JAGUARS HEAD COACH DOUG MARRONE
September 21, 2020
(Opening Statement) “Obviously, it’s a Monday, but it’s actually a Thursday when you’re on a short week like we are now. We got some things from the game and there’s a lot of things obviously we can learn from. We got the team in, we got in at a decent hour, so [we’re] rested up and getting ourselves ready to go. We’ll have a week of a lot of jog-throughs, things of that situation, so we get to the game on Thursday. Thursday places a lot of anxiety into a lot of people, as far as trying to get ready, trying to go, especially, I was told earlier in the year [that] it’s a little tougher. Sometimes at the end of the year you’re dealing with injuries or you’re dealing with getting your team back and healthy, but schematically you still want to make sure you’re doing the things you need to do to win the game. But a lot of times early in the year, you don’t know, you haven’t really settled into a lot of things, so that’s where we are right now.”
(On his assessment of the team’s red zone performance in the first two games) “Hopefully we can keep that consistency going. It’s kind of like after the year’s over and I get together with you guys, and obviously with the coaches and everyone else, and we talk about things we have to work on. We look at it as an overall team first, just team stuff, what we want to do, where we want to go. Then, we break it down into all three phases from a standpoint of what we have to do as a unit schematically and then what we have to do individually for certain players. The red zone was something that we knew that we had to do a better job and sometimes you have to address that a couple different ways. Not only is it scheme, it’s matchups, it’s everything. My whole philosophy with the red zone, and pretty much everyone’s, everywhere I’ve been has said this, things happen so much quicker, so much faster. That’s where you really see your completion percentage, your decision making, and your playmakers really come to the top. I thought that in the offseason with [General Manager] Dave [Caldwell] and our scouts and our pro scouts and even college, we wanted to make sure that we were able to get some players that we felt could come in here and help us there. We wanted to be able to run the football, obviously that’s a key thing in that area of the field, but you have to be able to challenge people on the outside or in the middle of the field and right now we have guys playing at a high level. We can run it, we can throw it, there’s a lot of different things we can do down there and we feel good about the players that are doing it and confident. I think that we’ve been able to execute. We put in extra time, obviously in the limited time we had, but we put in time. I think it’s just like anything, when you can take an area [and] focus on it, you have a chance to get better at it. We just need to keep our consistency up, but I’m happy with the job we’re doing there.”
(On playing the game with no one in the stands) “I would definitely agree that it was definitely different. I don’t know from the standpoint [of] I guess some people that haven’t been on the field or maybe in situations like that, [but] I feel like I’ve been in those situations quite a bit as far as on the field where you can hear things. But like I said before, showing up and there’s no one around the stadium, showing up and you’re in the hallways, there’s nothing going on, walking in and not seeing anyone out there, it’s definitely different. I think when you take a moment and you look around you say that, but I don’t think it’s something that keeps going in your mind, like screws you up as you have to do your job. I just think it’s something you just go, ‘This is pretty crazy. It’s weird. It’s different’, and it definitely is. At least for me, that’s the first time we’ve really experienced no fans in a regular season football game, so it was different, but once you started playing, I really didn’t put much thought into it.”
(On if it’s better to play at home during a short week and an update on OL Brandon Linder) “I think when you play on a short week on Thursday night you always get a little bit of an advantage if you’re the home team, depending on what your travel’s been the week before. I think our travel was fine coming from Nashville and getting in at decent hour. I don’t know the stats or the gambling or anything like that, but I would think, at least for me as a coach, when you’re home, it’s a little bit better because that Wednesday you travel, that Thursday you’re in the hotel for a long period of time. I just think it’s a little bit less anxiety for a team to be home on a Thursday. [Brandon] Linder, we got good news last night. Obviously, we didn’t know if it was going to be serious or not, so we got good news on it. Now it’s just going to be day by day. He’s not going to go on IR, so now we just have to see how we’ll be on a short week.”
(On how much QB Gardner Minshew II’s intelligence helps on a short week) “I think two things; I think that and experience. You could be smart, but if you don’t have that experience to go with it… I think anytime you have players that are smart, it’s going to help you in a short week and even [in] a regular week. I think when you have a bunch of guys that are in tune with what’s going on, you can do a little bit more. You can always keep building, keeping putting more on a player or take things out, put more in, and have a good understanding of it. Rather than sometimes, if you don’t have that, you try to tweak things a little bit, but what happens is sometimes you wind up confusing it rather than saying, ‘Hey listen, we’re going to do something different. This is what we’re going to do’ and getting them to understand it. So, I think it’s always good to have players [that are intelligent] and Gardner’s not the only one in there. We have a couple others, a bunch of guys, that are like that, so I think that helps us. Just when they’re comfortable in what you’re doing, it makes it easier. If they’re uncomfortable and you’re not having success, then everyone’s looking in all different directions. We have a long way to go and we’ve done some good things and we just have to keep building and keep that stuff going.”
