Darren Rizzi – September 6, 2018
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Thursday, September 6, 2018
Associate Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi
(What do you think RB Brandon Bolden and WR Tanner McEvoy bring to special teams?) – “Well first off, I’m real excited to get those guys. I know a lot about both of them, obviously Bolden from coaching against him all of these years, and I have a lot of respect for him as a player. I joked around with him the other day that I was sick of coaching against him so we might as well get him here playing with us. He’s a guy that has done a lot in New England where he was. He played a lot of different positions. I know he was a little bit of a leader. I got a chance to evaluate him even more specifically a couple of times in free agency and I dove into exactly what he does. Obviously, playing those guys two times a year and knowing exactly where the positions he played, we thought that after the cuts and where he was, it would be a really good fit. We’ve been really excited. He’s a guy that’s obviously ready to go. He’s mature and obviously very well-coached up there and I have a lot of respect for him so far. He’s a guy that can do a lot for us. He should be a four-core player and I’m excited to have him here. Tanner on the other hand, is kind of a unique story, I met Tanner McEvoy when he was in grade school. I recruited his brother to walk on at Rutgers University. His brother is Colin McEvoy, he played at Pascack Valley High School in New Jersey and grew up in the area that I grew up in. I recruited his brother and I know his family, so I think the first time that I met Tanner, he was in grade school. His brother was coming into Rutgets, ended up walking on and being a player there. So, I followed his career a little bit and kind of – he’s a guy that made the Seahawks as an undrafted free agent a couple of years ago. (He’s) a guy that’s played multiple positions, was drafted out of high school as a quarterback, played safety, played receiver, could kind of wear a lot of hats. A very, very bright player with good football IQ. He played ‘P.P.’ (personal protector) for them, has blocked punts, has caught passes, has done a little bit of everything. So, again, a little bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Again, the fact that I had a little bit of familiarity with both guys, both playing against them and knowing who they were, that certainly helped. As you know, I kind of follow the special teams core players around the league and we had the opportunity to get both guys, and we thought that they could both come in and help us out.”
(How is the roster cut down day for you? Obviously your guys play such a big role in who are the last or last few guys on the team.) – “It’s bittersweet. It’s a situation where as special teams coaches, we work with everybody on the team. Right when we start off in OTAs and we’re back in the spring, we’re getting everybody ready to play. So we’ve spent a lot of time with these guys and there’s some really tough decisions. It’s never easy. You come down to and there’s always going to be those really, really tough decisions on those players – I don’t know, I want to call it 48 to 53 – the last five or six guys where you’re trying to fit the pieces into the puzzle and see what’s best for the team. Sometimes you have to put personalities aside and relationships aside and do what’s best for the group. It’s hard because there are a lot of good players that we let go. Right from every single position, there’s some good guys that are going to continue to play. So, it’s difficult for me. Once we get down to the 53 … I can promise you this much, one of the nice things, the bittersweet part, is my depth chart goes from 90 players down to 53. All of a sudden, you’re shrinking down and the sideline starts looking like a ghost town a little bit. There’s not as many people you’re dealing with. One of the challenges for special teams coaches in the preseason is the substitutions. How many times do you watch a preseason game and there’s a guy running out there late – not just in our game but in any game – there’s a guy running out and you have 10 or you have 12 (guys on the field). You see it all the time because the depth chart is a little bit of a nightmare for a special teams coach in the preseason. It’s a huge challenge. So that part of it is the good part. We’ve narrowed it down to 53 of the guys that we feel are the right 53. Obviously a couple guys weren’t here. It’s a little bit hectic for me. It’s a lot of work on the excel spreadsheet on the old depth charts. (laughter) We’re sad to see those guys go because a lot of those guys put a lot hard work in and so that part is the tough part.”
