Adam Gase – October 8, 2017 (Postgame)
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Sunday, October 8, 2017
Postgame – Tennessee Titans
Miami Dolphins Head Coach Adam Gase (transcribed by Michelle Stone)
(Coach, you can certainly look at this game as a win’s a win…defensively, I don’t know how much you could say about those guys because obviously they controlled this game from start to finish.) – “They did a great job. It was nice that someone could score points. That was really impressive to see, how they just came out and decided they were going to dominate the game and they did. That’s what we’re looking for every week.”
(The elephant in the room is the offense – their inability to get first downs, convert on third down, and it looked like it was really a struggle all day out there for Jay [Cutler, QB]. What did it look like from where you were standing?) – “If guys would do their jobs, catch the ball, block the right guys, give the quarterback a chance to do something…Jay’s way down on the list of things going wrong.”
(This is kind of a redundant question, but how do you get this offense in synch?) – “If guys would do what they’re supposed to do, we’ll be all right. If guys keep not doing the right things, getting beat, not catching the ball, fumbling the ball, it’s not going to work.”
(How optimistic are you about turning things around?) – “We don’t have a choice. We have to.”
(If they continue to have the same problems week after week, we’ve talked about changes before – is that something you have to consider?) – “I don’t know where we’re going to go.”
(The fans were chanting for [QB] Matt Moore to enter the game. What’s your feeling about that?) – “That’s fine. They chanted for Matt Moore last year when we played against Tennessee. I’ll make the decision on quarterback. We’re not going to take public polls.”
(Are the offensive lines’ issues more not carrying assignments or just being beat? What’s wrong with the offensive line?) – “It’s some good, some bad. It’s both. One one time, one another time. Do they have a good defensive line? Yes. But we’re better than what we’re putting out there right now.”
(Do you feel better about the offense now than you did a week ago? Or is it still in kind of the same area?) – “There’s little things you can take from it. There’s times we’re open and we just don’t finish the play. We get the ball there…there’s a couple of times where Jay got out of the pocket and was making a good play and then we don’t finish the play. Guys got to make plays at the end of the day. We can keep scaling back the offense all we want, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to make plays.”
(Adam, this was the first game with [LB Rey] Maualuga, [LB Lawrence] Timmons, and Kiko [Alonso, LB] – how did they do, especially Kiko who seemed very active?) – It looked like they did well to me. It’s nice to see those guys out there because you don’t see a lot of missed tackles. Once they make contact, that’s it.
(Can you talk about [S] Reshad Jones and how he had a nose for the ball today and how he was on that play that nobody realized was a fumble?) – “The one thing about Reshad that you just notice right from the get go today was that he was all business today. He absolutely… You could tell he had a fire about him right from the time he walked into the locker room. Hearing him talking in the background, I knew he was going to be effective today and he went out there and he backed his talk up, what he was saying in the locker room, and he played an unbelievable game.”
(On that particular play it seemed like a lot of guys froze because the ball went twenty yards. Did you realize that it actually was a fumble?) – “Everything was happening so fast. We’re making adjustments, then you look up and see the ball go, and you see him go, and you’re trying to… Did anybody hear a whistle? That’s the biggest thing, will somebody accidentally blow a whistle in that case, the play’s dead. But the officials, over time, figured it out. You’re almost better letting it go if you’re not sure, because it’s a replay.”
(What do you know about [WR DeVante] Parker’s injury right now?) – “I’ll know more tomorrow, but obviously him not coming back into the game…we’ll see what it’s going to turn out to [be] next week.”
(When the offense did get going it seemed as though Jay was really locked into Jarvis [Landry, WR]. Can you talk about the connection that they had?) – “We were just trying to figure out if we could get him the ball and if he could run for extra yards. They were playing the run pretty hard, and just being able to get the ball out quick. Even when we were getting to them, we still got too much pressure in the face, missed assignments, and guys leaking through the line of scrimmage. We’ve got to clean a lot up.”
(What was your approach with the players today with regards to the National Anthem?) – “It was a decision made that we were going to stand and guys who didn’t want to stand, stayed back in the locker room.”
(It was a decision made by who?) – “I did.”
(Have you scaled back on the offense?) – “We have. Every week.”
(Dramatically?) – “Yes.”
(Adam, I know you pointed to other parts of the Dolphins breaking down. Particularly with Jay, how would you evaluate his performance?) – “I don’t know. He can’t throw it and run out there and catch it. We had five drops. They were going to be twelve to fifteen to twenty yard plays. I don’t know what else we can do.”
(RB [Jay] Ajayi averaged just three yards a carry, but given the fact that the defense linemen were at the line of scrimmage waiting to hit him – is that a good day in terms of production?) – “Yes. Some of it was good, some of it wasn’t good – the fumble, obviously is unfortunate. It was hard to see. I saw the replay up on the board. You just can’t have that happen. That’s one of the things we count on him with the amount of time he carries the ball, make sure ball security is 100%. It was one of those days where they were playing the run so hard, maybe we should have went to play action sooner. There’s a couple of times where we tried to earlier in the game, but things just broke down quick.”
(What is the mood in the locker room? What is the mood of the team right now? Is there a feeling of desperation?) – “No, I don’t think so. We just got done with the first quarter and we are two-and-two. Last year I don’t even think we were close to that. A win’s a win. I know I must have missed a column that says style points next to the win, so we’ll go back, we’ll correct it, and we’ll get better. That’s really what we’ve got to do.”
(As far as the touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, what went right? You seemed to have some success with the stop routes and things like that.) – “We did what we were supposed to do. It’s not hard. This is not a hard sport to play. Do what you are supposed to do and you’ll have success.”
