OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR PRESS TAYLOR
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2024
You’re keeping six or seven wide receivers on the roster in a given year, and then how do you assess
how WR Joshua Cephus has played so far?
PRESS TAYLOR: The roster is always kind of fluid. Sometimes it’s week-to-week of how do we build the
best gameday active roster? Who do you risk losing if you put on waiver wires versus who could you
potentially bring back, that all comes in play. Ideally, you’ve got three guys that you know are going to
contribute most of the pass game to, a fourth guy that can be versatile and have some sort of role, and
depending fifth, sixth, a lot of that comes down to special teams. We’re not throwing the ball to the fifth
receiver a lot of times on game day when there’s five guys out. It’s the top three guys you’re going to roll
on through plus tight ends, running backs, whatever the matchups determine, and then that guy has
versatility to play multiple spots or thrive in a certain role, but probably gets a game day jersey because
of special teams most likely. Then we have a lot of guys like Cephus that you were asking about that kind
of fit that mold of how do they fit. Where do they fit in fourth, fifth, sixth? What’s their value as a
receiver and special teams, as well.
What do you want to do with TE Evan Engram this year?
PRESS TAYLOR: There’s a lot of things. Evan is such a dynamic ball carrier. A lot of it is get him the ball as
quick as you can running away from people. But I think an element that he’s always had is getting down
the field really. Sometimes it’s trying to find what the match-up is. You can get him on safeties, you know
that. There’s certain looks. We don’t get a lot of match-ups with him against linebackers necessarily. We
get a lot of safety carry looks. We get a lot of people that will play nickel or 12-personal when he is in the
game. So then is it worth the tight end match-up against the nickel or a safety when you could get a
receiver in that match-up. There’s kind of a give and take. If we give him this, we’re taking that from
somebody else. There’s a lot of those elements. He’s done a good job particularly when he’s in the core
blocking second level. When we have a couple schemes where he gets on the second level quickly he
does a pretty good job on that stuff. That’s something we’re trying to evolve, but getting him the football
quickly. Things happen quickly and happen pretty well for him. He’s a good ball carrier.
TE Evan Engram has the skills to be able to make those plays?
PRESS TAYLOR: He does. He’s a good guy as a contested catch guy, above the shoulder, as well. Kind of
those half back shoulder, half contested catch types of situations.
Is TE Evan Engram pushing for more work down the field a little bit talk to you about?
PRESS TAYLOR: Not necessarily, but I mean he’ll do anything we ask. As we go and look at our offense,
attacking all parts of the field, whether it be vertically or horizontally, he’s certainly the guy that can give
us that.
As a coordinator, how does familiarity with your staff bring success?
PRESS TAYLOR: I mean that’s a big part of it. I think you’re comfortable with the people that you’ve been
around and shared experiences with. Now there’s value in outside voices, people you don’t know.
Ultimately, it’s how you work together. Whether that’s new people that you mesh well together or
you’ve been through the fire with and your personalities mesh. Ultimately that’s how it’s going to work.
It’s people working together. But certainly, if you have shared experience with somebody, that’s going to
help tighten that bond and be able to lean on that at the right times.
You said you took the offense as a group, I think you phrased it, down to the studs or something like
that. How has that process gone? Are you pleased with the growth?
PRESS TAYLOR: Yeah, really more so than anything it’s our run game. Just the terminology, the structure,
the progression of the way we teach it. That’s something we haven’t been as good as we want to be.
Moving forward we paired it down to what’s really important to us? What have we been good at? How
do we rebuild this thing from scratch? That’s where our main focus was. I think guys are seeing that, I
think the way we’ve taught it so far through the offseason has really stuck with guys. There’s probably a
clear understanding of things fitting in certain families where the rules and the techniques are carrying
over from play to play. You honestly have no idea if you can run the ball until the game starts. Preseason
only give us you so much. Offseason doesn’t give you a whole lot. It gives you targeting and landmarks
and footmarks and technique, but there’s not physicality. We talked about that last time. Even into
training camp. There’s only so much you can do. You’ll get a handful of days that are full speed, but
there’s really not a time. You have to get a hope that your training has taken you to the point that now
when the bolts are flying, we know how to respond.
Have you noticed a difference in WR Parker Washington?
PRESS TAYLOR: Parker is playing a lot more confidently. I think he’s a lot healthier than he was this time
last year when we got him. They’re not worried every time they break the huddle about what I’m doing,
where is my stance, how does this route change? Now it’s he’s heard it a hundred times. So we give a
play call, we give a route, we move him around. He knows the expectations of that particular player in
that particular concept and so now you just see the skill set start to come out. That confidence is a big
thing. He’ll continue to grow. He was put in the fire last year was moved around a couple spots, made
some plays. I think that certainly contributes to some confidence from the playmaking itself. He’s
continuing to go.