(With LB Mike Hull down, TE MarQueis Gray down, do you feel like you have enough bodies for that core unit on special teams?) – “I think that’s a good question. I think the additions of (Brandon) Bolden and (Tanner) McEvoy certainly help. Listen, Mike Hull and MarQueis Gray have played a lot of quality snaps – not only a lot of snaps, but a lot of quality snaps in the last couple years. So, is it a challenge? No doubt. Do guys have to step up? No doubt. There’s no question that I feel confident in the guys that we’re going out there with. We’ve lost some players to free agency, we’ve lost some players to injury. That’s just the way it goes. As a special teams coach, every year, that’s something that you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with getting young players ready, you’re dealing with players that you no longer have and you’re kind of managing the roster the best you can. Right now, I feel like we still have some good returning players – Walt Aikens, Senorise Perry, to name couple of guys – that have really played well for us in the past. Chase Allen really played well last year and his arrow the entire year was going up. Now with the addition of Bolden and McEvoy, I think we have a pretty good group.”
(Were you guys at all tempted by K Dan Bailey or any veteran kicker that became available Saturday, or did you all go into Saturday night thinking K Jason Sanders is our kicker regardless of any name that becomes available on Saturday?) – “I think the first thing is one of my jobs as special teams coach is you kind of get a pulse on the rest of the league and where teams are at with kickers – really all of the specialists – across the league. We’re always monitoring that situation, there’s no doubt about that. That’s year-round. You always know the cut-down day, there’s always a couple of names you maybe weren’t certain would come available that come available. So, yes, we definitely had kind of a pulse on that. I was definitely looking at that. However, I really felt as camp went on, Jason and Greg (Joseph) both got a lot better and really improved. There was a point in camp where I felt like we have our kicker here in Miami. I feel like our guys here on the roster … That thing went down to the wire. Both of those guys were good and really improved throughout. At the end of the day, the decision to go with Jason was really more of a consistency thing. Obviously, we chart everything and the analytics and all of that stuff right from when they get here. It just felt like Jason was a little bit more consistent and they both obviously have great ability. Greg’s already gotten tryouts I think with other teams since he’s left here. I think Cleveland worked him out the other day and maybe some other teams. It’s not a surprise because he’s a talented guy and that wasn’t an easy decision, but we’re really happy to have Jason as our kicker. I’m really excited moving forward and I think I’m really looking forward to getting him out there next Sunday. ”
(I know that WR Jakeem Grant is cleared to play. I’m sure you’re relieved about that. But what was the ‘what if’ strategy if he wasn’t cleared to play? Who would be your kickoff returner? I’m assuming WR Danny Amendola would be your punt returner.) – “That’s something we’ve talked about throughout camp. I talk about that stable. I always like to have that stable of guys, and in my opinion, you can never have enough. You can never have enough returners. I think we talked about this earlier in the preseason about getting as many guys ready to play as possible. The punt returner group right now is Jakeem, it’s Danny Amendola, it’s Albert Wilson, it’s Kenyan Drake. We have a couple of younger guys ready. Our kick return pool – obviously Grant, (Kalen) Ballage is a guy that can do it, Torry McTyer is a guy that’s done it, Albert Wilson, again Drake, if needed. We have more options than we’ve had in the past. You guys that have covered this team for a long time know that we haven’t had as many options in the past. Maybe if a guy went down, we have to get somebody that’s not here. I don’t feel like that’s the case anymore. I feel like we have more of a group of guys that are able to go out and do it, so I feel a lot better about that. Senorise Perry is a guy that returned kicks last year for us at times as well, when there was some injury stuff with Jakeem and stuff like that. There are guys on our roster that can do it, so I feel a lot better about that. We’re practicing that way, and we’re going in maybe two or three deep where in the past it wasn’t like that.”
(Obviously you might not know until it actually happens, but with K Jason Sanders being a rookie, how comfortable do you feel in a pressure situation, 48-yard field goal to win the game, that he’s ready for that moment?) – “The bottom line is until that situation happens, we’ll see what the result is. The bottom line is two things – one, I’m very confident in him. I’m very confident in the way he went through training camp. You saw what he did at the end of the Falcons game the other day. He kicked a long field goal with a lot of leg left on it. I’m very confident in his consistency and all of that. My confidence level in him, he wouldn’t be here if we weren’t confident in him. I can tell you that much. I’m not really talking out of school, everybody knows that. If we didn’t feel like he was the guy, we probably would have went with somebody else, a veteran or somebody else that we felt more comfortable with. The second thing is there’s going to be bumps in the road with rookie kickers, rookie specialists – snapper, punter, kicker, returner. We went through it with Jakeem (Grant) when he was a returner. Really, you can group those guys in the same pile. Are there going to be peaks and valleys with a rookie? Am I going to stand up here and say that he’s going to go perfect for the season? That would be a little bit unrealistic based on history. Do I think he’s going to be consistent enough for us to win on a consistent basis? I do, and so I am confident in him. I really like where he’s at from a mentality standpoint, too. It’s something I’ve talked about with him before. He’s never too high, never too low. He has a great temperament for a kicker, and there’s a lot to be said for that. That’s not a small thing that’s to be glanced by and overlooked. He has a really good mentality. If he misses one, makes one, he’s kind of got the same mentality. He’s kind of mature beyond his years and that part, I think, is going to help him here moving forward.”
