| September 23, 2020 Opening Statement: “OK, all right, good morning. I hope everybody’s doing well. Obviously off and running here on a Wednesday, trying to get ready for a great Arizona team. I think (Cardinals Head Coach) Kliff Kingsbury’s done a great job getting his team playing well this year, certainly centering around the quarterback who is obviously outstanding. So we have a lot of work to do. As far as for us practice-wise, (Desmond) Trufant will be out at practice, probably not doing much, really that’s about it. Everybody else is going to go out and see what they can do. So we’ll go from there. What do you got?” On if something in his weekly preparation needs to change, and if so, what is the first thing he’s looking at in preparing for Arizona: “Great question. I definitely always look at myself and what I have to prepare better and things that I can do. There’s certainly things in there that I like to change up when we have weeks like this – whether it’s in the team meetings, maybe it’s individually in the positions rooms or in either of the three phases where from a meeting room standpoint, I might have a little different point of emphasis, might have a little bit more pressure in the meeting rooms to understand the information ahead of time, and then obviously when we get out on the practice field, making sure that the level of urgency and execution at the practice field is at the highest level. We got to go out. We got to work today. We got to get some things fixed. So that’s what we’re going to do.” On if he’s surprised that the team is struggling with the mental part of the game: “I don’t think I’m surprised because I think that we’ve played two games together. With the amount of limited time that we’ve had as a team to be together – if you really think about the amount of time during the offseason, plus the Phase 1, Phase 2, plus Phase 3, the amount of work that goes there, the amount of teaching, the amount of philosophy, smart football, bad football, understanding what we’re trying to do that goes into that live and in-person is certainly – we tried to do the best we could with the virtual world. But then into a condensed training camp – it’s going to be this way in September. I think we’ve talked about that before. We need time as a group to work together. Certainly from a team standpoint, whereas much as we try to teach all of the phases, when you get into the actual game and now all three phases are actually working together on the field for the first time, or for this week would be the third time, only the third time, we do understand there’s going to be some things that are going to be corrected. For us, we just have to keep making the points of emphasis to improve it and to get it better and try not to make the same mistakes. As we go on, it’s a long season in the NFL. Everybody knows that. We certainly have seen teams that have not come out very fast then finished extremely strong. We’ve found teams that have come out very fast that haven’t finished very well. For us, it’s just about us trying to get better week-in, week-out, and understanding the opponents we play are going to get better as the season goes. We played a great one last week. We got a great one in front of us. We got to go out and just have a good week of work.” On if he’s seen a willingness by QB Kyler Murray to use his legs more than last year: “I would definitely say you can see the difference between early on last year when we played him, and then later in the season and how he kind of matured and grew as a player in the NFL. I think I may have said this before, but somehow, I think this guy got faster and quicker and more explosive in the offseason. It’s just amazing to watch in open space. He’s a smooth athlete. He can really get to top acceleration extremely quick. I think that’s what catches a lot of people by surprise. He can just burst and explode – within two steps he’s at full speed and then he can stop within a step or two. I think some of that for the quarterback position – you’re not necessarily used to it. It’s almost like trying to tackle a punt returner in those sort of space plays that he’s able to create. I think that’s one area where he just feels a lot more comfortable right now, and you see that.” On the pressure on the defense when facing a quarterback like QB Kyler Murray: “Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a great example too, of something that I used with the players too, of Russell Wilson. Kyler Murray is the same. You may do it right for 58 minutes, you may do it right for 59, but it’s that one minute that you don’t where he’s so dangerous, so explosive, that I think players like that have that feeling to take advantage of those moments. I think that is a part of, like you said – that you just need to be focused on the entire game on making sure you execute the plan at hand and not let those guys take over with their athleticism and turn it in to, what we call a ‘street ball’ game, where they can kind of get out into space and run and throw. Obviously his arm strength is another threat when he’s out in those kind of situations. A hundred percent, absolutely.” On what has changed about the defense this year: “I mean, obviously I don’t want to go into too many details with Kliff (Kingsbury, Cardinals Head Coach) obviously listening. You guys did a great job of talking to him. If you have any other real information that would be helpful from that standpoint. There are differences in our defense. I think the biggest thing for us, obviously the personnel is a little bit different, some of the players that are out on the field are a little bit different, and I think part of it for us is we’re still trying to find out what some of those guys do well and what do they do consistently. The defense always tends to change, and morph based on the players that we have out there. How do we put them in the best position possible to make some plays? We’re still very early in that stage with us defensively. It’s just the consistency is the biggest part of it. I would say there are some changes in there that are a little bit different that maybe, hopefully, some of it isn’t that obvious to the eye that’s breaking down the film. Some situations that we have that might have been a problem last year, maybe are handled a little bit differently, which would help us this year.” On the offseason expectation of how the rookie class would contribute and if there’s a discrepancy there currently: “I don’t really think my philosophies ever changed on the rookie players ever. I think it’s always been the same. If you go back to conversations when everyone was just getting to know me a little