Adam Gase – October 9, 2016 (Postgame)
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Sunday, October 9, 2016
Postgame – vs. Tennessee
Miami Dolphins Head Coach Adam Gase (transcribed by Michelle Stone)
(Adam, G/T Laremy Tunsil – how did he get injured?) – “He was getting ready for the game. I’m still kind of sorting everything out right now. We’re trying to get ready for (the game) and all of a sudden he lets you know that he’s not going to be able to go so we had to make some quick adjustments.”
(I know you’re not going to want to make any excuses, but a lot of injuries – all seven inactives were projected starters coming out of training camp. How much did that impact the game?) – “I mean, it happens. It happens as far as week-to-week, usually you have a couple of guys down. You never like to have this many guys, a couple of them being some fluke-type of thing. We didn’t think that ‘B.A.’ (Branden Albert) was going to be down at the beginning of the week, but he loses 12 pounds throughout the week and we can’t put him out there. He tried to practice. It just would be wrong for us to try to do that. Obviously, those guys can help you; but I feel like we have plenty of guys that can fill the roles that we need them to fill. We just have to do a better job.”
(Coach, you pretty much knew what they wanted to do coming in. There were a lot of three-tight, they wanted to run the football, and that’s exactly what they did – 224 yards rushing at the last count for me – that’s got to be a disappointing afternoon for you.) – “It was surprising considering that we were doing a pretty good job as far as fitting it – we weren’t finishing our tackles. That’ll kill you every time, especially with a running back like that. One guy misses, and they block it up well. Our guys were fitting everything right and it just takes a one-on-one match up, he makes him miss, now all of a sudden he’s in the safety, and a lot of times he’s going to make that guy miss. We have to do a better job as far as our tackling goes. It’s tough because the d-line is doing their job, and now all of a sudden, they want to go try to make a play to help, and now we’re moving out of our gap. It’s one of those things where you spring a leak somewhere else and then somebody else tries to plug it and then another one springs. We have to make sure we go back and we’ve got to figure out a way to do a better job of tackling.”
(Offensively – you look at the numbers, six punts, five of them three-and-outs, two of them interceptions…) – “We’re inept right now. We’ve just got to figure something out. We tried to slow it down today, and huddle, and we only had 41 plays and eat up 23 minutes. We’re not getting enough first downs. We had a chance there on the third-and-1, and the ball gets batted down. We think we’re in the end zone to be down by three and we get a holding call. It just seems that we can’t get out of our own way right now. We’ve just got to go back to work. We’ve got to clean up some of these things. There’s nothing really great that I can point to in this game, especially for the offense. I know that Jay (Ajayi) ran hard. There were times where there were free runners in the backfield and I thought that there were going to be two or three runs that were negative plays and he found a way to get to the line of scrimmage and get positive yards. That was encouraging for me as far as having a guy who you can lean on to try to get positive yards. There were some bad play calls in there that put our offense in a bad position. We’ve got to go back to work. We’ve got to figure out a way to do a better job of consistently executing play in and play out.”
(Coach, was there any point in the game where you considered taking Ryan Tannehill out of the game?) – “No. He’s not coming out. You can ask me a hundred times. He’s going to be in there the rest of this season.”
(Adam, what do you make of the season now that you’re 1-4? The big picture…) – “Well, the whole NFL is a mess, isn’t it? How many teams have the same record or are one win above us? You’ve got to play the whole season. Everybody counted Kansas City out. The one year New England is 2-2 and the sky’s falling and all of a sudden they rattle it out and go to the Super Bowl and win it. You better play this thing out. You never know what’s going to happen.”
(Adam, I know you have a lot on your plate right now after that performance, but what tops your priority list in terms of what you need to fix?) – “A lot of times, I look at it offensively. I know there’s some fixes we can have there as far as we hold onto the ball, we get first downs, the time of possession changes, and it helps the defense. That’s why it’s irritating for me, as far as if we could figure out a way to be more consistent on offense, it’s going to take a lot of pressure off the defense (and) keep those guys fresh. We built this defense to play with a lead. We just haven’t come through on offense yet. We had some changes. We’re trying to figure out some ways to get guys the ball, get the ball out quick, not put Ryan (Tannehill) in a bad position as far as holding onto the ball. It just didn’t work out the way that we wanted it to.”
