| September 10, 2020 Opening Statement: “Obviously got another big day in front of us here, ready to go. Third down, two-minute situational football here. Had a good day yesterday, I thought. I thought the team came out and worked really hard in pads. We got some work done there. Obviously, we’ll be in shells today and pushing forward through the course of the week. As far as guys working in practice today, C.J. Moore, Hunter Bryant – those guys will still be pretty limited. Big V (Halapoulivaati Vaitai) won’t be out there, then I think everyone else is trying to push through. Other than that, we’ll be working, and we’ll be grinding it out and trying to get ready for the Bears.” On his initial impression of RB Adrian Peterson and how he envisions his role this week: “I mean, just going off yesterday’s practice – that’s all we really have right now – really good vision, really good sense of the offense. He practices really hard, he’s big, he’s explosive. So, it was good. It was a good day yesterday. We’ll see what it looks like today, but I thought that was a good first start.” On if he says RB Adrian Peterson will definitely play this Sunday: “I mean we’ll see how the week goes. I think obviously he had a good day yesterday, so we’ll take it forward from there.” On what undrafted rookie TE Hunter Bryant showed to earn a roster spot: “He had a good amount of reps early, and obviously we were disappointed that he wasn’t able to push all the way through and we had the injury situation. Certainly, I think early in camp, the competitiveness that he has, his understanding of the offense – I would say he picked it up really well – and you definitely could see his skillset. We knew that he’s an explosive player, we know that he has some really good hands. He can run really good routes. I thought that live and in-person in camp, the blocking, I thought, was much better than kind of what we saw in college tape, and I think he did a really good job with that. We’ve still got a long way to go at this level compared to college, but I thought it was pretty good early on, and we think that will continually get better. I would say production is probably the overall biggest thing that we had in camp with him. I thought he had good production.” On if RB Adrian Peterson has pleasantly surprised him in any way: “Not anything that I didn’t know ahead of time, from that standpoint, but just a true professional. A guy that obviously – it’s pretty quick and pretty easy to tell why he’s been able to do what he’s done for so long. He’s got a great routine. I think that’s really good for the young guys to see, just as far as your preparation not only just from a mental standpoint and install, game-plan and all that stuff, but just the physical preparation that he goes through to get his body ready to go. I think that’s outstanding. I think that was pretty cool to watch, not that I didn’t know that he did that sort of stuff, but obviously haven’t seen it first-hand.” On where he was on the September 11 attacks and what the anniversary means to him: “9/11 is obviously a pretty big deal, and being from New York and having family that’s from the New York City and Long Island area and obviously a lot of friends, that was and still is a pretty significant moment. I think people go through their lives and have those moments where everybody remembers exactly where they were when things happened. I was coaching at Syracuse University at the time. I remember exactly where I was – I was with one of the players and kind of the thoughts that went through my head initially when I saw it, and then how quickly everything turned. I had some of my closest friends that lived in the city at the time and the concern and the fear, all of it that went along with it. I still think about it. Obviously tomorrow, that will be a big part of that day and making sure that we do remember all of the people that were lost, all of those that sacrificed and certainly, that event and what that meant to the country. It’s definitely something that I think about a lot. Coaching at Syracuse, we were actually the first sporting event in the state of New York after 9/11. I believe we played Auburn on the Saturday night after that, and you could feel the power and the impact of what that was after an event like that. Pretty serious, pretty real still, for me.” On if he personally knew anybody who died in the September 11 attacks: “Yeah, absolutely.” On if he was surprised with how Syracuse University handled the days after the September 11 attacks by not cancelling classes: “I don’t really remember so much from the class standpoint – I don’t. I do remember from the team standpoint. Certainly, at Syracuse, we recruited the New York City/New Jersey area heavily – the Long Island area, the Connecticut area – so we had a lot of players from that area. The concern that everybody had, we all had family and friends down in that area and trying to get a hold of people – that was certainly one of the scarier times, I would say, in the first 24 hours after it happened was you just couldn’t get a hold of anybody. You didn’t know where anybody was, and the amount of stress that I think that put on the players was high, and people were concerned for their families