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Adam Gase – December 7, 2016 (Conference Call) Download PDF version

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Head Coach Adam Gase Conference Call with Arizona Media

(How do you rally? You guys won six in a row. Obviously, it didn’t go the way you wanted last week. How do you rally back from a game like that?) – “The first thing we had to do earlier this week was correct a lot of the mistakes that we made in that last game. We had some uncharacteristic mistakes, at least compared to what we were doing the six previous games. It wasn’t for a lack of effort. Guys were flying around trying to make plays. We probably pressed a little too hard, guys trying too hard to make plays. We have to reel it back in, get back to the details of what we were doing – everybody doing their job – instead of guys trying to go outside of the box and do too much.”

(You have a good back there. What are your thoughts on the Cardinals RB David Johnson?) – “He’s one of the best backs in the league. The ability to run his style of running and how physical he is with his speed, plus him being involved in the passing game and having as many catches as he has and being available for the quarterback, you have a guy that’s a dual threat and causes a lot of problems for the defense. We obviously have to account for him a lot. Our defense has to make sure we don’t let him take complete control of this game.”

(How do you do that with him as a receiver? Obviously, everybody sort of knows what’s coming and how they’re going to use him. How do you account for that?) – “It’s very tough. I just know that our defensive staff, we have our hands full putting a plan together. And then our guys have to do a great job as far as when we finalize what we’re doing throughout the week and look at things, making sure that we’re on the details, because the slightest miscue is when you have … whether it be an explosive play or one of those games where you’re letting Carson (Palmer) get in a rhythm throwing it, and he’s feeling good about how they’re running the ball and then the play-action game gets involved. It all starts with the running back and goes off that. If we let him get going, that’s a recipe for disaster for us.”

(You mentioned not letting Cardinals QB Carson Palmer get in a rhythm, and the Cardinals offensive line is a little bit patched together right now, and you guys have a pretty good defensive line. Do you feel like that’s one of the big keys defensively for your team – getting pressure consistently?) – “That’s usually where it starts for us. That’s where the majority of our better players are, is in that front. Those are our top-tier guys. When you’ve got a guy like (Ndamukong) Suh who’s probably one of the most dominant defensive tackles in the league, probably arguably the best one. The way that Cam (Wake) and (Andre) Branch, (Jordan) Phillips and Earl (Mitchell) have been playing, there’s a lot of chaos that can be caused up there. When you’re going against a veteran quarterback … Carson knows how to make sure the ball is coming out. And then when you have a guy like Bruce (Arians) calling the plays, that’s what you need to have when you’re trying to get the o-line together. When you’ve got a play caller and a quarterback that both understand the situation and know what they’re going against, they’re going to find ways to get the ball out, get them in a rhythm and go from there. They’ll make their adjustments during the game. That’s the thing that we have to be prepared for as far as understanding what they’re doing early and being able to adjust throughout the game. We need to try to stay one step ahead, which is always hard when you’re on defense because it’s so reactionary sometimes.”

(When you’re dissecting the Cardinals defense, what’s the first thing that strikes you?) – “This is the third year in a row that I’ve gone against these guys. They’re very aggressive. Obviously in the secondary, they’re very strong. Having Patrick (Peterson) out there A) makes it very difficult, because he’s such a good player, and he does such a good job (for) whoever he’s covering of making it a long day. The rest of that crew plays off of him, and all those guys do a great job. That front is about as nasty as they come. You know what’s coming. You know five guys are coming more times than not, and they’re going to put pressure on your offensive line to hang in there. When you’ve got a like Calais (Campbell), who’s disruptive as he is, and now add in Chandler Jones. When you’re in this (AFC East) division (and) he gets traded away (from New England) you’re thinking, ‘Alright, we don’t have to deal with him anymore,’ and here he comes again. It’s just that whole group. Now you look at the linebackers, and it’s a lot of team speed, a lot of aggressive players and then you have a great scheme that goes behind it to where they’re not afraid to play aggressive. That’s what makes that defense so tough to go against.”

(Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald – 33, putting up big numbers again. Are you surprised [he has] been able to put these kind of numbers up from the slot position?) – “No, because his intelligence of the game, that’s really what the slot position is. It’s, ‘What’s the defense doing? What’s their leverage? What’s my route, and how do I take advantage of it?’ When you have a guy that has played as well as he has – and at as high a level as he has over time – outside and now he slides in the slot – he knows the why of everything a defense is doing, and he takes advantage of it. That’s the key to playing slot. When your slot receiver understands why the defense is doing something, he knows how to beat it. He’s such a tough guy to take away, because you can double him and he still finds a way to get open. He finds a way to catch the ball in traffic. Those things just haven’t changed. It’s such a tough matchup because of his size. You don’t have a lot of slot players that are as big as he is.”

(Were you hoping that Cardinals T Ulrick John would stick around on the practice squad so you guys could keep him and develop him?) – “Anytime that we bring a guy or have a guy on our practice squad, we’re trying to develop a program to where we can promote from within instead of going to get guys on the street. That’s really what we’ve been trying to lean on since when we started the season. Them grabbing him, that was a tough pill for us to swallow, because they’re hard guys to find. Sometimes you don’t have enough roster spots and you’re trying to develop a guy and help him get better through the practice squad. But those guys, they don’t exist around the league. The way that injuries have been going, it’s hard to keep your practice squad together. They did their research on him and felt like they had a guy they could bring onto their roster that they could develop and put him in this position if they needed him.”

(What did you like about T Ulrick John that lead you guys to think that he could develop into a player?) – “We felt like he moved well. He really fit into … As far as what our scheme was, he really had a great grasp of it. He was one of those guys you just trusted, because you knew he was going to do the right thing. He was trying to get the right techniques as far as what we were coaching him to do, and he was a competitor. He did such a good job as far as he was in that final conversation for us to keep him on our roster. At the end of the day, we didn’t have enough spots. We had some unusual situations. Our center was out, but he was going to be on the roster. We had to keep an extra interior guy, which really, we lost a spot … You’d love to keep as many tackles as you can because if you lose one of those guys, that’s where things get kind of nasty for you. So, putting him on the practice squad, we were lucky that he stayed with us for a little bit, but it was a smart move by them to grab him when they did. Now it’s paying off, because you have enough injuries and all of a sudden he’s playing, and they probably feel comfortable about it.”

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