| September 30, 2020 Opening statement: “OK, good morning. I hope everybody is doing well. Obviously pushing forward – we have a big week in front of us – excited to get out there on the practice field and get rolling. As far as announcements – just think (C.J. Moore) will be out at practice, but won’t be participating, might be dressed and then Jayron Kearse, he will be out at practice. He’s eligible to practice here today with us. No really other roster moves. Everybody else I think will be out there. Trying to see what we can do through practice, so we’ll see how that goes. Obviously have a great Saints team coming into our place. (New Orleans Head Coach) Sean Payton does an outstanding job with his team, coaching them, trying to get them ready to go. Drew Brees, great quarterback – they have a lot of great players. We just have to go back to work and try to do the best we can to prepare to get ready to go win.” On the challenge of defending Saints RB Alvin Kamara in the passing game: “I think obviously he’s going to run the ball, and he’s extremely good at the run game, and I think the stretch game that they run handles a lot of things that he does well. He has great vision, he has great bursts, he’s explosive. He can get through the line of scrimmage quickly. So he’s a hard guy to tackle – we all know that. Those are the things I think they do well in the run game. Then the pass game, he’s just dynamic. You get the ball in his hands in space, whether it’s the wide routes, the checkdowns – they’ll empty him out, send him vertical. He has tremendous speed. Sometimes I think he’s deceptive on how fast he really is or how quick he’s moving. He’s such a smooth athlete that sometimes you may take a bad angle or poach angle and you see a lot of guys miss tackles on him from that standpoint. You really have to do a great job to close that space, but just know how quick and dangerous he is to be able to cut across your face and get back into that open field. Really great player for them.” On the key to shutting down the space for Saints RB Alvin Kamara: “Really good film study right there, too. I think if you take a look at the big play from the other day, the 52-yarder, I think what’s amazing about that is – that is a downfield shot. It’s an over-post route. It’s one of their concepts they do off the play-action where they try to push the ball downfield. You can see the defense and the coverage just collapsing deep into the back end to try to take away that big play downfield. Really, give credit to Drew Brees. He did a great job of going through his progression, and then finding Kamara out to his backside there on the flat. Honestly, the defense was there, missed a tackle and really – I think what he does so well is he has unbelievable vision. He was able to just kind of survey the field, saw the deep coverage, knew the guys in pursuit were going to catch him, and it’s almost as if he just slowed up and waited for his linemen to get caught up with him, and they kind of just then took him down the sideline. I think his ability to handle space plays and be aware of what’s around him, I think is what makes him so dynamic. Certainly like you said in the routes, things like that out of the backfield, they may look like they’re not much, but he just gets a step and once he gets a step, and obviously with the accuracy of Brees, he can just accelerate into the open space very quickly. So it becomes very difficult. I’ve obviously played him a couple years ago, and they actually put him out in empty instead of vertical on a nine route, and we had one of our fast guys on him, and he just ran by him. The guy’s speed is real, and you can’t fall asleep on him because he has those little stutter steps and skip steps that make you either overreact or fall asleep, and then he’s gone. It’s just that acceleration is very deceptive.” On how New Orleans’ offense changes with Saints WR Michael Thomas on the field: “Obviously a great player and a go-to guy for Drew Brees. Someone that he trusts really in a system where Drew can do a lot of different things at the line of scrimmage based on coverage and calls and communication – and certainly with Emmanuel Sanders, another great player but still kind of getting indoctrinated into this offense. I think that Michael Thomas – just the communication they have and some of the signals and the routes based on leverage, based on coverage, that they’re able to get to, really make them operate very efficiently. He has a tremendous release at the line of scrimmage. He runs a great slant route at the No. 2 slot where he’s just going to come off and move the defender out of his way. It’s the catch-and-run plays after that that is just great. Huge target for them to convert first downs and keep the chains moving – just a great player.” On addressing the team about the recent COVID-19 outbreak with the Tennessee Titans: “Just obviously straight up – you have to talk about it and you have to have great conversation and remind everybody about the procedures we have in place and why they’re important, just try to do everything right and understand that – maybe we’ve talked about this before, I think with everybody here. We’re in our world of testing every day and being in the building and trying to do everything