DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR RYAN NIELSEN
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2024
(On the hardest part about defending against Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa) “Yeah,
he’s got a lot of weapons. Really good team, fast team. Shift, trade and motion all over the
place. He does a really good job distributing the ball. Look, we all know about Tyreek
[Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill], Waddle [Dolphins WR Jaylen Waddle], but the rest of the group,
they do a really good job. If you take those guys away, he’ll get the ball to the other guys. So,
you can’t just focus on one or two. They’ve got a full offense that we’ve got to prepare for.
He gets the ball out. He knows where to go with the ball. The guy gets out the ball lightning-
quick out of his hands. So, we’ve got to do a really good job in our coverage and disrupting
him in the pocket, things like that, things you’ve got to do every week. But really good
football player. He’s playing at a really high level. Watched a lot of his games from last year.
How quickly he gets rid of the ball and how well they do a job of seeing your coverage. He
knows where to go with the football. It’s very impressive.”
(On what the defensive line must do, given his ability to get the ball out quickly) “Yeah,
hands up. Get your hands up, limit interior throwing lanes, things like that. We can’t be high
rushing up the field, open up areas where he can see better. But yeah, interior types, hands
up, bats, tip some balls, things like that.”
(On if he likes having the challenge of elite receivers in Week 1, and if that prepares the
team to face similar styles of offense later in the season) “Yeah, we treat each game as one
unit. And so each game is going to present a different challenge and it’s really good that this
team is, just how the schedule falls and we don’t pick it. We’ve got to go out there and
we’ve got to play. But fired up about playing this group. Really good, have a lot of success.
Mike [Dolphins Head Coach Mike McDaniel] has done a great job with their team and the
offense down there has been really good in terms of running and passing. They’re well-
balanced. Obviously one of the high-power offenses of the league, No. 1 passing offense,
things like that. It’ll be a really good test, our guys are going to be ready. We’re just one day
at a time and go out there and play third down today.
(On the importance of the defense’s pre-snap portion within the down) “We talk about align
and adjust when the pre-snap, when they break the huddle, we make our calls and our
coverage calls, and our guys have got to get lined up quick because there is so much shift,
trade and motion. Get in a stance, get your eyes on the right spot and then be prepared for
the adjustment. College football, NFL, it’s all the same, high school: line up and then
somebody’s going to move today in any level. I mean, somebody’s moving. The receiver’s
moving, tight end trade, backs moving. So, we’ve got to be ahead of those shift, trade,
motions for our guys to go out there and be ahead of the coverage call, ‘Hey, we’re going to
go from this to this or we’ve got to slide the line,’ or something like that. So, we’re on our
guys about every single call. Then what’s going to happen? Just don’t sit there and be like,
‘Hey, they’re going to snap the ball.’ We’re going to get a shift, trade, motion every snap.
That’s what we’ve been practicing. We’ve been practicing that since OTAs. It’s just how the
game is today.”
(On the defense’s motto to “attack everything”) “I think it’s our motto every day: attack
everything. Everything we do. The weight room, the meeting rooms, the practice field,
rehab—we attack. It’s the mindset of being ready for everything. We’re going to go out
there, we’re going to treat it like today’s Sunday, we attack today, treat it like a game, so
then when Sunday happens, we’re prepared. They’re going to do some things that we didn’t
prepare for. It’s Game 1. Everybody does that, but as long as we align and adjust, we get our
eyes in the right spot, we win the pre-snap and then we go out there and we attack the play,
we should be pretty good.”
(On his message to the guys making their NFL debut this Sunday) “It’s football. It’s football.
By the fifth play, all those emotions and everything kind of go away and you get into the flow
of the game, so don’t burn too much in the pregame thinking about it too much, flight down
there. Just go do your job. That’s really the important thing. Play fundamentals and
technique. You know the scheme and everything, where you’re supposed to be. Play
fundamentals and technique, do your job and just focus on winning your one-on-one
matchup.”