Combining a couple of things, WR Gabe Davis and WR Brian Thomas Jr. have both said that they’re —
they value blocking. They understand that Brian said that at LSU, if you couldn’t block, you couldn’t get
on the field. How has that maybe shifted your view of that six or seven wide receivers you’d keep on
the roster? Additionally, having those two players as you take this down to the studs, how does that
skill set maybe force you to completely alter what you did a year ago?
PRESS TAYLOR: Yeah. I think, I mean obviously we want to be — we feel like kind of the interior, the core
unit is going to help us efficiently run the football. Efficiency turns into explosion when the receivers are
blocking. You get those four-yard runs turn into 14 yards runs because we have hats on the safety, we’re
carrying corners out, whatever that may be. We’re not going to ask those guys to block middle
linebackers. There’s going to be a time an a place. May be a front side pen pull, may be a back side
cutoff. It may be getting to the second level on a toss crack series, but for the most part we’re blocking
four safeties, we’re blocking cloud corners. Things we think those guys can do, certainly they’re size
helps. They’re both strong, physical guys. Gabe has done it in the NFL which is a big deal. Brian, we’ll get
him working on certain concepts, but everybody has to block. We ask Christian [WR Christian Kirk] to
block. Christian blocks a point of attack, Christian blocks the backside of things. Sometimes it’s the
changing picture is where it gets hard. You have to block the four safety. Well the four safety could be
frontside, could be backside. Could be somebody blitzing off the slot. And so you trust those guys that
know how to do that really well. So having more of them helps us. Now we’re less into this guy is on the
frontside, the run is to him, this guy is on the backside, the run is away. It just helps you eliminate
tendencies having more guys to do more things.
What are your thoughts on QB Mac Jones in this offseason?
PRESS TAYLOR: Mac’s done a great job just getting in here and learning the offense. He’s a sponge. He
loves learning football, talking football. He’s constantly in the building, he’s constantly asking questions,
he’s constantly talking, which one thing, like, ‘hey, shut up, I have to give you a play call real quick.’ He
just runs his mouth all the time, which is fun. It makes practice fun. He’s chirping with the DBs all the
time. It’s hard right now when we don’t have helmets on so there’s no headset communicator. I have to
physically get him to come talk to me to give him the next play call. He’s done a great job just learning.
You see his experience. He’s played a lot of football. All the concepts we run he’s run at some point in
time. Some of it is translating and then you try as quickly as you can to get away from the old language
you have. You can’t keep telling yourself, oh, this is this. Well, this is this and at a certain point it’s got to
go away and it’s got to be this is this. This is how we communicate. This is our language. He’s done that.
He’s playing quicker each day that he gets, every rep he gets. We’re glad we have him.
We always like to talk about that change of scenery or a player. Is that real?
PRESS TAYLOR: I think so. I think there’s certain times it just gets tough and it’s nice to have a breath of
fresh air. It’s fun to have a new system and talk new language with the group and I think you’re kind of
seeing that with him right now.
What do you like most about what you guys have done this offseason?
PRESS TAYLOR: I think we’ve established a tempo in and out of the huddle. The way we want to meet and
establishing our standard for this is what it looks like. We’d love to say we established his physicality that
we’re going to be, but that’s just real right now. So there’s certain things in the tempo, the way we
communicate in and out of the huddle, playing at the line of scrimmage. There’s a couple different things
that I feel confident we’ve been able to do. Then like we talked about, just start running progression of
this is our starting point, this is how we build on this, this is how it all fits together to where there’s more
understanding. It’s not memorization. It’s now we understand why this word means this, how this relates
to that and hour blocking schemes are the same and our combinations are the same.
How much of that is QB Trevor Lawrence?
PRESS TAYLOR: A big part of that is Trevor. A big part of that is familiarity. 75-80 percent of the group has
been here before. So they kind of understand why things went away, why things change the way they
were called, why we do things we do. You know, it helps when your teach tapes are now our guys.
There’s no more Indy clips, Philly clips. It’s us for two years whether it’s training camp, offseason, joint
practices, games, whatever that is. I think that certainly helps guys watching themselves on tape as well.
What do you look for from young offensive lineman this time of year? How do you figure out where
they’re at this time of year?
PRESS TAYLOR: That’s hard because a lot of it for them, there’s so much more learning for offensive
linemen than there was in college. We have a number of different calls. We’re trying to build their
toolbox. You face this sort of rusher, this is how you’re going to approach it this week and it changes
every single week. They’re seeing that throughout the offseason just based on whether you’re playing
[OLB] Josh Allen, [DL] De’Shaan Dixon, [OLB] Travon Walker. All these different types of rushers, you start
to see how that changes. So you start to see how to handle it, how they adjust. But a lot of it, you’re just
trying to get them to learn what they can do, what the tools are. Really one of the big thing is they
haven’t heard things at the huddle and they haven’t used cadence at the line. A lot of it was no huddle,
you got a signal, you heard the quarterback clap, let’s roll. We have to vary the cadence, we have a lot
more play calls you hear in the huddle. So there’s a whole process that you’re just trying to get them
through really to now their skill set flourishes. Going back to, like, Parker. Parker settled in. He’s more
confident now. You want to get them through that as fast as possible so you can see their skill set take
over.
