Adam Gase – October 4, 2018
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Wednesday, October 4, 2018
Head Coach Adam Gase
(Is there long-term concern for DE Cameron Wake or concern for Sunday as far as his health?) – “We’re taking it day to day right now. We just want to make sure that he’s right. You guys know him, how he takes care of his body. I know he gave us everything he had this last Sunday. It wasn’t easy for him. We’ll just kind of keep going day to day and go through the week, and kind of see where we end up.”
(Is it something DE Cameron Wake came into Sunday with?) – “He’s always one of those guys that he just doesn’t really … he’s not going to tell us much. You’ve kind of got to poke him a little bit to see how he’s feeling. We try to be smart with him in practice. He takes probably more reps than what we want, but that’s him. I think we finally, at least, getting him to kind of sit down here the last couple of days was good.”
(With DE Andre Branch, we saw him out there today. Did he have a breakthrough in the last few days or is this kind of on schedule?) – “I think he’s ahead of schedule, whatever that means. He’s been working hard. He wants to get back. He wants to help contribute to kind of what we’ve got going.”
(Did you get anything more from WR DeVante Parker today?) – “Sometimes he feels really good and sometimes it’s not as good as what he wants. When running is your entire profession and you’ve got any kind of soft tissue (injury), it’s not that easy to deal with. Every day, we’re just going to keep trying to get him a little bit better and see where we land on Sunday.”
(Has this first month with WR DeVante Parker been kind of frustrating, not knowing whether you’ll have him or not on Sundays?) – “I think any time that you start a week with a group, you have an idea what you’re going to do and who you have and kind of how you’re going to do the personnel groupings. When you lose a guy midweek or late in the week, that kind of can throw things off and you’re trying to regroup and reset everything. It’s tough because you feel like you wasted reps on plays that somebody else is going to run. Right now I’ve just got to kind of have that contingency plan of if he feels better and if he doesn’t, then go a different direction.”
(LB Chase Allen is an under-the-radar guy for us but we see him back out there. How would he help you from scrimmage and what units of special teams?) – “He’s one of those guys that does everything for us on special teams. On defense, it’s nice to have some depth like we do when he’s back. Right now we’ve been kind of thin. Those guys, the guys that have been playing a lot, they’ve done a good job of kind of working that rotation. But getting him back will be nice, both on special teams and defense.”
(Can you talk about the challenges that WR A.J. Green poses?) – “I don’t even know where to start. I mean, he’s a phenomenal player. He stretches the field. He gets on you fast. He’s long. He can high-point the ball. He can make some unbelievable catches. I always just think back, we had him in the Pro Bowl in his second year and Andrew Luck was like throwing a ball away and he went and got it and scored a touchdown. And he was like, ‘I was throwing it away.’ I mean, the guy has just got incredible ability to track the ball, go get it. He’s got another gear when the game hits.”
(How do you decide when a cornerback is ready or whether you should be shadowing with him? What goes into that decision process) – “I think it’s a little bit the confidence of the player. Some guys like to do that. Some guys don’t. Some guys want to stay where they’re at. When a guy does have the confidence, it’s probably your starting point there when you know you have an upper-tier guy. You know that guy is probably going to catch balls and it’s, can you keep battling him throughout a game? And really, that’s what you’re looking for when you have a guy that can do something like that. Can he bounce back when it doesn’t go his way?”
(RB Kenyan Drake is averaging 10 touches a game. Is that enough?) – “Yeah, I mean, with 45 plays or whatever we’re averaging, it’s not good. There are about six other guys, too, that are sitting with their … they’re not getting enough touches. We need more plays. When you go 70-75 plays, now things are going to look a little different. But when you go 50 … we went 47 this week and 44 the week before, that should be one game. If we get more snaps and we convert some third downs and stay ahead of the sticks, then everybody gets more touches.”
