| September 11, 2020 Opening Statement: “Good morning – I hope that everyone can hear me OK. Hope everybody’s well, hope everybody’s safe and doing healthy. Obviously (it’s) 9/11 here today, definitely a day – that’s just the impact and the importance to remember this day and certainly remember everyone that was directly affected by the loss and how it changed everyone’s lives in America going forward. Certainly want to make sure that we acknowledge that and think about everyone involved there. “The players have voted yesterday for captains, so I have that to announce. As a player vote – captains for this year will be Matthew Stafford, Taylor Decker, Trey Flowers, Duron Harmon, Jarrad Davis and Don Muhlbach – so six captains. Practice today – obviously trying to finish off a good week here, getting into the red-(zone) area, some situational football stuff. As far as practice is concerned, some guys that are really out, very limited right now is Hunter Bryant. C.J. Moore, Kenny Golladay and (Halapoulivaati) Vaitai. Other than that, everyone’s going to be out there trying to work through. We’ll see what some of those guys can do. We’ll just kind of take it from there. Important day for us to get a lot of work in, and certainly it is game time, it is the regular season and Friday is a critical day for us to make sure that we’re getting everything accomplished here before the weekend. We’re excited to get out there and keep stringing some good practices together and get ready to go play the Bears. Let’s just open it up for questions, (and) we’ll go from there.” On if WR Kenny Golladay will be out for practice and not the game: “Correct. He’ll be out at practice; he’ll be dressed, and we’ll see what he can do, but probably pretty limited.” On if tackling is the biggest issue for the first few games: “A hundred percent. It’s something we really put a big stress and an emphasis on (is) fundamentals. We call them ‘the lost arts’ sometimes. I think a lot of times we don’t spend enough time on those fundamentals, and I would put tackling at the top of that list. There are guys who have proven to be really good tacklers through the years, (and) guys who haven’t tackled so well. But certainly early in the season we see that kind of adjustment to game speed, adjustment to the angles, adjustment to being able to drive and finish through on a tackle. A lot of times in practice we might be in a tag-off situation where guys might be just getting into that fit position and maybe thudding up, but not necessarily driving through, wrapping the arms and trying to finish the tackle. It is definitely something that I think we will see for the first month of football here – all different levels of really good and really maybe some not so good.” On the number of hamstring injuries being a coincidence or a result of the shortened offseason: “Yeah great question. We actually did a great study of this in what a normal season kind of looks like. We see in the springtime as we get into OTAs and that Phase 2, that’s where we really see the joint stiffness and soreness. So a lot of the knees, the ankles, the hips, a lot of those type of injuries come up for us in the spring. Then as we progress towards training camp, that’s when we start to see more of the soft tissue where we’re amped up to speed and the length of the plays and how far downfield and things like that and the groin issues that maybe come with some of the defensive players with change of direction – so that’s like a normal year of where the bodies are adapting to getting into football shape. What we’re seeing right now is a condensed version of a spring and summer all in four weeks, where we initially got onto the field, and we saw a lot of the joints and some of those things that were bothering guys. Now we’re kind of working into that training camp mode, even though I know the regular season is starting, but timeline of guys getting ready to go and prepare – where now it’s a little bit more of the soft-tissue stuff. Certainly the other one that we tracked as we talked about, maybe a couple weeks ago, I can’t remember – just with 2011, some of the impact injuries that we saw, maybe that were non-contact and that were more tendon-related. So whether it was the bigger tendons in the muscles, the quad tendons, the Achilles tendons, things like that, and we saw those kind of explosive-moving tendons that were more of the injury-prone type of injuries. So we’re seeing a condensed version right now. I would say the one thing that we’re trying to do, and really why you’ll see it on the injury report a lot, is we’re trying to prevent them from being long-term type of soft-tissue injuries. So even if we get guys that are tight, that may be on the milder side, maybe a seven-, 10-, 14-day type stuff, we’re trying to prevent the four-week type of injury there.” On if he watched the Chiefs versus Texans game last night to see how the first NFL game went: “I did. I had it on in the background a little bit and was just trying to peek at it. I certainly think – I didn’t really analyze it enough to be able to tell you – but I think Mike (O’Hara) hit it right on the head. I definitely saw some tackling that looked interesting out there from that standpoint and just the speed of the game. I didn’t get a good enough look on the coaches’ tape yet of the special teams. That’s the one I’m really interested to see, what that looked like from that standpoint.” On what the team is planning from a protest standpoint on Sunday: “We’ve had really good conversations from all the way when we got back and really even through this week, as far as what Week 1 looks like in general. I think there will be a lot of changes to just the overall look of what that is. We’ve had some great discussions. Like I’ve said before, we’ve got great guys in here. They do a great job of listening to each other and understanding. We’ll keep that in-house for now and then we’ll get to the game and get ready for Chicago.” On if WR Kenny Golladay and T Halapoulivaati Vaitai have a chance to play on Sunday: “For all that stuff, we’re taking all those day-by-day from that standpoint. It is that type of situation, that type of injury right now. So, that’s what we’ll do.” On how realistic the playoffs are as a goal: “I’d say just a real difficult question to even try to conceptually think about. We haven’t even stepped on the field yet. We’ll just try to do the best we can this weekend and go from there. The season for the NFL is long. It’s ever-changing. There’s different phases to it, we certainly know that. We like to break them up into quarters, four games at a time, and kind of look and see the improvement and evaluate and go. Right now, we’re just starting the first quarter. So, we’ll see how this one goes.” On if anything that’s happened in the last six months change how the team approaches certain expectations: “I think – you guys know me as a person. I think I just approach every single day the same, trying to win every day. So, we’re going to try to win each day.” On if back-to-back divisional games to start the season brings more urgency for a good start: “I would say that’s a great point. Obviously, it doesn’t change anything. We have the same goal every single week we play. But I do think we understand that the division, back-to-back, out of the gate is really important for us. I would say, really, what it does is make sure that your focus and the preparation for those things are laser locked in. Can’t have any miscues. We’ve got to stay the course, we’ve got to stay on track. The games, we’re always going to do everything we can to win the games. The preparation is what’s so important. We understand that with two division games back-to-back, how important that preparation is in our improvement.” On his comfort with the division at this point and how it helps with his preparation: “That’s a really good question. I was actually just thinking of this probably just two days ago. It does feel a little bit more natural, kind of like this is the division we’ve played for a couple years and the moving parts haven’t been as great. It’s certainly, for me, just me individually, a lot more comfortable than what it was maybe my first year and even into last year and some of the adjustments there. So, I would say absolutely. As you progress through a couple years of being in a certain spot in a certain division, you start to get familiarity with the players and the coaches. Not that you didn’t know who they were, but maybe the intricacies of that or the details of that are maybe a little bit more natural.” |