(On his expectations for the interior defensive linemen against Miami’s offensive speed)
“They do a good job in their perimeter runs, but then when you really start breaking them
down, they do have some interior runs that you can’t fall asleep on as everybody starts
running to the sidelines. Again, we’ve just got to go out there, we’ve got to play the man in
front of us, we’ve got to play the angle of departure in our block, own our gap. Then the big
thing is—and this is every week—get off the block and get to the football. Populate the ball,
run inside-out, eliminate the cutbacks in the big yardage. Their backs are really, they do a
great job getting on the edge, one cut—boom. They hit it right down the field. So, we’ve got
to get off the blocks on the back side and get to the ball to eliminate those cutbacks.”
OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR PRESS TAYLOR
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2024
(On how much is unknown about Miami’s defense being Week 1 under a new defensive
coordinator) “Certainly, there’s a lot of unknown. I mean, we haven’t seen a lot of their guys
play together through the preseason. Coach Weaver [Dolphins Defensive Coordinator
Anthony Weaver] is probably going to have his stamp on it. Now, we’re going to certainly
study his past, and not just him. There’s a number of coaches on their staff that have been
involved in other systems that you’re kind of keeping an eye on. You may check a little bit
and the benefit is, you get some time to do that through the summer. But then, the tough
part about it is you don’t know. So, it’s kind of one those things that, let’s carry things we’re
really good at enough to where we can adjust as the game goes and try to figure it out as
things are playing to put our guys in the best position.”
(On if the game plan for Week 1 is more thorough than for later weeks) “No, not necessarily,
but there’s just enough variety of things we do well that have good, versatile answers. There
may be sometimes where you’re very specific because we know these are the coverages,
these are the pressures we’re getting, things like that. We pair some things down or maybe
we have kills that just give us the right play at the right time, or here, it’s kind of, we may
have to pivot in the middle of the first quarter. Whatever that may be based on where
people are aligned, what they’re playing, how it goes from that standpoint.”
(On his confidence in the offensive line as a unit) “We’re very confident in the work they’ve
put in. That’s really all we can go off right now. From April through training camp, through all
of it. Whether it’s the meetings, spending time together, getting on the same page
communication-wise, to the reps we see on the field and the reps we spend time getting in
the walkthroughs. We’ve put a lot of time into that and we’re very confident in the way
they’ll play. But again, that’s part of it. Let’s go see what happens.”
(On who has assumed a leadership role on the offensive line) “Yeah, I think there’s a lot of
veteran presence in that room, be it Cam [OL Cam Robinson], Mitch [OL Mitch Morse],
Brandon [OL Brandon Scherff]. Those three guys are probably the guys that kind of
spearhead the leadership of that room itself. Mitch being a center, Luke [OL Luke Fortner]
being a center, you hear those guys a lot, because they’re involved in a lot of
communication process. So those are guys that are probably the most vocal, but then
Brandon and Cam and some other guys, they’ll speak up as well.”
(On WR Louis Rees-Zammit’s skillset and eventual role for the team) “He’s got a great
accent, so he’s fun to talk to. I think with him, it’s just a new beginning and even playing
football is new, but playing receiver is new. He played running back in Kansas City and so
transitioning to the receiver room, kind of learning a little bit more space to play in right
there. Then, right now, it’s just him kind of trying to get some sort of understanding of what
we call things so he can play fast and work his way through. But as far as the individual
drills, he’s done a good job so far. The scout team has had a couple plays here and there, so
it’s good. It’ll be fun just to watch him continue to grow.”
(On pairing down the run game and the buy-in from the offensive line) “I think the biggest
thing is we’ve been able to communicate pretty well. Our goal is just to always have 11 guys
seeing it the exact same way, every time out. Because we could have one run play, but you
could block it ten different ways based on the presentation of the defense. So, we want to
be really good about, ‘This is what we do, this is all the looks you could get exposed to
throughout the course of the game.’ So then, when you go into a Week 1 with a lot of
unknowns, we kind of just lean back on what we’ve been doing since April. We get
everybody on the same page, and we execute the down and then we get to the sideline, and
we communicate and talk through what’s the best way to do this moving forward. But we’re
excited about the work we’ve put into that, and we want to see what happens on Sunday.”