What has WR Brian Thomas Jr. done right to help his adjustment to the NFL?
PRESS TAYLOR: I think he’s just really diligent. One of the things, we’re trying to get him to talk more, just
ask more questions. He’s not a big talker. So you’re not always sure, you’re searching for feedback. Are
you picking up what we’re saying? So far it’s always translated over the field pretty good. So he’s getting
it in some, way, shape or form. We want more out of him communication wise just so we know what
he’s thinking. Does this make sense to you? How do you relate this? For the most part, he kind of nods
and looks at you and goes out on the field and does it right. So that’s encouraging. At least he’s doing it
right, not wrong. You’re looking for that. He does a great job. However he’s getting it, whether it’s from
the meeting room, extra studying at night, carrying it over the field, he’s done a great job of that so far.
We’re trying to expose him to as much as possible so if he misses a signal or an alert, if there was
something real subtle in a huddle it doesn’t happen twice. With him, so far, he’s not repeating any
mistakes.
When will he start to communicate with you guys? At what point are you kind of like all right, man, we
really have got to know what you’re thinking at this point?
PRESS TAYLOR: Hopefully, we just really annoy him enough until start talking back to us. We’re
encouraging him to start talking more. I think it’s just getting comfortable in your surroundings. He’s
lived in Baton Rouge forever, now Jacksonville, staying in a hotel. You’re finding your way into work,
you’re finding out where the cafeteria is. There’s so much new for these guys. You’re just trying to get
them to settle in and eventually we hope that takes over a little more.
What do you like as a coach, how do you approach when you see the schedule actually come out, the
order with Miami and Cleveland non divisional teams? When did you start like to working on them?
Do you like to wait?
PRESS TAYLOR: As quick as possible. We’re fortunate. We played Cleveland, we played Baltimore. Which
is kind of where we are going off with Miami so far with Anthony Weaver over there. Same idea. You go
through, you watch your past, you watch as much as you can throughout that. We’ll spend time in
training camp when we have those free moments of searching through certain things. There may be days
when we show Cleveland blitzes. We may not even tell our guys it’s Cleveland blitzes, but as coaches,
we’ll put these in, kind of introduce it a little bit and work on that here and there. You kind of look at
those first four opponents. We’ll start there and then everything kind of flows from that.
The proposed new schedule for the offseason that potentially could happen where there would be no
OTAs. From a coach’s point of view, do you like the schedule the way it is now, and what would that
mean for younger players to not have the OTA, perhaps, but to have an earlier training?
PRESS TAYLOR: I don’t know. This is really all I know, so I like it the way it is. I went through the COVID
year where obviously there was no offseason. The next years in Indy, we had a two-week agreement
with the players. We just did two weeks. That was all different. There’s good and bad with it. Really, just
tell us what the rules are and we’ll figure out how we’re going to adjust to it. I don’t know if I’d
necessarily have an opinion. It would change our schedule from the get go. As long as we have some
summer break or something, it would be nice.
Do you think it would affect with younger players, like for example the WR Josh Cephus or these
undrafted free agent rookies? Would that be unfair to them to perhaps only have two preseason
games even if it’s an extended training camp?
PRESS TAYLOR: Yeah, they’re swimming. A lot of these young guys right now, they join at Phase 2. They
get one week of Phase 2 with the vets and then they’re kicked into the deep end and it’s OTA and we’re
practicing against each other. So you kind of get those kinks out of the way early, and they come back for
training camp, they know the speed, we’re going through the install again. That process would be hard. I
would assume you’d pick them, get them a playing book, whatever it is, but then they don’t come in for
two months. Yeah, that would be tough probably for young players, but I think that’s — they don’t really
have a seat at the table at CBA. The young guys don’t and the old guys like the way it is that they know it.
I don’t know how that plays out. Just tell me when I need to be here and we’ll figure it out from there.
That plan seems similar to the COVID offseason in 2020. Do you have any lessons learned from that
offseason that would make it easier to transition?
PRESS TAYLOR: Yeah. That was kind of make it up as we go. Things change daily, things change weekly.
We were just plying by the seat of our pants there. I’d have to go back and really look at what we did and
our calendar, what kind of use we got out of it. I think it made everybody more organized as coaches.
You were at home all the time, all you had was video. So we all got our cutups in order and things like
that, the teach tapes together. I’d have to go back and look at that.
What do the quarterbacks do? Do you want them to make sure they take like a two or three week
break where there’s no football or talk about it at all?
PRESS TAYLOR: We more so give them a plan like here’s what we’d like to see when you get back from
training camp. How they go about that is different for each guy. Some guys want to train with their
quarterback coach, some guys want to be here or play golf or go on vacation. For the most part, this is
what we expect when you come back from training camp.
