| August 7, 2020 Opening statement: “I appreciate everybody being here this morning. Certainly thought it would be good to just start off and maybe recap the week from where we are as a team, what we did this week with the players. I certainly think that’s different for every club, and I think maybe we were a little bit unique on that accord also. Obviously to start the week, just heartfelt sadness – learned about Jamie Samuelsen and his passing. So again, Stoney and ‘Wojo’ and everyone that worked with Jamie – I said it earlier in the week: What an amazing guy that he was. Just thoughts and prayers to his wife and his family as they go through this, obviously everyone that worked with him (too). I know that aches in everyone’s hearts because of what a tremendous person he was. I want to make sure I just mention that real quick here first. “Got going here this week with the players in the building. We actually decided – a couple of the different rules that we had based on the League and the (NFL)PA agreements – at the start of the week we left our roster at 90, and just try to feel that it was important for us to have the players in the building before we try to make any decisions and give ourselves some time to be able to go through and take a look at everyone, as hard as it is just (with) the minimal opportunities we had. We had a really good spring with everybody and really wanted to get a chance to meet everybody and see what it looked like. A little bit of a difficult task when you have 90 on your roster, you had to split the team up in to two groups, and then in those two groups, within those two groups, I split the team up again. So we really wound up being four teams that we’re rolling through the building over the course of the day. Started very early – the first team would come in, they would get their workouts in, their runs, their lifts, obviously any sort of treatment, any sort of recovery, things like that that they needed. While that was going on, the second group, or team, was coordinated enough to come in and move in a different part of the building than where the first team was so that we could clean and move the groups through, but really keep them separate from that standpoint. “Then in the middle of the day we had a deep clean through the course of the building for about 30, 45 minutes, where we actually went through the entire building, downstairs where the players are and just completely try to do that cleaning one more time. Then the afternoon group, which was actually designated as ‘Group No. 2’ by the League rules, was also broken up in to two teams, and then those two teams really did the same thing. So I would say a very busy building, a very busy day from that standpoint for the players, coaches, strength coaches. But I thought it was just really important for us to get through the first 10-14 days here from the initial report and testing date with our players to try to do everything we could to be safe and make sure that we were getting the testing protocols down and having a good idea of where we are with COVID exposure. Certainly from that standpoint, I figured it be good to start in smaller groups. So as we go through camp, we’ll certainly increase the groups and the amount of guys we have working with each other. Then certainly at some point we’ll get to the full 80 guys out on the field together in a practice format. But right now just being the first and foremost for us is to be safe, be healthy, see how everything works in the building and also kind of – I don’t want to say ‘soft-open’ the building, but be able to put a group of maybe 20-30 guys in the building at one time, make adjustments, before we get a larger group of 40 say, and then all the way to 80, and just try keep everybody – the feedback coming in so we can improve it as we go. So it’s been interesting, been busy from that standpoint. “Obviously great to see everybody’s faces, and really some of the new guys trying to identify everybody with masks on. Our guys have been great with wearing the masks in the building and during the workouts and stuff. I know they’re really taking all of that very seriously. From that standpoint, just itching to get on the field. I know it’s coming; we’ll get there eventually, but we’re just taking our time to make sure, again, (that we’re) safe and healthy from COVID. Also on top of that, soft-tissue injuries which is something else we’re really conscious of coming up from especially the 2011 season, trying to use some of the data and some of the stuff that we did during that year to try to make sure we limit the amount of soft-tissue injuries before we actually get to practice.” On if he splits the position groups up as well among the two groups: “Yeah, great question, and definitely. One of the things, trying to figure it out how we were going to do all that. The first parameters when you stayed at 90 came from the League, in regard to, let’s call it rookies, first-year players, any injured players from last season and then quarterbacks. That can technically be what was made up of Group 1, then Group 2 was veteran players. Within that we decided to do – the quarterbacks was the one group that you can spread out among those two groups, and being in the world of trying to keep those guys separate from each other right now, we did do that. Within those groups, Group 1 and Group 2, that’s where we split them up in to two teams. With that first group, with the young guys, kind of put them together in one area certainly knowing that with the rookie class, trying to almost make up a little bit of time there and treat it like a rookie minicamp from the standpoint of walkthrough time, then that allowed us to have some virtual meetings with them in the afternoon to try to catch them up on some of the information while the veterans were running and lifting. We did try to do that and split those guys up mostly by years in the League so that we could get the randomization of the positions, so that it wasn’t everybody in the same position in the same group working out, and try to limit that contact exposure right now until we get through that 10-14 day period.” On if LB Jamie Collins Sr.’s value was his versatility and if that’s his plan to use him this season: “Certainly you love that attitude, you love everything that Jamie brings to the field and off the field and his intelligence is really what makes him so flexible and so dangerous when you get out into that game. Obviously his talent and his ability is off the charts. But it is really one of those things, I try to look at it through the lens of the quarterback and what is the quarterback looking when he looks over there on defense. I think Jamie Collins is definitely one of those guys that when the quarterback looks over to the other side of the defense, they try to figure out, ‘OK, where is this guy, and what is he doing?’ I think when you can keep that moving or make it a variable for the quarterback each and every snap, that just adds to what the quarterback has to think about before that ball is being snapped into play. When you can do things like that with players, and certainly Jamie is one of those guys, it helps. But we also know that he’s just getting here, we haven’t had a spring, we’re trying to put some new pieces together. Obviously with Cory (Undlin) coming in as the defensive coordinator and trying to make sure that he’s comfortable in the things that we’re doing also as he teaches it to the players, we just want to keep it at the right pace if that makes sense.” On what he has seen from QB Matthew Stafford so far, and his impressions of RB D’Andre Swift: “Obviously last year with Matthew didn’t go the way we wanted it to go. Certainly his drive, his competitiveness, I knew he’d be right back at it as soon as he could. Just keeping him healthy and making sure that he went into the offseason as safe as possible was important for us, and certainly through training camp as we go with him knowing the offseason was limited, we want to make sure with all of our quarterbacks that we have a really smart plan for all of them. He’s certainly – I knew probably in the spring sometime that he tells me, ‘Hey, I’m good coach. There’s no issue whatsoever.’ I’m good with that. He knows his body, his arm, all that better than anybody and nobody works harder. This guy loves football. I love it when he calls me and says, ‘Hey, I’m going to go throw this or work this out. I’m going to go grab these guys and do this.’ Almost like that football junkie mentality – I mean, you just love it. You just love his passion and grind for the game. We’ll be ready to go. I would just like to get out to practice, that’s kind of the first part. “Swift. Certainly very excited to have him in the building. Certainly from the running back position with a rookie, there’s a lot to learn, there’s a lot to go over, a lot of information, we did as much as we could virtually there. But it would be good to see that in live practice reps and to see the reaction time to that, not only when he has the ball in his hand but when he doesn’t and be able to get in to different positions and see defenses and recognize some of the things we do in the NFL that may be a little bit different for him. But really hard-working guy, honestly all these young guys, along with the older guys, they’ve taken the older veterans lead and just have worked extremely hard on the Zoom calls and trying to learn as much information as possible. That’s what kind of crazy is we’re just getting back to having everybody in the building, but we’re still doing meetings virtually. We’re still trying to keep everybody in this world until we feel we’re ready to move into that next in-person meeting situation.” On how he handled QB Matthew Stafford’s false-positive COVID-19 test and if that prepared him should that occur during the season: “Obviously the situation for us with him and the testing procedures – honestly once that happens, we just go through it step-by-step. The first and foremost concern with me is his health, his family’s health, Kelly and the kids and making sure that they’re OK. That’s as far as it goes right there. Once we kind of sort through that, then it’s about, ‘OK, what is the procedure here. Is there something we think a little bit different? How do we go about handling it?’ Honestly after that, I know the League is working really hard to try to do everything they can to monitor and adjust as they go. We’re trying to do everything we can to get feedback. I think that’s the great part about it right now. There’s been a lot of calls, a lot of conversation. I think the League is doing a great job of listening to all the different unique situations that all the clubs have had and try to adjust with it. After we get through that, for me, it was really just about making sure that I could really feel his situation, his family situation and how much that just hurt to watch or listen to what they had to go through. I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew, ‘Hey, we fully support him and his family. We want to make sure everybody understands what this is and that there’s no wrong narrative out there and not to just pre-judge on those things because it’s about people. It’s about people, it’s not about a number, it’s not about something that’s written on a test sheet right now. It’s about making sure that everybody’s OK.’ That’s really what goes through my head.” On if any coaches decided to opt-out or request a change in role this year and what is his protocol if they request it: “Great question. I think that’s something – just like everybody in this organization – I think you have to have those conversations. Some of it you may not necessarily have the answers for right now. There is no protocol in place from the League as far as coaches are concerned, but as an organization we have definitely had internal discussion as far as what would that look like and how do we respond. Some of it certainly is (that) we’ll have those conversations and obviously we want to be able to move forward as a team to make sure that we’re operating at a highly efficient manner. But situations can change and something that maybe outside of the building might change and you just have to listen and understand and support. We’re dealing with a really real situation and people’s experiences range from all over the place. I think for me – and I have an amazing family, my wife and our kids, I’m certainly concerned for their health and safety every single day also. So it’s not so much as – obviously we have a job to do, all of us are trying to do the best we can within that job but it’s just about listening and understanding and supporting. And quite frankly, this is something that’s on my head right now – I was walking through the building last night and ran in to one of the ladies that cleans the building – wonderful, wonderful people that we have in this building and have had. A lot of times, those guys that come in at night, the cleaning crews, those are the ones I see the most during the course of the season and get caught up with, and I haven’t seen any of them in six months. I saw one of the ladies and she very, very really told me a story about how she lost her husband to COVID. Quite frankly for me, that hit me really hard, to understand that this is about people. We have to listen to everybody’s unique situations to make sure that everybody is safe. It’s not just, ‘Hey, what makes it easy for us, or, how do we move as a football team?’ It’s, ‘How do we help people right now?’ That’s real.” On clarifying that no coaches have opted-out: “We have nothing to report on that end.” On the team’s contingency plan if he has to miss time with a COVID-19 diagnosis: “The first part of it is something that we started talking about, really, in the summer, to be honest with you, as far as what would we do if those certain scenarios came up. We put a plan in place, and we have kind of a mode to go into, certainly, if something happens to myself – who would kind of push the different sort of team meetings that we have and certainly, from a signal-calling standpoint in all three phases, if something were to happen there. Back in the summer, (we) talked about it, put a plan in place. It will be a little bit unique situation during training camp, although I would say in general, we tend to do this. Part of our philosophy is (to) make sure the next man is ready to go. That’s not only on the football field with the players, but we have always had that with the coaching staff too, the next man up mentality. We’ll probably put a little bit more emphasis on it during training camp, and maybe it’s a period of practice where one of the other coaches calls the plays or something along those lines. But yeah, I put all of that protocol in place and those procedures. Hopefully everybody just stays healthy and we don’t have to use them, but we’re ready to go from that standpoint. “One of the things, also, that we’re doing right now is we have a lot of technology right now that we’re wearing all over. We have tracking systems, we have tracers, we have rings that kind of predict certain symptoms. We’re using a lot of different smart-wear technology to help us. So, for our current situation, what we’ve done through the course of the weeks is just run samples sort of examples. ‘What if this person is infected? What if this person is? What does the contract-tracing look like?’ From there, try to gauge the meetings, the setups, the rooms and also then, with the smaller groups in the buildings of players and as we build toward the full team, where are those touchpoints where it does get critical that maybe there’s too much time being exposed to another person testing positive, and how do we change those? Is it a virtual situation, is it a larger room that they need to be in, is it something where – honestly, some of it’s behavior changing, where you talk to somebody and realize, hey, I’m just going to take two more steps backwards and just make sure that we’re at a safe distance. One of the things that we did a great job of, I think, and are continually trying to do is mask education. There’s so many different types of masks right now that we’re trying to utilize all of those in different situations, certainly, when you have to coach and yell and you’re on the field and you know the exposure possibilities are higher. Some of your protection is different in the type of mask that you can wear. If you’re in some of the classroom settings or the hallway, the N95-grade masks – we’re wearing them because they protect not only you from the other person, but that person from you. And also, trying to experiment a little with – not that I struggle too much with trying to project my voice – but microphones, if we have to use those in the classroom to have enough space. You guys know our building, so it’s a little bit easier to explain to you guys. We have an amazing indoor facility that we are actually right now converting and have converted it into different classroom settings, so we have that sort of open space to be able to teach and coach maybe in a safer environment.” On if he can share what the fallback plan is if he or a coordinator have to sit out of games due to COVID-19: “I think I’ll probably keep that one to me right now. I do appreciate that question very much. But yeah, it was really something, honestly, that a lot of the head coaches started talking about in the summer and some of our conversations. So really, I almost feel like we’ve hit that maybe a couple of months ago. It’s a big, important part of the game to make sure that we have all of those different areas handled.” On what can be done with false-positive cases and how the NFL should handle them: “That’s a great question and your solution is probably just as good as mine right now, so I’m going to let the people that are highly qualified to work on those procedures handle them. I would just say this – the reassurance that I’ve gotten and through the calls that we’ve had is that they are trying to come up with the best way to adjust and monitor and go forward. That’s the part of it for me that I’m encouraged by, that’s the part of it that I’ll rely