(Is it a Catch-22 if you give a guy more plays, you’ll get more plays?) – “I mean, these guys are playing like the way we want them to as far as the play count compared to what we’re getting. We’re just not getting enough plays. Like, his snaps should be anywhere from 35-40 snaps a game between him and Frank (Gore) splitting that stuff. But we’re getting like 20-23 plays a game because we’re not having enough snaps in the game.”
(Was having two tight ends restrictive at all in terms of what you wanted to do?) – “No. We’ve got plenty of wide outs that can fill in.”
(When a cornerback has to follow a receiver, how much challenge does it put on the other guys to make sure that they know their assignments if they have to flip sides?) – “That’s not something that’s difficult for those guys because they’ve got to do everything anyways. As far as coverage goes, ‘Hey, you’re cloud, you’re in quarters, you’re in man, you’re in thirds,’ whatever it is. That’s not the difficult part. The difficult part is those guys start really switching … When you do some of the things that we do with Albert (Wilson), then it gets interesting because now you start bouncing inside, outside. The guy’s in the backfield. You start doing stuff like that, that causes that guy problems.”
(How often has CB Xavien Howard come to you guys and asked to shadow somebody?) – “I don’t know the number count. I know it’s happened a couple times, though.”
(So CB Xavien Howard asked you…) – “Yeah, he talks to the defensive guys. It doesn’t take them long to say, ‘Hey, you’re good with doing this this week?’ And he’s always going to say yes. It’s been rare that he’s had to come to us for anything. You can just tell when he gets excited anytime that we play a team that has an elite receiver. He knows that everybody is going to be watching him and how he plays and what he does.”
(When did that first start?) – “I don’t even remember. Maybe it was against these guys.”
(Have the veterans you brought in had an impact this week on the locker room? I’m not saying the effort wasn’t good on Sunday but it was obviously a bad result for you. Was that what you were hoping you would get from them or maybe a little bit more?) – “I just look at kind of the way practice has been, the energy level. It’s tough. When you get kicked in the you-know-what, you’ve got to bounce back on Wednesday. The turnaround is quick. You’ve got to reset and you’ve got start over. The energy level Wednesday was outstanding. Guys were fired up to get back out there and kind of get going for this week because you’re on to the next opportunity and it allows you to eliminate what happened the week before. That’s the best part about this part of the season is you’ve got another week to play so you can forget that game, learn from what you need to learn, and move on. I felt like all the guys did a great job of coming out with great energy and practiced hard and really got after it yesterday.”
(Are RB Frank Gore and WR Danny Amendola vocal, or are they kind of lead-by-example guys?) – “A little bit of both. You’re never going to get Frank to really … If he has something to say, it’s going to be a little side conversation. He’s not going to be somebody that’s going to say anything really out there like it’s in a practice setting or anything like that. Danny, I mean, I don’t know … you never know what could happen.”
(You guys have nine interceptions through four games; you had nine all of last season. Do you just have more interceptions, or are the defensive backs better right now?) – “I think a point of emphasis has been turnover margin for us, which I’m sure it is for 31 other teams. I think our coaches have done a good job on the defensive side of the ball as far as really working on certain kind of drills to emphasize that, making sure … We just lost out on a lot of opportunities last season where we got hands on the ball or there was a fumble to where we didn’t get it. I feel like this year we’re doing a better job when a play like that occurs for us, minus T.J. (McDonald)’s, we’ve made a play.”
(You’ve been a guy who likes to promotes guys who are on the practice squad. When they have success in the game, like DE Jonathan Woodard somewhat did, does that sort of reinforce the belief?) – “It makes you feel like our process is working the right way for us. It hasn’t always worked like that at other places I’ve been as well. I’m sure there’s been times where you’ve brought somebody up and it didn’t work out well. When you have a guy in your program and the rest of the guys … and you’re able to bring somebody up and those guys feel comfortable playing with … Four guys are working together there. When they know they can count on this guy, that helps three other guys as well. Now there’s just a smoothness and they kind of play off each other. I do think having guys in our program that we can elevate, that’s beneficial to our entire side of the ball, whether it’s defense or offense or special teams.”