in that situation. I’m not going to dive too much into it, but yeah, we did. I was trying to make sure that the players were OK, that everyone’s families were OK, and I can’t really remember what the decisions were to play that weekend. I do know that we did. I do remember that it was powerful. I do remember everyone just trying to hold each other close and make sure everyone was OK.” On if WR Kenny Golladay showing up on the injury report was a sign of a lingering injury or something new: “Nope. For us, it was just something that happened yesterday, and we were just trying to make sure we did a good job of taking a look at it. Coming off a couple of days off, obviously, practiced a little bit on Sunday. Saturday was Saturday, Monday, didn’t do much, Tuesday (didn’t practice). So, guys are a little bit tight, guys are a little bit sore.” On not having officials at training camp this year: “I mean I definitely think there’s something not as valuable when you don’t have those guys. Like you need those guys at practice. I think it’s good for everybody. I think it’s good just to get used to interacting with the officials, how they see things. A lot of times when we have those guys in, we actually get a lot of work done not on the practice field. There’s a lot of time spent in the meetings, in the classrooms with the officials, the players, the coaches, trying to get interpretations, how they see things. It’s great for us because we can get the practice tape and then we can pull the tape and put it up on the screen with them. They can explain to us some of the things that they look at. It’s just a very interactive time for us when we have the officials here. So, I do think there is something lost there when we don’t have that opportunity. We tried to do the best we could to really make sure that we were analyzing every play for penalties. We would put penalty tapes together, I would show them to the team, I would explain to them why those are penalties, what the officials are looking for. We really try to do our due diligence there to make sure that every day we were coaching penalties and what not to do and certain things that we know that they look for that they will call. So, we try to make a big emphasis of it from a coaching standpoint, but probably never the same as it would be if the officials were here.” On having three players on the roster who have switched sides of the line of scrimmage and what goes into a player changing his position to a different phase of the game: “(Jason) Cabinda, (Jamal) Agnew – who knows where they’ll line up. Matt Nelson, I’m pretty sure he’s good at o-line. I don’t think he’s going back to d-line anytime soon. But I would say for me and kind of my background, it’s something that I was exposed to very early on in my days in coaching the NFL. Obviously Troy Brown played star for us, he played the nickel position for us. I believe it was probably the first game of the Buffalo game, I’m pretty sure, Drew Bledsoe completed it to Troy Brown. Drew was on the Bills and obviously Troy was on defense, so he got a little bit confused there on that one. And then Julian Edelman played star for me, nickel for me in a playoff game one time against Baltimore. So, we certainly understand that on the active roster, there’s going to be guys that we need to look at that can potentially help us in other situations based on injury, based on the game-day roster, and we try to cross-train those ahead of time, identify guys that maybe have done something similar in the past and/or have a skillset that we think is applicable for that particular position. Certainly, some of the guys, we just want to try to get the ball in their hands as much as we can because we think it’s a dynamic situation for us to be able to do that. Again, I’ve been on teams where I’ve had defensive lineman – Richard Seymour – lined up at fullback. Russ Hochstein, who was an offensive lineman, (too). So, there is a little bit of that. It’s not unfamiliar for me to cross-train guys and have them ready to go, but certainly, the more you can do, obviously, the better it is (with) your value on game-day. So, we certainly like to do that. I’d say with those guys in particular, they’ve done a great job of really handling the information. That’s the biggest thing.,” On if players changing phases of the game takes a certain mindset: “I would definitely say there’s got to be a want to. I think all the guys want to do it or they’ll try, but honestly, to really dive into it and master it does take a lot. There’s a lot into that – try to learn two playbooks at one time. Plus, if you’re a special teams guy, you’re learning all three playbooks. You’re trying to learn the nuances of everything along with – it’s one thing to learn your side of the ball’s playbook, but understand if you’re an offensive player, you have to learn how to identify defense in the offensive terminology. If you’re a defensive player, you learn how to identify offense in the defensive terminology, and sometimes that doesn’t always cross over. So, you could be learning, really, four different languages at once, along with special teams on top of it. That becomes very taxing, I would say, unless you have the right mindset to get it done.” |
