Vic Fangio – February 20, 2023
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Monday, February 20, 2023
Defensive Coordinator Vic Fangio
Opening Statement from Head Coach Mike McDaniel:
“I just wanted to introduce coach Vic Fangio. It’s an exciting day for the Miami Dolphins organization, the fan base. Since the season ended – we really tried to attach, in the journey for looking towards the future, who can we entrust to continue to develop the players to maximize all people in the building in that regard, to do right by the organization and chase what we’re trying to chase in building a winner. So it was a very easy decision, when given the opportunity. I was very excited about the opportunity. I was really pumped that he joined in the vision, and couldn’t be happier, really, for the organization. He’s really a guy that takes professional football serious, but also the obligation to continually evolve and get better. You don’t have a sustaining career for longer than I’ve been alive really, like Vic has, without that fearless chase of continuing to evolve, and get better, and be the best version of yourself as you age with grace. So without further ado, Vic Fangio, the defensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins.”
Defensive Coordinator Vic Fangio:
(You were a DC who was in high demand. There were a lot of teams that were looking into potentially bringing you in. What made Miami the right fit and the right opportunity for you after a year off?) – “Well, I think the Dolphins have a good thing going here. I like Mike (McDaniel) and his staff that he already has in place here. I think there’s good components to the coaching staff, led by Mike, that made it intriguing to join that. I think there’s a good nucleus of players here. And the allure of South Florida.”
(What do you think are some of the most important ways to maximize a player’s talents?) – “Well, I’ve always believed you just try and improve every player as an individual. And then hopefully you do that well enough to where their position group improves. And if their position group improves, then the defense is improved. So you really do it from the ground up. And there’s a lot of good young players here that I think have room to grow. And hopefully, myself and the staff will get that done.”
(What’s your connection with Mike McDaniel, and when did you guys meet and develop a relationship?) – “Really, I didn’t have much of a relationship with Mike. Obviously we have some mutual friends. But as far as Mike and I having a relationship worth mentioning prior to this would be misleading. Obviously, I knew of him; he knew of me. We’ve had two- or three-minute casual conversations maybe at the Combine or somewhere else. But no major relationship prior to this.
(Having said that, from the little that you’ve been with Mike McDaniel now, what’s your first impressions of a guy like that?) – “Well, it’s been very little because I got here last Tuesday, and Mike was on vacation. So today’s the first day we’re in here together. Now we did some Zoom interviews together from where he was last week. But everything I thought – he’s energetic, genuine, obviously got a good football mind. He puts good offensive football out there. And hopefully we can complement that.”
(This past season, you weren’t in the NFL for most of the year anyway. But you did spend quite a bit of time studying games. In the time that you are studying games, what can you take away from what you saw of the Dolphins defense? What stood out to you?) – “Well, I didn’t study the Dolphins defense per se that much. Basically what I did with all my time was I kind of treated it like a college professor on a sabbatical and was watching a lot of NFL tape, more from a situational standpoint rather than studying a team per se. So I never actually studied the Dolphins in its entirety. Now, obviously, their games would come across these situational studies that I was doing. And I think there’s some good young talent there. Obviously, just from two years ago in the draft with (Jaelan) Phillips and (Jevon) Holland, those are two really good players that I really liked in the draft. Bradley Chubb is here, who obviously I know about. And several other guys. Christian Wilkins is here, another guy I liked in the draft. Christian’s greatest honor, is the Bill Campbell Award trophy, which is the ‘Academic Heisman.’ Bill Campbell was a good friend of mine. So when I see him, I always think of that. But there’s a good nucleus of players here. For me to give you a great answer schematically, I’d be stretching it.”
(You got a ton of defensive coordinator experience. Going into this tenure with head-coaching experience, how will that transform who you are as a DC?) – “My experience as the head coach won’t change it too much because I still ran the defense when I was in Denver. So I just continued on that path. Obviously, I had more on my plate that I was responsible for. But I’ve done this job enough now that I don’t see it being a major, major factor.”
(How important was it to get Renaldo Hill to come from LA? And now how do you convince him to leave a DC job to work under you?) – “Yeah, it’s important. First and foremost, Renaldo is a good coach. He’s really a talented coach that’s got a bright future in the NFL. He worked with us for two years in Denver. So his familiarity with me and the system and what we do was important to me. But regardless of that, just his ability to be a great coach is what attracted me to him.”
(How’d you convince Renaldo Hill to leave?) – “I’ll let him answer that for you at some point.”