(Any of the rookies, so you’re thinking S Minkah Fitzpatrick, LB Jerome Baker, TE Durham Smythe and CB Cornell Armstrong – have any of those guys jumped where you’re like ‘wow, they can really be a part of one of the four cover teams, can cover a kickoff, or made great progress since they arrived?) – “Maybe more than in the past, we brought in some rookies that had a little bit more special teams experience in college than maybe some groups in the past. A guy like Minkah played a lot at Alabama. He played a lot of special teams at Alabama. Baker played a lot of special teams at Ohio State. (Kalen) Ballage played a lot of special teams at Arizona State. That’s usually not the case, especially with the higher draft picks. So these guys had a little better foundation coming in than most. I know it makes them a little bit more advanced. They’ve all flashed at times in the preseason. Minkah didn’t play a ton of special teams in the preseason, but he had maybe the most experience of anybody and so I’m very comfortable in using him. Baker, obviously I know his linebacker coach and defensive coordinator at Ohio State – Greg Schiano. He’s a guy I worked for for six years, and so I certainly had some history there and kind of knew his makeup coming in. He hasn’t proved anybody wrong. He’s flashed and made some plays on both defense and coverage. Ballage is another guy, although he missed a couple of games. They’ve all flashed at times. Ballage played in this last preseason game and played a little bit of everything. We had him holding up punts; we had him playing gunner, kind of a jack-of-all-trades. We got him moving around and got him a lot of work. So, all of those guys … Cornell Armstrong probably made the biggest improvement of any player on the team in special teams area from day one until now. He’s made a really big jump and so I’m really happy with his progress. He really was a guy who was on the most-improved list, if you will, as we go through. So, all of those guys have flashed at some point. All of the rookies are going to play for us. Durham Smythe is a guy that came in right away and probably picked up things quicker than anybody in the rookie class, in terms of mentally. (He has) really good football IQ. We kind of knew that coming in. (He has) really good make up. He picked up things very quickly. Nothing was too big for him. All of those guys that I just mentioned have all, at one point or another, have proven that they can kind of hold their own so far.”
(With all of the changes on the special teams, how much more important does CB/S Walt Aikens become?) – “Well, Walt, I don’t know if he becomes any more important. He’s always important to me. I think you guys know how I feel about Walt. He’s been kind of a foundation guy for us, if you will. (He’s) a guy that we’re kind of building around here in the offseason. Obviously, he was a free agent and we decided to sign him back and we’re kind of building the core group around a guy like that. I think Walt has come a long way in terms of leadership and a leader by example and things like that. He’s really grown in that way, and so we’re looking for a lot more leadership out of him. When you start to lose guys, you can start naming the guys we’ve lost in free agency, injury, or whatever. You lose some leadership there. We were looking for some cohesiveness at least, and a guy like Walt brings that. He brings some energy, he brings leadership, he brings experience, and so you’re looking for guys to be looking to a guy when you’re on Sundays and things start flying around and he’s the guy kind of holding it together right now. So, I’ve been really happy with his progress, both as a player and a person and a leader. His maturity has really grown, his maturity has kind of taken off. I can’t really speak enough about him. He’s been great, and he’s been a guy that younger guys are going to lean on. I watched him go and mentor some guys in practice. I watched him grab guys in meetings, ‘Hey, sit here next to me.’ That’s great. That’s no small thing either. So, he’s been really good. He’s been a model for us and kind of a guy you’re looking for, a model of consistency this offseason. Hopefully that shows up on Sunday.”
