JAGUARS DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR TODD WASH
Thursday, October 8, 2020
(On people giving more attention to DE Josh Allen) “Well, I think obviously, that we’ve had the departure of a couple pass rushers and that kind of stuff. But he’s getting some attention and we’ve got to find the ways to attack some protection, to be able to get some things slid away from him and that kind of stuff. But he’s continuing to work, which is what we like. I know everybody’s caught up on the sacks, but I think we’re hitting some quarterbacks; statistically, I know we’re doing pretty well in that category. But it’s the situation, obviously, Josh needs to win some one-on-ones. And the same thing, if we can get him in those situations where he can pass rush, we feel he can.”
(On RB James Robinson’s efficiency in the run) “You know, what you see out of him during the game—we don’t really watch the games much, we don’t watch our offensive film and stuff—but what we do see from us defensively, is he’s got great vision, he does a nice job of developing the blocks in front of him. I think our offensive line is doing a real nice job. But his center of gravity and his contact points, it’s hard to get pads on him. With him, you’ve got to really wrap him up and get to his legs. I think he plays with very good forward body lean and there’s not a lot of surface area. So, he’s tough to bring down, you can see that with the missed tackles and his leg drive. But he is playing extremely well right now. I think they’re blocking well for him for him upfront, so it’s a combination of not only his talent, but what our offensive line is doing for him.”
(On expectations for Sunday on third down passing downs) “Well, you know, obviously D.J. [Hayden] went into IR and that kind of stuff this week, so our backup situation nickel has always been Tre [Herndon]. We moved Tre in, what you [saw] last week on tape is what Houston will see this week. So, we’re not giving out any secrets or anything on a Thursday even though we have a lot of work to do. But you’ll see [Chris] Claybrooks outside, you’ll see Syndey [Jones IV] outside. You know, we’ve got some younger guys in the stable that we’re really going to be able to take a look at during the week and also on Sunday. Houston’s got a lot of talented wide receivers, in my opinion they’re about five deep, and they’re doing some things to get all four or five of them on the field at the same time. So, we’ve got to be able to match that athleticism and we’re going to be able to take a look at some guys this week.”
(On difficulty of blitzing with rookies) “You know, I don’t think we’ve got to protect them. I think if we’re going to end up bringing pressure, we’ve got to make sure it’s the right pressure for the protection that we’re seeing. If we just think we’re going to blitz, and all of a sudden, they’re in a six- and a seven-man protection, well that’s not very smart, let’s just say. So, the situational—what protections we’re getting, how we can dial some pressures up. I know we came with some pressures, obviously, last week. [We] got a big holding penalty on the one on the high red or fringe on Josh Allen, which was a really nice rush. And we brought some pressures and it helped. We were at 64 percent, I believe, last week on third down, and it was third down situations where obviously we can rush the passer. So, you’ve seen that and I think we ended up getting five hits and hurries and that kind of stuff and one sack last week with a touchdown.”
(On Texans QB Deshaun Watson this year) “Yeah, there’s no doubt. He’s a true dual threat. I think there’s getting to be a lot more of those in our league, with the college game that’s being played now. The biggest thing is, we’re going to do everything we can to try to make him a pocket passer. We’ve got to keep him in the pocket. You’ve seen some games, we’ve played them tight, early on and that kind of stuff. In the last couple of contests, we’ve had some really good results early and then we kind of falter a little bit late. But for us, we’ve got to keep him in the pocket. We’ve got to keep him contained with our four-, five-, six-man pressures that we have on third down. But the biggest one is first and second down. The timing throws, we need to have good pressure from our corners, getting hands on people, try to disrupt some of the timing, and let him really feel the rush. If we can do that, I think we can control him. But if we let him run around—around here, we say when that rooster gets loose, he’s going to hurt you. And he’s done that to a lot, a lot of different teams over the years and we’ve got to do everything we can to keep him in the pocket. But with that being said, being a former d-line coach, and talking with Rebs [Defensive Line Coach Jason Rebrovich], if you’re constantly talking about, ‘Hey, let’s keep him in the pocket, let’s keep him in the pocket,’ all we’re going to do is run right down the middle of people and stare at them. So, there’s a really fine balance of how much you can bring, how—chances or whatever you can say as a rusher—to keep him in the pocket. But we have to be smart and keep him in the pocket, but yet still get after him.”
