Darren Rizzi – October 4, 2018
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Thursday, October 4, 2018
Associate Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi
(Is there any difference in the way Head Coach Adam Gase or any other assistants who spoke handled the aftermath of this game compared to the Baltimore loss last year and the Carolina loss, or is it basically the same approach? I don’t know if there is any difference that you’ve noticed?) – “I think the one thing that Adam has done a really good job of since he’s been here is kind of not treating anything differently. We come in and we have our routine that we do weekly. We come in on Monday and we evaluate the game, we watch the game. I think one of the things we’re doing this year that’s really good is we’re spending a lot of time on Mondays making the corrections. Not that we didn’t do that in the past, but we’re spending a lot of time on the game film. We have ample time – special teams-wise, offense, defense – to watch the game. I think the one thing that Adam does a great job of is treating each game like an individual event and making the onus on the one game. Win, lose or draw, we move on to the next week. We go in Monday and we evaluate what we’ve done, Tuesday the players are off, Wednesday they’re back and it’s on to the next event. So, (there’s) not really a big change there. Obviously, there’s a lot of things you want to clean up from last game, so that was addressed on Monday. Then when the players are back here on Wednesday, it’s right on to the next game and again, treating it like an individual event. So, I think that’s really one of the things I’ve been impressed with the most, with Adam that is, in terms of just taking the week by week approach, not getting too far down the road, not looking back and not looking too far ahead. We’ve kind of treated it the same way all the way through.”
(What did CB/S Walt Aikens not do correctly on that personal foul, because it looked like he tried to come in?) – “I can’t criticize the officials so I won’t do that, but I do not necessarily agree with the call. I’ll just leave it at that. I don’t think he did anything that was abnormal. My reaction on the sideline probably also backed up the fact that I didn’t agree with the call. I could tell you what the rule is. When the gunner goes out of bounds, he can’t go out of bounds on his own. If he goes out of bounds without being touched, it’s a penalty. If he gets forced out of bounds by the jammers, his angle on his re-entry to the field has to be a straight line back onto the field. At no point can he straighten out on the sideline. He has to take an angle which brings him back onto the field. That angle could be five yards, that angle could be 15 yards, that angle could be 30 yards, but that angle has to bring him back on the field. At any point, if he takes a step to straighten out and that step does not bring him back on the field, that’s an unsportsmanlike conduct. It’s a 15-yard penalty. The Patriots had been called earlier in the game for what they call the ‘four feet in the paint’ rule, which is when the jammer takes the gunner out of bounds, at that point they’re both out of bounds. The jammer cannot make contact with the gunner. Four feet in the paint is that big white stripe. The official that’s officiating that play is looking down the sideline, and if he sees the jammer make contact with the gunner and they both have both of their feet in the paint, that’s a penalty. If the jammer is on the playing field in the green, and the gunner is in the white, they can make contact. So, their guy had been called for four feet in the paint, and later on, as you know, we got called for an illegal re-entry. I wasn’t really pleased with the call but regardless, that’s what he got called for.”
(Is it strategy for jammers to take them out of the paint?) – “If you have two gunners, some guys might both release outside, some guys might both release inside and some guys might both release in the direction of the punt. So, everybody is different, meaning every team is different or every rep could be different. We have a technique for when the gunner releases outside – an outside release is what we call it when you start going outside – and we have a technique that we use with the jammers when that guy goes out of bounds. We have this whole technique that we use at that point, whether it’s one guy on him or two guys on him. There are two different kind of ways that we play it. Most teams do, because you have to be very careful with the rules there. You have to make sure the jammer, once you get near the sideline, they have to make sure they stay on the field. If they end up out of bounds, they have to get themselves back in because obviously they can’t make contact like I said before. There’s a lot of technique. We spend a whole lot of time doing that. You see it a lot more with two jammers on one gunner than one-on-one. Usually, the one-on-ones don’t end up out of bounds. Sometimes they do. If the gunner lines up really close to the sideline, you’ll see them maybe end up out of bounds. But a lot of times, when a gunner goes and lines up, if I have two players, if I have two jammers, a lot of times they’ll widen their alignment. They’ll adjust at the line, they’ll tighten it or widen it to give themselves more room either way, so it’s a little bit of a cat and mouse (game) there, for sure.”
