| September 2, 2020 Opening statement: “Good morning. I hope everyone is doing well and having a great day. Big day here for us today – we’re going to head down to the stadium and give a little bit of a trial run through our normal gameday operation and get through the pre-game stretch routine, just get familiar with our stadium and our surroundings and give the team an opportunity to go down there and get some work on the turf. We’re excited about that. It’ll be a great change of scenery for us which will be nice, but there’s a lot of logistics here it seems that we want to make sure we handle from the standpoint of what a gameday operation will look like, so that when it comes up for the first time against Chicago, we’re not dealing with anything other than just concentrating on the game. It’ll be good for us to do that, as far as the players are concerned – Danny Amendola and Darryl Roberts are probably still pretty limited, if not out. I think everyone else is going to be trying to work in some sort of fashion of practice here today. So that should be good for the most part. We’ll see as the morning goes here before we get to the afternoon. Other than that, just kind of open it up to questions and just another big workday in front of us here at training camp. It’s still training camp, and we’re still trying to do everything we can to get guys an opportunity to compete and be in positions to show us what they can do.” On the difference in gameday logistics now compared to other seasons: “Quite a bit and this will obviously be our first run with everybody and the players and the coaches going down there. It’ll be a completely different feel even from just parking – that’ll be different. Getting into the stadium will be different, the locker room will look different, and obviously we had some COVID-19 precautions up in the locker room with plexiglass and separation and space, different things that we’re doing in there. Modified the training area so that there’s more space for taping and things like that. We have a little bit of a stretching area that’s different, that we usually utilize that kind of the training room, move it to there so that we have some different spaces now available to us in the stadium that we normally would not because of fans and crews and things that are operating in there. So we have expanded our footprint a little bit outside of our locker room where we can get guys warmed up and ready to go. So that will be a little bit different. Just the different types of mask requirements that are going to be required in different areas of the locker room, and we have some meeting room spaces that we try to utilize and getting everybody fluid there, and certainly the coaches booths – those are totally different. So that communication – plus new coaches and new players – we just want to get everybody down there and familiar with the stadium from just that operation, logistic standpoint. So it’s not everybody finding their own way the first time when we play Chicago.” On what he has seen from T Taylor Decker that gave him the confidence to make a long-term deal and if the two have spoken after the extension became official: “I don’t talk about player’s contracts or anything. I think that’s all very private information. I’ll say this about Taylor just as a player and as a guy, as a part of a member of our team – I’ve just seen so much growth in him over the last couple years in his ability to get better at the position, just be more consistent, his technique, his leadership is outstanding, the way that he approaches every single day. He’s just been a really consistent guy for us on the offensive line. I would say his overall football knowledge has just really increased with the different types of looks and protections, blitz packages that they see on the offensive line, the run game, just overall improvement by him each year. I think he’s having a great camp; I think he’s working really hard. He’s been the same guy every day. I just couldn’t be any happier for him in general with his development as a player and obviously everything that goes along with that for his future. I think he’s just an intricate part of what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to be about. Every day I get a chance to work with him (and) it’s been great. I’m really excited about that. I’m excited about all of it. But I would say that the improvement he’s made over the last couple years – and with the coaching changes and head coaching changes and all the rest of it, you just see the growth and development that he’s had. You always want to do everything you can to raise your own and reward your own. Certainly Taylor has done an awesome job for us.” On what he’s looking for in a player to be a foundational piece for the team: “I think you hit exactly like you said – the foundation. I think we’re just getting to that point. I think Taylor is a great example of that, of a guy that’s drafted to play here, that has developed, that has gotten better, that has just been everything we want to be about. You want to keep those guys as you raise them and as you develop them, and you watch them grow. It’s impossible to build a team through roster changes and free agency every year. You just can’t do it – financially, it’s impossible. You never really have a good foundation to build your team upon. You need to be able to draft guys; you need to be able to develop players; you need to be able to have guys that are improving every single year that they play, and they are getting better. That’s really the core of what you’re trying to do. I think with Decker, that was kind of the first wave, and we’ve got some coming I think that are really important with guys in the future that have been drafted that we want to build upon. I think we add the free agent pieces that we know help us, and certainly in the immediate and also the long term. We want to make sure that you’re adding guys in that fit in to everything that you’re doing. When you build a team, when you try to structure it and develop – that’s really the key word, you try to develop a team. You’re trying to grow a team. That’s what we’re trying to do with a lot of the young guys that we have. We have some good young guys and added the great veteran pieces through free agency or leadership and that’s how you build the pillars on top of the foundation.” On what he wants his team to be about: “I think we’ve got a team right now that just wants to go out and work hard. They want to go out and compete, and they want to go win. I think that’s the most important thing, they just are doing everything they can to be great teammates, they’re doing everything they can to try to help each other improve. Very unselfish, very much just a group of guys that want to go work every single day, and then put the best that they can out there on Sunday and go compete and win. So, I think that’s really what this group right now, this team’s, about. They’re an amazing bunch of guys. They have amazing care for each other, they’re really just invested in each other as people, and we have that great brotherhood going right now, and that’s something that’s really important. From the philosophical part of it from a football team, we’re trying to be smart, we’re trying to be tough, we want to play with good fundamentals. Just making sure that we have guys that understand that and push to do that.” On if TE Hunter Bryant is practicing today: “Thank you, I did skip that by accident. Hunter Bryant will not be at practice today.” On what the unknowns of the League protocols alter what the team wants to do for games this season: “A lot of the protocols that I think everyone is trying to work through are coming out here in the last week and things change and we need to be able to adjust and to move forward with that. Interesting you ask that question – we had one with the coaches booth, which was really kind of an issue for us, to be honest with you, with everybody kind of packed into a very small coaches booth and what was that from a safety standpoint. Certainly operationally, it’s something that we’re always used to doing, so that’s not really a concern. But it was a concern from a safety and health standpoint and what were we able to do. Having a stadium that doesn’t have fans or is not going to have that many people in it, we did have some more space so we decided to actually go ahead and actually expand the coaches area upstairs, which if we do that for the home team, then obviously we need to do that for the visiting team too and have that equity. So that was something that we were kind of doing and then the League came out and they have policies in regard to that and making sure that the coaches have enough space and are protected and everything like that in the coaches booth. So it’s just kind of working with the League to get those requirements adjusted into our stadium and then to go test it to make sure everything works, because there’s a lot that is involved when you do that. There’s obviously the wiring and the headsets and the communication and everything else from that standpoint. It’s a little bit more work than just getting it done real quick.” On how much of the travel operation changes on the road: “The road games in general are a big challenge, I think for everybody in the League, trying to figure out buses and planes and hotels and spaces for meal rooms and training rooms and all of those different things that logistically, we’re going through for a road game, let alone when you get to the stadium. What does that look like? What are the parameters that are set in place there to keep everybody safely distanced and all that? We’re trying to grind through that the best we can. Unfortunately, I think part of it is we’re not totally going to know until we’re in that space with everybody, and then we’re going to have to be ready to adjust. Certainly, we are going through the different provisions that we need to make to make sure that those are safe environments.” |