(On which area WR Brian Thomas Jr. has shown the most growth in) “That’s a good
question. I think just kind of understanding… I don’t know. Going into Week 1, especially
when the game plan hones in, of being able to see, all right, this is where they’re going to
use me. This is what this looks like at this certain time. I think even going back to the Atlanta
preseason game, he caught the crosser. If you just watch the tape, he’s open, he gets out,
he runs it a certain way. We spent a lot of time as a group just detailing that specific route,
and what it looks like and all the different looks for it. So then to see the way he ran it, dove
inside, got vertical, stuck his foot, separated, that was exactly what we talked about. So
just to see him grow on the little details, the little nuances of one simple little route to
where it carried over to game. Then you’ve seen the confidence grow from him. I think that’s
a big thing. I don’t think he was ever not confident himself, but you just see confidence in
his ability to play, understanding the offense, how they’re using me, what they want me to
do, that type of stuff. It’s just been fun to watch, and I think it’s just going to continue to
grow with him.”
(On RB Tank Bigsby continuing his production into the regular season, and how that affects
the run-pass balance of the offense) “Yeah, I think that’s always the goal. I think a lot of it’s
dictated by circumstances in a game. So obviously games that you’re behind two scores, it
may be a throw-game at the end, your numbers change. Third-and-longer situations, again,
you’re going to throw the ball a little bit more just in attempt to convert. But as long as
you’re managing the game and you’re efficient in what it is, then yes, the ideal game at the
end of the day would be a 50-50 split. Now, at the same time, if we’re having success
throwing the ball and that’s the way we move the ball, I don’t care if we throw it 100 times
and run it zero times. If we win the game that way, awesome. If we have to run it 100 times
and never throw it, as long as we win, awesome. We’ll do whatever. At the end of the year,
when you look back and you’re holding the Lombardi and you’re 50-50, that’s awesome.
Everybody got so many touches, and we spread the wealth, but we’ll do whatever it takes to
win a game. We don’t care who gets it, how we do it, but we’re just trying to score one more
point than they do at the end of the day.”
(On if he’s expecting simulated pressure from Miami’s defense, and how he’s preparing the
guys for it) “Yeah, again, we’re looking into the Baltimore family. If you look at that, that’s
certainly been a trend of theirs recently. I think that’s kind of a trend across the league, and
that’s been in college football as well, working its way up. So, it’s certainly tough to deal
with. That’s something we’ll prepare our guys for. That’s something we’ve been preparing
our guys for since April. We’ll spend a lot of time in the offseason training camp
walkthroughs of picking one flavor pressure package of the day and we just will, 10 reps of
that over and over and over, so that when you get into a game like this, we try to rep
everything we could possibly think we could see based on film. But we also have our kind
of—we call them SOPs—our standard operating procedures, to fall back on to when it
comes out that, ‘Hey, we didn’t practice this this week on Wednesday, but we did in April.
We did in August in camp,’ and things like that. So, the simulated pressures are certainly a
thing that they’ve been very good at in Baltimore. We expect to carry over into Miami, but
again, we’ll adjust as the game goes along.”
(On if communication is a big part of implemented SOPs) “It’s a huge part of it. It’s similar to
the run game of just making sure that we’re all on the same page. We have 11 guys seeing it
the exact same way. Or in the protection world, do we have seven, eight guys seeing it the
exact same way, identifying who’s the MIKE, who are we going to, who’s in the slide, who’s
not. all these different things that come up. That’s a big thing that having a veteran center
and having a quarterback now in his fourth year or third year in our protection system, we
feel pretty good about being able to get on the same page quickly.”