bit, even when we were talking about Kerryon Johnson, there was a lot of conversations early in his year about projections and where he’s going to be and all that stuff. I think we always keep all that at a very moderate level. We understand that the jump from college to the NFL is different. We try to make sure that the expectations of those guys are just to be to go out and try to do their job at a high level and learn as we go and grow as players. I don’t think any of that has changed, even though in the spring we feel good about our rookie class or whoever we brought in – we still feel good about those guys. We feel good about the players that are on this team. We just have to anchor down and improve and keep working to get better every single week.” On G Joe Dahl’s injury status: “I think we’ve got him on the three-week IR. So, we’ll see what that looks like as we go forward.” On WR Joe Webb III’s role with the team and if he’ll mimic Cardinals QB Kyler Murray this week: “Joe Webb’s great, he can do a bunch of different things. He’s actually a big-body guy and he can play quarterback, he can play receiver, he can probably play tight end. We need bodies out there and guys that can give us a good look, so I’m sure whatever we ask him to do, he’s going to do.” On if he meets with Principal Owner and Chairman Sheila Ford Hamp every week and what those meetings have been like recently: “Obviously, no surprises here, I meet with the family. I meet with Sheila, and we talk internally about a lot of things every week. She’s great. She’s obviously trying to learn as much as possible and the communication’s been outstanding for me to have her and communicate with her. It’s all been really good. Those are scheduled for the entire season. We make sure that we always kind of come back after a game week and get ready for the next week that the communication is at a high level. It’s obviously a little bit different because of COVID-19, so we’re doing it on Zoom or something like that. That hasn’t changed.” On if he ever feels like he’s running out of time: “No. I mean I think for us, we just try to stay consistent every single week. I think a lot of that is, again, that would be the same as riding the ebbs and flows of every single day, which we talk about during the game. No different than stories that are in the media, no different than people that want to talk about Week 2 and Week 3 and Week 4 before we even get to Week 10. For us, it’s just trying to stay consistent and improve. I think that’s the biggest thing for us. There’s certainly, like I said, a lot of teams in the history of the NFL that have started out not very well that have that have finished extremely strong, and teams that have started off really well then finished not very good at all. That’s part of the NFL. It’s an interesting, difficult season. It’s a grind, and obviously the biggest trick to all of it is to try to improve as you go through the year and try to get better. For us, from that standpoint, always just kind of working every day to try to get better and come in here and be the same person, just like I expect the team to be the same every day, because that’s how you really get better.” On what he wants the team to be consistent in: “I mean I think, obviously, we’re always judged by the end result, and that’s just what everybody sees with the three hours on Sunday. We know that. But I would say the consistency of what we do for the other six days during the week is critically important when we’re working those 12, 14, 15, however long, hours during the day. If you can be that same guy and not be different and not have anything distract you from that and improve, that’s where the consistency comes into effect, and that’s really where you get better as coaches, as players and as a team. So, there’s a lot that goes into it and obviously, the result is what everybody sees and that’s what we know we have to change, but I would say the one thing that is good is the consistency during the course of the week gives us a chance to do that.” On if he’s confident that his young secondary can handle Cardinals WR DeAndre Hopkins and if there’s anything defensively that gives him hope for improvement: “Let’s start with the receiving corps. Hopkins is unreal. I mean, he’s a phenomenal player. This guy can run every route, he gets open, he’s got great hands, he’s got great body control, he’s a go-to guy for him, and I think that was really a great addition for them on the offensive side of the ball. You can never mention wide receivers with the Arizona Cardinals and not mention Larry Fitzgerald. I mean this guy is one of the best, has been one of the best for just such a long, great career. I have the utmost respect for him. I’ve seen him be able to change his role to be able to morph into a different type of player that they need each season depending on what’s important for their offense that year. It’s quite amazing. He’s got some amazing stats when you look at it. Not only just the yardage and the catches and all that, but this guy has more tackles than he does drops. I mean this guy’s hands are unbelievable. He can catch anything, he’s always open. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s physical. He’s an unbelievable player. That’s a huge challenge for us, with the players they have and the skill positions. They’ve got a lot of speed on the field, they really have done a great job of creating these space games and even now the quarterback and putting that amount of duress on the defense, as you can see what they’ve done the last two games. Certainly, that’s a big challenge for us. “Defensively, obviously not where we want to be. We know that. Right now, we’re working to get that better and improve it and from that standpoint, that’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got to grind it out, we’ve got to get better. We have some good players, we have young players, we have new players. All those guys have got to come together. Defensively, it’s very different than the other two phases where everyone’s got to be on the same page and everyone works together and everyone – communication is critical and all of those things on top of fundamentals and technique, which take a long time to work on and make sure that you execute at a high level. So, we’re going to get better at those and we’re going to keep going forward.” On if he sees light at the end of the tunnel: “I think you have to. I mean for us – you know me – we’ve got to always try to get better, we’ve got to try to improve. If you’re a person that walks around without seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, then man, that’s probably not a good day.” |