(On CB Tre Herndon’s strengths as a nickel) “Yeah, we think Tre is a very good nickel. Obviously, we had D.J. [Hayden] in there, so then obviously he plays outside. But we always knew that we had a quality, quality backup nickel with D.J. He matches well on slots, he’s tough, he’s very, very intelligent. He’s involved in the run game, all the different motion adjustments and stuff that he has. That’s one of his strengths ishis intelligence and just his understanding of the game of football. So, we feel very comfortable with him playing inside.”
(On Bengals RB Joe Mixon’s touchdown runs) “Right. On the first one, it was a crack replace, there’s also some other situations where some guys could’ve reacted a little bit quicker, to be able to make sure that that declares, that it’s a crack and not an over-route; which would’ve cleaned it up for [Chris] Clay[brooks] a little bit. We’ve got to be able to crack replace better there. And then on the second one that popped in through the A and the B, depending on how you looked at it, it’s the situation—we were in some read option type rules. And we fell back when we really shouldn’t have. So, the guy creased us in the B gap and we’ve just got to be able to stay home and play our gaps. It’s something that we’re going to see this week, so it’s going to be important that we learn from it.”
(On CB Sidney Jones IV’s and CB Chris Claybrooks’ performance this year) “Yeah, I think, when you look at Claybrooks, obviously a late round draft pick, what I like about him is he’s a very aggressive guy. He has no problem with getting his hands on people, he’s very confident in his ability to run and he can run, which is—for a corner, if you have the confidence and you have the ability to get your hands on it, you know they’re not going to run by you. And realistically—really, we’re not getting ran by at this point in time. It’s the intermediate stuff and it’s the quick game, and stuff like that, that we’ve got to clean up. But we feel very comfortable with Claybrooks there. We like his play speed, like I was saying earlier, and he is competitive as all get-out. And I think that’s one of his strengths and I look forward to seeing him play a full 60 minutes. When we had the injury on Sunday, I walked over and I said, ‘Hey, it’s time for you to get your feet wet, bud.’ And I think he did a solid job. Obviously, there’s stuff that we can clean up—and I’m not saying just players, it’s coaches, too. We’ve got to clean some stuff up, put them in better positions and when we execute, we play pretty well. If you look at the first 30 minutes of the game, we played pretty damn well in the first half last week and then we had some breakdowns in the second half and we’ve got to be able to play for a full 60. And then you go to Sidney, we knew Sidney when he was in Philly. He was a guy that played a lot of off-coverage there and a lot of that has to do with what [Jim] Schwartz likes to do. But we knew he had the skill set to get up on the line of scrimmage. Same thing, he can run well and he feels comfortable at the line of scrimmage, which is very important in our package. So, we know he can go out there, he’ll challenge wide receivers. Once again, his demeanor, he’s very tough, he’s competitive and it’s going to be fun to watch those younger guys—if you call Sidney [Jones IV] a younger guy, he is in our package—but, it’s going to be fun to watch those guys compete this week versus some really quality wide receivers that Houston has.”
(On interior pressure from DT DaVon Hamilton and DT Taven Bryan throughout the rest of the season) “You know, I hope so. I think we’ve got to continue to work, making sure that they’re playing on the edge. You’ve seen D-Ham [DaVon Hamilton] get a couple pressures and pushes in the pocket that we’ve seen. We’ve got to get Taven [Bryan] to really transfer or transition his rush from play action, obviously, from the run to the pass on play action. We need to continue to work on that. But I think those guys are continuing to get better and as the season goes on, they should get better. And that’s what we’re looking forward to as we keep rolling.”
JAGUARS LB JOE SCHOBERT
October 8, 2020
(On the keys to stopping Texans QB Deshaun Watson as a linebacker) “You just have to try to keep him confined in space. When he gets outside the pocket, he gets dangerous and when he does, you have to be able to take good angles to get him down because he’s elusive. He’s a good athlete and he makes a lot of people miss tackles. So, taking good [a] angle and trusting [that] the other people on the defense are going to be right behind you. When you get there, you can’t take your time. You have to shoot your shot. If he makes you miss, at least you hope to make him stop his feet and somebody else is going to be right there.”
(On if playing assignment football is more important when playing someone like Texans QB Deshaun Watson) “Yeah, I mean that’s always important, but it gets exploited, like you said, when you’re going against somebody who’s as talented as Deshaun. So, you just really have to dot your I’s and cross your T’s when you’re facing an athlete of his caliber because there’s not a lot of guys in the game of football who can single-handedly change the game. Quarterback is one of the positions where [if] you have a guy of his caliber, they can affect the game, so, as a defense, you really have to be on your P’s and Q’s.”