(How do you like to go about deciding which players should play, which players should play a lot, and maybe some aren’t going to play a lot?) – “Well, that’s a process that starts in training camp. I could say OTAs. But in OTAs, we’re going to be teaching everything. It’s a process that really the players are in charge of. Now there’s some that you’d like to play every play. Sometimes that’s not possible from an exertion standpoint. But a lot of the great players that I’ve been around, they never leave the field very often. I know the heat here is a different element and animal to deal with. But there will be plenty of packages available for guys to get playing time. But who plays and how much is really up to the players.”
(Your time off – did you come up with anything new that you would like to try out there?) – “Yeah, there’s a few things that I came up with that I’m anxious to try. We’ll try them in OTAs at some point and then in training camp as a good fit for the other things we do. But what’s going to be most important is tailoring what we do to our players and to the opponent that we’re playing for that week. So there may be things that we did at previous stops that we won’t do much here because it doesn’t fit our players and vice versa; we might do something a lot that we didn’t do other places because it’s a better fit for our players. And sometimes it’s a better – you might think it’d be great to do something because it fits a certain player really good, but you really have to think about how it fits all 11 and what’s the best way to stop somebody from scoring too many points.”
(Your time with him in Denver, what were your thoughts on LB Bradley Chubb and what’s the key to unlocking the best of him here in Miami?) – “Well, the three years – and Bradley and I talked about this the other day when he was in here – the three years I was with him in Denver, he was the victim of some injuries. I believe he got hurt in the fourth game the first year I was there and was out for the season. He came back the second year and it took him about four or five games to get into the groove coming off the injury and then he had a good season that year. And then he really basically missed – it doesn’t say it statistically – but he missed most of my last year there because he had an ankle injury that kept him out and when he came back, he wasn’t himself. (He was) still recovering. He had two ankle injuries. So I’m anxious to get him rolling, keep him healthy and see the Bradley Chubb that we all know he’s capable of being.”
(Based on what you know about LB Bradley Chubb and what you liked about LB Jaelan Phillips entering the draft a couple of years ago, what potential do those two have as a pass rushing duo here?) – “They have great potential. But potential – we got to see it. Talking about it is easy, projecting it as easy, but we got to see it. And I’m confident knowing those two guys’ work ethic that they’ll do everything they can to put a good product out there on the field from the both of them. They both have the tools. They both have the makeup to be really good players on the edges for us.”
(How do you describe your defensive philosophy? I know we’ve heard a lot in the last couple of weeks about things you do, but how do you – do you have any way to describe it?) – “Not a buzzword if that’s what you’re looking for. We’re in charge of not letting the other team score and we will do anything and everything to do that. I’ve been places in the past where we pressured a lot. I’ve been places where we didn’t pressure very much. You’ve got to fit the scheme to the players that you have while also factoring in the opponents that you’re playing. So hopefully we’ll be a team that will keep the points down, make it hard for teams to score a lot of points and put our offense in position to score points for us. So I’m not a buzzword guy as far as that goes other than we want to play good defense and what’s good defense? Keep them out of the end zone.”
(Going off of that, what is your general philosophy when it comes to blitzing specifically?) – “As needed and when I want to. (laughter) Versus having to. If you have to, that’s not a great feeling. You want to do it when you want to on your terms. Now, having said that, I can’t tell you what that means from a percentage standpoint.”
(Head Coach Mike McDaniel mentioned you’ve been doing this longer than he’s been alive. You see these young guys, young head coaches, the offensive philosophy is changing. How do you mix with that and do you think he’ll benefit from having a guy who’s been around like you and have seen it all?) – “Yeah, the game’s evolving. Since I got in the league, the evolution of the game has just continued. I think we saw it firsthand in the Super Bowl – I guess it was nine days ago, eight days ago – two great quarterbacks, two great offenses, and they had their way with both defenses in that game. There was like, I believe 17 possessions in that game and I think 14 of them resulted in scores. And we’ve got to find a way to slow that down, and the only way you do that is to evolve your philosophy, what you’re teaching, what you’re playing, to fit stopping what they’re doing now. To line up and play what you did 10, 15 years ago, although you’re still doing some of that; you have to adapt it to today’s NFL game. Years ago, every team had a fullback. Now, hardly any teams have a fullback, and the fullback’s been replaced by a third wide receiver or a second tight end who’s like a third wide receiver. That in and of itself has changed the game. But teams are still running the ball. Everybody likes to say it’s a pass-happy league, but percentage-wise from 40 years ago to now, the runs have decreased only about 4 percent. And Chris Grier told me, because he’s on the competition committee, they had a graphic last week in a meeting, this is the most runs in the NFL this past year in the last 25 years. So you still have to be able to stop the run and play physical.”