right, but COVID-19 is still real. IT’s out there. We have to be careful. We have to do our diligence to take care of each other and take care of our families and our teammates’ families and just be disciplined with it. Certainly from a situation of the Titans, and obviously the Vikings situation, my first thought just goes to the people that I know in those buildings an have a great relationship with: Mike Vrabel and ‘J-Rob’ (Jon Robinson), you know Monti (Ossenfort), some of those guys down there that I just make sure they’re OK and their families are OK. Again, COVID-19 is something that we’re dealing with, and we have to be careful all the time. It’s hard, but it’s kind of what it is right now.” On him being careful with safety protection and how he views other coaches who are less careful: “I appreciate that. I appreciate you noticing, too. I actually got a little bit of a modification in my mask. I have a filter in there too. I’m just trying to make sure that I’m keeping my family safe and keeping players safe. It’s not easy though. I think there’s a lot of situations – we obviously work in a communication game, and we’re trying to talk and (there are) certainly different situations where it may be hard to hear. Honestly, for myself, I don’t really hear that well anyways, so I do a lot of lipreading, and that’s real hard when you have masks on from that standpoint. I know the players do out on the field too. There’s a lot of times where I’ve had players that – they’ll read my lips. They don’t necessarily get the call through the helmet, and they might just be able to understand what we’re running based on the communication based on looking at somebody’s face. Sometimes it becomes really difficult, but from my standpoint, I’m trying to do the best I can to do that. It’s not perfect, I know that, from all accords. But we’ve just got to try to keep doing what we can. But it’s difficult, it’s hard, and it’s new for all of us. We’re just trying to stay consistent the best way we know how.” On Running Backs Coach Kyle Caskey decompressing by playing his guitar and how he decompresses himself: “I don’t have any guitars. I don’t have any here, not with me, so I don’t really have that. The ukulele is at the house. I haven’t brought that to work yet, I don’t think anybody wants to hear me play that. Obviously, I think the great thing about football is that we’re all grinding and working, but we spend a lot of time together (with) the camaraderie and the brotherhood and the friendships that we have. When we get away from it, you’re usually talking about family or kids or just checking in to see how everybody’s doing for the most part. But nothing real exciting from that standpoint.” On Running Backs Coach Kyle Caskey’s skill on the guitar: “I think he’s probably trying to hide that thing from me to make sure I don’t come by and see that at all.” On his assessment of the team’s special teams performance this season and how the unit performed late in Week 3 at Arizona: “Great situational play there at the end of the game in that fourth quarter. That’s an outstanding set of series of plays where I think you really highlight the complementary football of all three phases and why that’s important. We talk a lot about those situations, certainly, where we have an opportunity to pin an offense deep and how important that is on special teams, to be able to do that. It’s really an outstanding play there also by Tony McRae, I don’t think you can leave him out of the conversation. Those guys were hustling down at the gunner position and they actually got knocked down. They got hit pretty hard. Great kick by Jack (Fox), (they) popped back up and were able to kind of pin them down in there. It was really just an outstanding individual effort on that aspect of it, and then the defense and then the offense of complementary football with the punt return too, with (Jamal) Agnew. I thought that was great. We just need to do that consistently. I mean, I think that’s the biggest thing for us. I think it’s a great example of what we’re trying to do, and obviously it’s a competitive game so that doesn’t always happen. I think we understand how big of an opportunity it is when we can do that and when we can work all three phases together and play complementary football, how important that is to the outcome of the game. So, certainly from that standpoint as we look at the first three games, we’re trying to just make sure that we’re consistent with that style of play, to make sure that we understand that the punt return sets up the offense and then obviously the punt team and how that helps the defense and the kickoff coverage and the kick return. Certainly, all of it, boiling down to the specialists, to (Don) Muhlbach and Jack and obviously (Matt) Prater at the end of the game. Those are things that we’re really always trying to strive for greatness for, in those areas, but we’re a long way off. There’s a lot of areas that we need to improve on, and we’ve got to get better. There’s certainly been some highlights, but the overall picture for us, I think we all just want to be more consistent in all of the four core phases, plus field goal and field goal block. Those are the six phases of it that we really have to just continue to get better at.” |