(On what he can attribute to points and total yards being up across the league this year) “First off, I think it’s because that’s what the NFL wants. The rules keep changing and make it a more offensive-minded league and then obviously training camp. Training camp affects everybody in specific ways, but I think on defense, not getting live reps as much against other teams [hurts]. You see your own offense every day obviously but not getting those live reps against other teams and getting those looks I think has been detrimental. On offense, you can run offense against air. You can’t really run defense against air. You need the offense to be able to read and react and play against. So, that might be a key but other than that I don’t really know.”
(On if the defense will be able to catch up to the offense as the season goes on) “Yeah, you would think so, hopefully. With also the shortened training camp, I think injuries are up in the NFL this year a lot and it just seems offensive guys can kind of plug guys in easier and not miss as many beats as defense. So, if people on defense keep going down across the NFL, I think it might stay the same. But if you can keep a healthy defense and keep building, get these first couple games out of your system, then as the season goes on just get stronger, I think you’ll definitely see some top defenses rise into the top ranks of the NFL.”
(On what he attributes the decline of the run defense in the second half against the Bengals) “Yeah, I mean obviously injuries don’t help but in the NFL, as every coach will ever tell you, is a next man up mentality and that breeds true in every sense of the word. So, you can’t really use that as an excuse and then I think everybody on defense will take it on the second half. There’s plays where people are out of position. It’s nothing they specifically did. I think [Defensive Coordinator Todd] Wash came in on Tuesday I guess [and said] they had four runs for 90 yards I think in the second half. We faced all four of those runs in the first half and they had a combined 7 yards. So, it’s just misalignments or misfits on a couple of plays that really hurt and obviously Joe Mixon’s a great running back and was able to take advantage.”
(On Defensive Coordinator Todd Wash’s attitude the past few weeks) “I don’t know how to class him. I’m going to say he likes to have fun. He’s not loose in terms of like ‘loosey goosey’ or anything like that, but he knows how to have fun. He knows how to get serious when you need to be serious and he knows how to push players properly to get the best out of them in practice and in games. Obviously, he’s with the d-line a lot because he’s formerly a d-line coach, but he stops into different meeting rooms along the day and chops it up. So, he’s present in, I think, every room and he’s present vocally, and I think he does things the right way.”
(Of if Coach Wash points out the small victories to keep the defense motivated) “I think a sign of a good coach is obviously to correct the things that need to be corrected, but also to point out things that are being done well, and there has been a lot of things that have been done well. Like we were talking about earlier, the whole first half of [the] Cincinnati game was pretty much a very well-played first half on a defensive perspective. So, you have to take those good things and build upon it and take that over a full 60 minutes and then you have to identify the things you haven’t done well and eliminate those from your game. I think he does a good job of playing out both of those and stressing the importance of both of those aspects.”
(On if he’s nervous about COVID affecting the season with the influx of positive tests recently) “It always gives you pause when you see something like this happen. Obviously, we’ve luckily been out of that crisis [that] I suppose Tennessee’s dealing with right now and a couple other teams that had some cases pop up. But I mean it’s just the status of the world right now. We spent the whole offseason not knowing what we were going to be doing if we were even going to be having a season. For me, right now, it’s always on the forefront of your mind because whenever you go and check your phone, you see a news flash of a new guy in Tennessee testing positive or their next week game potentially being postponed or forfeited or whatever the NFL decides to come up with if things keep happening. So, it gives you pause because NFL is our business and getting on the field and playing football is what we do for our living. Obviously, it gives you a moment’s pause, but I think, as professionals and in our environment here in Jacksonville, we just have to keep doing things the way we’ve been doing then. We’ve been good so far. Sometimes you catch it just because, I’m not a doctor, but you can catch it getting take-out. Some things are unavoidable, but you have to limit your exposure as much as possible and I think the guys on the team understand that, so it doesn’t give me too much worry.”
(On if forfeiting games would be the worst case scenario this season) “Forfeiting games or just cancelling the season would obviously not be great because then you don’t get paid for any of those forfeits or [if] the season’s cancelled you’re not going to get paid anymore for the season. So, you don’t want it to get to that point because, like I said, it is our job. Obviously, we get paid very well in the entertainment industry as football players. There’s a lot of people out in the world who have normal every day, regular jobs who are being affected and have been affected by this as well. The forfeiture of games and potentially cancelling the season is something that’s on your mind just from a financial standpoint and your family’s standpoint.”
