| November 12, 2020 Opening statement: “Good morning, hope everyone is well. Pretty much – just dive right into questions and get going here today. So what do you have?” On the typical number of formations you have to prepare for: “Absolutely. I would say this about formations and teams that do a lot of shifting and motioning and formationing – a lot of times it’s gameplan specific. So you’re really not going to know what they look like until you get into the game. You obviously try to practice the ones that you’ve seen on tape, you try to handle the ones that are most difficult that you’ve seen that have a lot of adjustments and communication, you start with those just to make sure that you’re solid because those are the ones that are going to get you when you they come up. But a lot of it is just trying to make sure you have good fundamental rules, you can communicate on the field efficiently so that when something comes up you haven’t seen, which will happen in this game, that you can communicate and handle it on the field at a fast level. “The other thing on top of the amounts of formationing, shifts and the motions – and they have a couple different kinds of shifts and motions, right? It could be a single player; it could be a double player. It could be two guys moving in at once, it could be one, it could be a single motion and it could be double motion. Sometimes they’ll motion a guy and then they’ll motion another guy, and then off of that they’re going to take the back and move him out of the backfield. So it’s very complex from that standpoint, but through it all, the biggest challenge for us is just trying to stay calm and communicate through the final look, and then sometimes not get distracted with some of what we call ‘window dressing.’ There’s going to be fast motion that may be snapped while somebody’s in the backfield or inside the tackle box as opposed to getting all the way through to the other side. I would say those are the complexities of what you have to deal with when you play a team like this.” On if he has to manage WR Kenny Golladay more carefully as he recovers from a second injury: “It’s a good question when you have same-side injuries or opposite-side injuries, sometimes when you look at, especially in the legs or shoulders, I would say, you may have something that’s overcompensating for another body part. Whether it’s on the same side or opposite side, you always try to make sure you do your due diligence to check if there’s something different with his gait, is he doing something different where he’s pushing off one side, and just try to overall make sure that our numbers that we look at is percentages of whether it’s speed or strength or how we gauge the kind of back-from-injury recovery stuff, those numbers are as close to balanced as possible. Sometimes you try to get them equal, but we do know there’s a wear and tear of the season that actually, even though you’re not injured, may cause a deficiency in one way or another, just because it’s a long year. So you always are trying to gauge that and get it back to as close to 100 percent as you can. Then a lot of that depends on – sometimes the player’s going to want to push and get out there even quicker because they’re competitive and certainly, Kenny is in that boat. He always wants to be on the field and wants to practice. He wants to play. So we just have to try to be smart with it.” On if same-side or opposite-side injuries are more concerning and which applies to WR Kenny Golladay: “It’s a good question. I’m not going to get into specifics for Kenny’s injuries. I think in general with that, it can go both ways. You can really see guys, if they have an injury on one side and then something happens on the other side, and you look at it and you’re like, ‘All right, there’s a major overcompensation.’ Maybe it was something where the guy just wasn’t ready to come back or that particular play, whatever caused it, or sometimes you see that – like you said, all that stuff’s connected on one side – that can obviously strain it going forward.” On how realistic it is to build a defensive line using first-round draft picks: “Obviously with the Draft, there’s so many unknowns that go into that. I think for Washington – I mean, you go right down the line, right? Rookie, second-year player, third-year player, fourth-year player – that’s pretty amazing, and then the production out of it. Now there’s some inside versus outside defensive line conversations as those come up. Certainly in the Draft process, like we talk about all the time, it’s a position need or highest value in the Draft at that point, those are the conversations that you have in the moment. Look – I think they’ve done a great job of maximizing the players that were available for them, and certainly, a lot of productions out of those guys.” On an announcer scouting report of Aqib Talib: “I’m excited. I’m excited for it. I can’t wait to get caught up with him when we do our production meeting here. Talib – he’s by far one of the most favorite guys that I’ve coached. Competitive, tough, great personality, all of it, super smart, I mean this guy is – he’s on top of it. So I’m excited. Hopefully he doesn’t give away too many secrets when he’s watching some of the coverage stuff out there and just put it out there for everybody to see because I know he’s going to know what it is. But really a player for me, honestly, that changed a lot of what we did defensively when we got him. I would say, in kind of the, let’s call it, probably 2010, 2011-ish years, we were probably in a different coverage mode at that point and doing things that we were built for for the team that we had. Then Talib walked in the door and everything changed. It was great. We were able to do a lot more things. He’d walk into my office every Tuesday and be like, ‘Hey, I’m taking this guy, and you figure out the rest of it.’ And I’d be like, ‘Perfect.’ You know? It was always their best guy, like he always wanted to cover their best guy – he was that competitive. You love to be around a guy like that. I’m excited for him. I’m happy for him because he’s a guy that had a tremendous playing career. His next phase of life he’s going to succeed at that, too, because he works really hard. I hope he does great, and I can’t wait to get caught up with him this weekend.” On if he ever got a sense that Aqib Talib wanted to pursue a media career: “Great question. I can’t really comment on if I did or didn’t. I don’t really – I don’t’ know. He was pretty focused on ball.” On if he expects DE Everson Griffen to return to practice today: “Everson’s here today. He’s good.” |