(On the timeline of figuring out the linebacker situation with LB Myles Jack and LB Joe Schobert) “Afterwards, we felt that we had a great advantage, this is the mindset now in January. We thought we had a good advantage of saying, ‘Hey you know what, we’ve got ourselves a player that can play all three positions and think he can play those positions at a high level.’ So, then it went into, ‘Okay, let’s look at free agency, see who’s out there in free agency.’ Then it was, ‘Let’s take a look at college and see what’s there in college and see what the next best step is for us.’ When we saw Joe [Schobert], we wanted to go out there and get Joe and then move Myles [Jack] back to WILL. We feel like in the end we got the best of both worlds. But in the beginning, I don’t want to say that if we couldn’t find anyone to play ‘MIKE’ that maybe we would’ve looked for ‘WILL’, we just thought that Joe was such a good player at that position and then moving Myles back to ‘WILL’, which was a better position for him. We felt that would benefit our team. I spoke to Myles about that early on in the process. I said, ‘Hey listen, this is what I’m thinking, this is what we’re thinking of doing. I don’t want you to hear it from anyone else. I want you to hear it from me.’ He was great. He’s like, ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to be a better football team. No problem at all. [I] appreciate you giving me the heads up calling.’ I think he was in Australia at the time when I called, I’m not sure about that, or [if he] was just getting ready to leave, but that’s how that went.”
(On if Defensive Coordinator Todd Wash said LB Myles Jack was a middle linebacker last year because he was going to play that position the whole year or if that’s the position he really saw him in) “I don’t know if [Defensive Coordinator Todd] Wash’s is going to be on [the press conference], that’s more of a question [for him]. I can’t answer that for him as far as what his mindset was. I think that if Myles [Jack] was a middle linebacker, I would say Myles is a middle linebacker, meaning that I really feel, and I know this is hard maybe for people to understand, I really feel that he can play all three positions at an extremely high level. I do, personally. Where I like him at the WILL linebacker is a little bit less on his plate and now you when there’s a little bit less, when I say that I’m just talking about making the calls, doing all that stuff, now he can just tune into formations and go and get ready to play. I think it frees him up. But I think whether we’re talking about the SAM [line]backer or MIKE linebacker or WILL linebacker, I’ve had a couple guys that I’ve been fortunate enough to be around in this league that’ve played at high levels and been Pro Bowl players, I kind of feel the same way about those guys too, if you’re a linebacker and you’re off the football. What’s unique about Myles is he’s a really good linebacker on the ball too, which we saw that first year. But if you’re a behind the line linebacker, if you’re good, you can probably play both of them. He’s playing at a really high level right now and, like I said, I think he can play anywhere and if we have some injuries, he’s one guy that we can move around. Hopefully, we don’t have to do that.”
(On if he’s watched Miami’s game from last week and knows where he can take advantage of their defense) “I have not gotten [to] that yet. The way I start off is I usually start off with a lot of stuff on our team and who’s going to be up, who’s going to be down, getting ready for the practice schedule. Then I start with special teams, then I go to defense, and then I save offense for last. I haven’t watched that yet, so I apologize for that.”
(On if they are planning to see QB Tua Tagovailoa or QB Ryan Fitzpatrick in Thursday’s game against Miami) “In this time, you have to be ready. You never know what’s going to happen. I think that [with Ryan] Fitzpatrick, there’s a lot of stuff out there on Ryan. I have a ton of respect for him. We see him that he can get hot real and really do well. [With] Tua [Tagovailoa], we haven’t really seen yet except for in college. We’ll make sure we peek it and dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s and just make sure that we can see some of those things and, again, just have a plan for Miami’s offense, not for anyone in particular. They have a lot of good players in a lot of different positions, so you just have to be sound and be ready to go. It’s tough on a short week to put a lot of new stuff in there.”
(On balancing and prioritizing the corrections from last Sunday’s game during a short week) “First of all, the way it is, it’s really like a Thursday, so time is of the essence to make sure you get ready for your opponent. You want to be ready for that and then you want to make sure that you’re getting anything [done] that needs to be done on the plane, on the ride home. We’re watching the film and getting things corrected there because when you players come in, you want to be able to move forward because of the short week where you don’t have a lot of time to really go over the film, maybe like you would like to. But you’ve got to get it in somewhere and make sure that you’re correcting those mistakes so they don’t come back the following week because a lot of times in this league, if you make mistakes, people are going to test you to make sure you got them corrected. That’s on us as coaches to make sure that happens.”
(On how much he thinks he can do on offense with the variety of players he has this year) “I think we just keep building. I think like you said, they’re all different styles. There’s a lot of strengths to their styles and what they can do. There are guys that have done some good things that haven’t shown [everything]. There are guys that are able to cross what they do so I think that’s where it’s fun. You have a bunch of different guys, they have skills sets that you can put them in different spots, put them in different places. That’s what makes it enjoyable when you’re getting in there and game planning on how you want to use someone or how you want to highlight a matchup that you feel really good about. You’re not just always looking at your top guy and hoping that they don’t double cover them, but you can do somethings where you have some guys that are going and that’s where Gardner [Minshew II] ’s done a really good job and [Offensive Coordinator] Jay [Gruden] and [Quarterbacks Coach] Ben [McAdoo]. We’ve spread the ball around pretty good, so I think it’s a little tough to get a beat on, ‘Hey this is the guy you’re going to’ or ‘Hey, if we take this guy away, make them throw to somebody he hasn’t thrown to before’ or something like that. Gardner feels real comfortable. We feel real comfortable about all the guys we have so it’s a good situation and they’re young and they’re hungry and they want to do more.”
