| August 28, 2020 Opening statement: “Good morning, good to see everybody. Just a couple announcements here for practice: We will be inside today, obviously with the weather. We had a good, hot practice yesterday, so that was good. We had a good, rainy practice the other day – that was good. A little bit of a shells-practice here today, not in pads, so that we can put the pads on here tomorrow and try to go back outside and crank it up a little bit. Inside, quicker-tempo practice, little bit more fast-paced, lot of situational-football stuff, so we’re going to be working on a lot of communication and things like that. So inside helps us a little bit just to make sure the communication is clean. A couple guys for practice – Hunter Bryant, Da’Shawn Hand, Bo Scarbrough and D’Andre Swift – kind of on the same program. Nick Bawden, he’ll have a day of rest here today, and we’ll see what that looks like tomorrow. Trey Flowers and Taylor Decker (were) a little bit sore yesterday, went out, tried to see if it would loosen up on them, just decided to give some of those reps to some other guys to kind of give them a little bit of a break. So we’ll see how that goes today. Again same thing, sometimes in the morning guys come in, and they might be a little sore and try to loosen up before they get out to practice and kind of see what it looks like – if it’s a situation where it’s tight or they’re tight or sore. We may not extend them into practice at that point, sometimes it happens last minute.” On how to balance a player resting and practicing: “Soft-tissue injuries are sometimes complex, sometimes they’re a little bit less complex. You’re always going off the grade of: What is the percentage of workload they can do off the hamstring or a soft-tissue injury? We have different measures through our training department that can test – maybe the muscle is at a certain percentage of workload that maybe they’ve done in the past or maybe it’s practice or other training, and we have ways to measure that and kind of be able to say, ‘OK, they can do this amount of workload in practice, or they can do these periods which are more controlled as opposed to team periods (which) are maybe not controlled and have maybe more space involved with the plays.’ We certainly look into what area of the field are we practicing in. How can that contribute to pacing a guy through practice so we can get his reps, but also not putting him in injury or dangerous situations from that aspect of it. We kind of monitor all those, and really just what does the upcoming schedule look like, too. Is it a situation where maybe that particular player is going to have a heavier workload on the next day based on situation or the practice type we’re going to have and may be better for us to just kind of rest him for a day and go from there? So certainly trying to make sure the player safety is first and foremost and making sure that – we certainly don’t want to do anything that’s going to prolong and injury or extend them from any missed time because being on the field is the most important thing to get evaluated. We want to make sure that we can get him out there in a safe manner as soon as possible.” On T Halapoulivaati Vaitai’s status after leaving the practice field yesterday: “He’s good. It was hot, hot day. ‘Big V’ is a big guy. So it was really hot yesterday, which was good. We needed the heat. I think, again we talk about this a lot, I certainly enjoy practicing in all types of weather and situations. I think that it’s all equally important. Yesterday was a good day for us. It was hot We did some work and we were out there no longer than any of the other practices, but obviously you could feel the heat yesterday, the humidity and guys were working, so that was great. Sometimes in those situations, like we see a guy that maybe has lost a lot or if we can also track how much water weight they usually lose during the course of a day, and we get patterns and put those patterns together and see, ‘Hey, how much fluids do they have to put back in their body before we practice appropriately the next day?’ Especially with the big guys, if we start to see anything at the end of practice, we might just make sure that their hydration levels are good, run them inside and check them out. I think we had a situation – Dan Skipper, yesterday we brought him in, brought him back out. That was because it was a little bit earlier in practice. I think ‘Big V’ was right at the end of practice.” On the point he gets concerned about the role RB D’Andre Swift can have given the amount of time he’s missed during training camp: “I think that in general with rookies with a normal season, where we have the spring and we have the preseason when we get to the regular season, things happen a lot quicker, and they’re a little bit more complex than what we’ve seen. So we’re going to have to do a good job of making sure he’s acclimated for when he is ready to go to be in situations that we think he can handle, and work him in that way until we build up a background, little bit of a repertoire for him where he knows what he’s going to see in those certain situations.” On what he’s seen from QB Matthew Stafford: “Man, he’s been awesome. He’s dialed in, locked into the coaching, the teaching, practice, meetings, his leadership has been outstanding. I think he’s fired up every day out there, he’s competing really hard and wants everything to be perfect, and you love the drive of everything that he does right now. It’s been great, it’s been unbelievable and for me, it’s been awesome just to watch him take that upon himself to push the team, and from that aspect of it, I couldn’t be more appreciative. It’s great.” On why he kept Wide Receivers Coach Robert Prince on staff when he took over as coach and even now: “‘R.P.’ – he’s awesome. I mean I love him; I love the way he coaches; I love his energy. He’s super smart, very intelligent, understands the offense. He’s been in a lot of different schemes. He’s great with the players. I think he really develops players, he makes his players better, which as a coach, is what you want. Just couldn’t be a better person. He’s a great guy, he just truly wants the team to do well, and he wants the players to do well and he’s just all on board. I lean on him a lot. I think the world of him and his family and I’m lucky to have that situation where I can walk in and have such a great coach like that and be able to keep him on my staff and work with him every day. He’s awesome, man. He’s absolutely awesome. He’s one of the best wide receiver coaches in the League. Again, the X’s and O’s, he’s super smart offensively, he handles a lot of things for us in the passing game, and like I said, he really coaches his players hard and he gets them better. It’s been great.” On why he thinks injuries are different this preseason: “That’s a really good point and a really good conversation. I was actually looking at some of the information last night about this in regards to the types of injuries that we’re having right now, because I always think that’s important too. What kind of injuries are we having? Are we having contact injuries, are they soft tissue injuries? Right now, I’m seeing a lot of joints. I’m seeing a lot of hips and ankles and knees and just kind of wondering if that’s a production or a process from the spring where we weren’t in maybe football-type positions like we usually are and doing some of those fundamental drills and we’re kind of kicking into that at a high level. It seems like everybody’s maybe a little bit banged up, so in my perspective, I think overall, you kind of always think the worst. I do feel like the guys did a good job coming in ready to go. I do feel that the process that we took to kind of get everybody acclimated back into training camp was good. I think everybody’s trying to do the right things from that standpoint. This is a big week for us because I would say that the intensity is – it feels like training camp. The intensity feels pretty high this week and certainly through this weekend, so we’ll see how that all goes. I would say right now, the types of injuries so far, have been a little bit different. It’s been a lot of just really sore, sometimes we call it overuse where it’s not acclimated enough to that sort of movement, and we’ve got to just be really careful, so it doesn’t turn into something bigger. I think it will be interesting for us to really keep track of the start of the season. I think that’s when really we’ve got to see how the injuries are taking effect as we get into game-speed, game-mode and kind of that whole other gear that’s really hard for us to get to in practice simulation and see what happens then, if that makes sense.” |