on for them to really look at it and say, ‘Hey, what can we do to make sure we’ve got all of this right?’” On if the team is planning on scrimmaging at Ford Field prior to Week 1: “Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting when you look at the League and you look at all the different teams. One of the things that we’re doing is – there’s no handbook for this, right, everyone’s doing it for the first time, so you try to get as much information as possible (with) what other teams are doing. The teams that have been able to move into their stadiums and use their stadiums as training camp sites and protocols are already set up in those buildings, they kind of already have that comfort feeling in that stadium for what the procedures and protocols will look like on gameday. Being that we’re obviously doing everything here in our facility, we do need to go to the stadium at some point and we do need to see the changes that we are going to put in effect to make everyone feels safe and make sure everybody understands these are the things that’ll change so that’s not happening on the first day of the season against the Bears. We’re working through the timeline for that and have probably narrowed that down to somewhere at the end of August and maybe the first couple of days or so of September. It’s a tricky thing. You try to put a timeline on, call it, wherever that third preseason was going to be to make sure that you’re having a really good, strong practice from an evaluation standpoint, but certainly when you get in that highly competitive mode, for me personally, I want to be on grass. It’s safer and some of the different injury situations. But I think we do need to go down to the stadium in maybe a follow up to that sort of timeline and schedule and practice at a high level in the turf, feel the turf, be used to what it looks like but then also be able to see the locker room and what that’s going to be like and how we’re going to adapt. And really, take a lot of our practices, it really gives us a couple of weeks here in this building to see what it’s going to look like when we have all 80 in the locker room to be able to go down there and be able to take some of the things that are really working well and apply them down there. Maybe there’s things that we just can’t do down there in that situation. Certainly, with an 80-man roster, it’s going to look a lot different than when we get into gameday active rosters and knowing that we’re going to have to adjust that a little bit when we get the full team down there.” On his reaction to seeing Philadelphia Eagles Head Coach Doug Pederson contracting COVID-19: “Obviously, my first reaction is I called Doug. I just wanted to make sure he was OK. I just checked in, ‘Hey man, you all right? What’s going on?’ Sometimes it may be just a text message just to get that reassurance that that person’s OK. That’s probably my first reaction on all that stuff. Same thing with (New Orleans Saints Head Coach) Coach Sean Payton, when he got it in the spring. These are colleagues, these are people that you’ve known for a long time (who) you compete extremely hard with in the fall, but this is a different sort of level of situation. I’m just trying to make sure everybody’s OK. If there’s something you can do, some way to help out, something like that.” On Chairman Emeritus Martha Firestone Ford passing the responsibility down to Principal Owner and Chairman Sheila Ford Hamp and what he expects to change with a new primary owner in charge: “Sheila’s been amazing. She’s been so wonderful to me from day one when I got here and my family and just taking a really strong interest in us settling into the area and getting used to everything out here. Certainly, from that standpoint, she’s working really hard to obviously step into that role, and I’m just trying to work closely with her to give her as much information as I can as we push forward. Mrs. Ford is amazing, and I’m so blessed for her and thankful for her, and Sheila, it’s obviously the same. I’m thankful for that entire family that has allowed me to try to have this opportunity to do what we can here. I do think that the conversations have been great between Sheila and I. Her passion, her drive for everything about this organization – obviously the football and what it looks like on the field, but also everything off the field – is great and something that I just see us always continually trying to improve.” On what he’s looking to see from LB Jarrad Davis this season: “I think ‘J.D.’, he’s obviously a cornerstone of a lot of things that we do. He’s been a tremendous player here both on and off the field. Certainly, I think for me, I’m excited when we get all of these guys on the field because ‘J.D.’ is an extremely, extremely competitive person, and I think now he has some very competitive people around him. It’ll be interesting when we get everybody out there. We haven’t had a spring, so nobody knows what it looks like, and I think that anticipation of putting everybody in that space and seeing what the position drills look like, seeing what the team periods look like, that’s exciting. Certainly, ‘J.D.’ has a little bit of an advantage on everybody because of the communication of some of the things that we do on defense. He’s very vocal on the field, he makes a lot of adjustments and a lot of calls, and certainly one more year of that, I think, will hopefully help the game slow down for him from a mental standpoint (and) allow him to use all of his natural ability and speed to go play fast on the field. I do think, like you mentioned with Jamie (Collins Sr.), who has great knowledge of this defense also and his communication, that’ll certainly help. And another year for Christian Jones and another year for Jahlani (Tavai), really all the way down – Jalen Reeves-Maybin, these guys are just getting more and more reps with the communication and hopefully that allows everyone to just play faster. And certainly someone with ‘J.D.’s physical skills, playing faster than he already plays could be really great.” |