(On the positives of having a short week as a young team and not dwelling on last week’s loss) “I didn’t think about that until you brought that up. I think my gut feeling would be probably yes. You don’t really have time to go back and get upset at yourself or pissed off or the same emotions we go through as coaches in wanting to have plays back or called back. I think you just have to move on so yeah, I think it should. We’ve got to make sure we cover it though. We want to make sure it’s not like, ‘Hey listen, we played and we’re moving on’ like we’re in sixth or seventh grade where you’re not watching film and making those corrections. But for them, I think it’s an important point. It’s one I try to make after the game and it’s one I’ll make later tonight with them with, ‘Hey listen, we’ve got to push forward now. We’ve got to focus all our attention on Miami coming in here on Thursday night.’”
(On if this team needs to learn how to start games with a lead, not just how to battle from behind) “I put that more on us, myself and the coaches, to try to get them get in a good start and doing that. I don’t think it’s going to change the way they play though, meaning that I don’t see them having any type of complacency or anything like that if they did have a lead. Obviously, we’ve seen what it’s like for them coming back, especially last week down fourteen points twice and coming back from that. There’s a resiliency about them. There’s a competitiveness about them. We just have to look to see how we can help them from a coaching standpoint to put them in better positions in all three phases. But I don’t see them changing as far as what their mindset is of how they take the field or how they play the game.”
(On level of play from the wide receivers) “That’s what I was saying, it’s like sometimes you get in there and you rotate them in and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Hey listen, I have to have this guy on the field to do this certain thing’ or sometimes you might only three guys that you really feel comfortable with like no matter what these three guys have to be on the field on third down. I look at our receiver group and I just say whoever’s out there, I’m good with. That’s me personally. I feel really confident and I think that all those guys are playing at a really good level right now. Those guys feel there’s a confidence level about them. I think it’s a great mix of guys in that room. You have someone like Chris [Conley] who’s the veteran presence. You have some like DJ [Chark Jr.] who’s always done things the right way, that works for it and became a Pro Bowl player. Then you have these two young guys [Collin Johnson and Laviska Shenault Jr.] that are really doing well, and you look at what Keelan [Cole Sr.]’s done for us these past two games. He’s really played at a really high level. A guy like Dede [Westbrook] who we feel really good about, we can’t even get him up on the game day roster. We knew going in that we were going to have pretty good depth at that position. At the end of the day, there were a lot of things we liked about some of the younger guys, but until you start playing, you really don’t know. But right now, all those guys are playing at a good level, really good level. [I’m] really happy with that.”
(On feeling close to this year’s team as a coach) “First of all, I think it comes to communication. One of things I’ve learn a long time ago is that I always felt like, for me when I was growing up, at least to some extent, I can approach people. When I was an assistant coach, I never had a problem going and talking to the head coach. If I saw people that I wanted to meet, I had no problem going up to them and meeting them and communicating. I think sometimes in this business, when I started moving up and I became a head coach, I saw it a little bit different. I saw when you walk down the hallway, people would turn away and you’re like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ because you’re the head coach or people would just be quiet, everyone would stop and it’s a very uncomfortable feeling, at least for me, when that happens. I learned early on that you had to really work as a head coach to either create or break down those barriers so that you can communicate. Communication’s obviously a two-way street so a lot of times you try to have conversations and you try to learn about people and it really has nothing to do with football. [It’s] just to get to know people and get a feel for them. I think with this team, maybe because we’re with these younger guys for so long, they communicate extremely well. I was like, ‘Holy cow!’ You’re walking down the hallway and now they’re going to stop me five or six times. I’m the guys who’s hiding a little bit now but they’re just great young guys. The older guys have really opened up for whatever reason. The vision that you have for what you want to look like as a team, that I share with the players and we talk about quite a bit, is a shared vision. I think when you have that with no little groups on one side or a couple groups here and people trying to tear it down or question it, I really feel good about it. Everyone has a really good vision on how we practice, how we play, how we approach things and that’s what we’re talking about and I feel like we have a shared vision which I think creates the closeness.”
JAGUARS SIGN CORNERBACK JOSH NURSE TO THE PRACTICE SQUAD
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. –The Jacksonville Jaguars have signed rookie CB Josh Nurse to the practice squad, the club announced today. The Jaguars also released first-year RB Craig Reynolds from their practice squad.
Nurse, 6-3, 200, originally signed with Baltimore as an undrafted free agent in April. He played collegiately at Utah, appearing in 40 games after first joining the Utes as a walk-on. Prior to playing at Utah, Nurse also attended Blinn College in 2016 and Georgia Military College in 2015.