(You mentioned the sabbatical that you took. Can you give us a little bit more detail of maybe what that looked like week to week for you watching those situational drills?) – “Well, I set up shop – I lived in Destin, Florida, up on the panhandle, and I had a computer that I was able to VPN into and it was just like if I was in an office, an NFL office. I had exposure to everything that any NFL coach had at that time. And wherever I went, I would tune in and do my – not every day, but most every day – spent a few hours watching tape and doing these different types of studies like third down, red zone, formational studies against offensive personnel. I did that a lot up there. I traveled out of there. I’d go back east and fly into Philadelphia and either drive two hours north and see my mother or two hours south and see my kids. I’ve spent some time in San Francisco. But no matter where I was, I was doing that. Just doing it on a kitchen table. Sometimes I went into a library and did it. But I just did that all year. I played some golf, too. It was an interesting year, one that I would recommend for anybody to do at some point, but in this business, you can’t do it too often.”
(What was the desire to get back in? Some may have just enjoyed life. You wanted to get back into coaching. Why?) – “Yeah, just because that’s who I am. That’s what I do. That’s what I like to do. I still have a lot of coaching left me. It’s not like I’m thinking about retirement or anything. Somebody asked, ‘How much longer are you going to do this?’ I don’t know. It might be 10 years if they’ll have me here for 10 years. It’s just who I am, what I do, what I enjoy doing. I like the competition. I like teaching players. I like to see players improve as individuals and putting something together is challenging and fulfilling.”
(I think you mentioned teaching players. One guy you mentioned earlier was S Jevon Holland. I know you’ve had a lot of success with safeties. What do you think you could maybe teach him to elevate his game?) – “I haven’t studied him enough since he’s gotten the NFL as far as what can I teach him, but I do know I really liked them the year he came out in the draft. I like his physical ability, his combination of size, speed, quickness, he’s got good instincts. I think he’s smart from a football standpoint. And you’re right, we’ve had some good luck with safeties over the years in the last few stops, and I’m hopeful and confident that he can be one of the top safeties in the league.”
(You mentioned fitting your scheme to the players. With your relationship with General Manager Chris Grier, how much input will you have on bringing in certain players with all the relationships you have that you think will fit here?) – “We haven’t sat down and said how much I will, but you can rest assured if there’s somebody I feel strong about, I’ll be in and out of his offense pestering him pretty strongly.”
(How close is this defense to being Super Bowl caliber?) – “Oh, I don’t know. Can we get one practice on the field? (laughter)”
(What have you done this week? You’ve been here a week, you said about a week. What’s your order of business this week?) – “A lot of it’s been spent on filling up the staff and everything that’s involved with that, which is a multitude of phone calls, Zoom interviews, talking to a lot of people. I did one day of a little house hunting and up to this moment right now I’m looking at one that’s way more than I wanted to spend. (laughter) But it’s been – I’ll tell you what it is, too – last week, it’s one of those where you’re super, super busy, but if you came in my office, and ‘hey, show me what you got done today,’ I really couldn’t show you much. Because you’re doing all the busy work, not handwriting busy work, but the legwork to fulfill your staff.”
(So if you’ve had conversations with them, what are your early impressions of Defensive Line Coach Austin Clark, Linebackers Coach Anthony Campanile and Cornerbacks/Pass Game Specialist Sam Madison?) – “Great. They were on vacation last week, although I did spend some time with Austin (Clark) and Anthony (Campanile). We watched some tape together. I met Sam (Madison) for a little bit. But by all reports and everything I know, they’re great coaches, and that’s why Mike (McDaniel) kept them on and I’m looking forward to working with them.”
(You mentioned obviously you spent time, it’s been reported, with Philadelphia during the Super Bowl period. What did you learn? Or what did you maybe help in that period that you think you can provide insight with?) – “I wasn’t there often. Like I said earlier, I would fly into Philadelphia and either end up going north a little bit or south a little bit to see family and I’d stop in and see them because Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni are friends of mine and I’d spend some time there. And then when they got in the playoffs I helped them prepare for the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl, but I was helping the offense, not the defense. I was giving them a defensive perspective for the offensive coaches and it was a great experience. They’ve got a great organization. Jeffrey Lurie’s a great owner. Howie does a great job as the GM. Nick Sirianni is a great coach and they really have a great staff up there and what little I was around them, I enjoyed it.”
(Did you have any background with the Dolphins at all before this?) – “No. Other than – some of you are old enough to remember when the Dolphins were in the AFC East when it was a five-team division and I was with the Colts a couple of years. Dan Marino and I talked about one of those games just last week. Obviously when you think about the Dolphins, you think about Don Shula, Dan Marino, the heyday in the 70s, the 17-0 season. I think the Dolphins are one of those franchises that the NFL is a better league when the Dolphins are relevant and in the hunt and hopefully we can get it back to that.”