(You mentioned your reaction. Have you ever gotten a warning?) – “I don’t know what you’re talking about. (laughter)”
(Never once?) – “I have no idea what you are talking about. (laughter)”
(Through the first quarter of the season, how have any of the rule changes played out compared to your expectations?) – “Starting the season, I really thought that after looking at the play a lot through the preseason, I really felt like it was going to be a much more wide open play. I think that’s been the case. You’re not seeing those big collisions happening in the back end of the play down by the returners, the off returners we call them. Down in the red zone area, from the 20, you’re not seeing those big plays anymore. You’re seeing a much more wide-open play. Every team handles it differently strategically. Some teams have a little bit more of a tendency maybe to stay in if the ball is in the end zone. You can kind of tell where the returner lines up a lot of times. Some teams are going to do it situationally. That’s more of what we do, more of a situational approach to the return game. I know the numbers are up a little bit when there have been returns. The kickoff numbers are up a little bit because the play is more wide open. It’s not as condensed, it’s a little bit more of a full-field play. I think it’s going pretty good. I don’t know the exact numbers, I can’t give you the exact numbers on the injury prevention stuff, which is obviously why the rules are put in place, for player safety number one. But I do think we’re heading in the right direction. I think as the season unfolds and gets down the road, as we know, obviously a lot of the teams play in colder weather, there’s going to be more returns and I really think you’re going to see more big plays. Usually, what happens in the first quarter of the season, the touchback number is high, then as the season goes on that number comes down because you’re not getting as many touchbacks in the colder weather games. The ball is not kicked as far, so it’s harder to kick the touchbacks in that type of weather. I think it’s going to be a really interesting number to keep your eye on the rest of the season, how that touchback number plays out. I think towards the end of the season, in the colder weather part of the season, I think the kickoff return game is going to be even more interesting.”
(Was the wind blowing differently in New England? If seemed like there was a little bit more of a line drive punts?) “Yes. It wasn’t a really good punting day for either side certainly. What was happening, there was a little bit of a cross wind and we got messed up with our drops a little bit and I know they did too. The punt numbers weren’t great on the day. The couple of bad punts we had were more related to our drops. Our drops, a lot of times when you’re on your going in punts and you’re on what people call flip flop or Aussie punts, you drop the ball nose down and the ball was getting pushed down by the wind a little bit and it was messing with our drops a little bit. It’s not a flat drop, our regular punts were actually better than our what we call flip flop punts or going in punts, plus-50 punts. Everybody has got a different name for it. Our regular punts were actually pretty good, our flat drops were good. It was messing with our nose down drops a little bit, our nose was coming out and that’s why Matt (Haack) had a couple of shanks. That’s something that’s easily fixable, but it wasn’t a good punting day for either side. The cross wind, the wind that goes across the field messes with punters a little more than a straight down your field (wind) either at your back or in your face. You don’t have as much problems with the drops. It’s the crosswinds that kind of mess with their drop a little bit. It wasn’t a very good punting day for us and it wasn’t for them either.”
(Is this something that you know before the game? I know the last two games he punted really well especially inside the 20.) – “Yes. We worked on it. To be honest, he had a pretty good pregame. That’s a really good question. Going into it, the wind did pick up a little bit to be honest with you. Up in that stadium that wind comes out of that open end and comes in and goes back into that corner. When you’re looking at that open end, it kind of drives through that open end where that bridge is and goes into that corner. That’s where that crosswind was coming and as the game went on, the wind picked up a little bit and it was kind of going in the face a little bit – the cross(wind). It was something we noticed pregame. It really wasn’t a big deal pregame, but as the game went on it became more of a factor. It was an interesting note for that game.”
(Do you have tabs on all the stadiums like that?) – “Yes. For the most part going in, you kind of have an idea. I’ve been fortunate enough to be around here long enough to be in all the stadiums we’re playing in and certainly the open-air ones. There’s kind of a book on each stadium that doesn’t always play out exactly … It depends on the day. Sometimes you get a day, and that obviously was one of our better days in New England weather-wise, but there still was a little bit of a tricky wind. We kind of have a book going in and then the kickers and punters are going to play that out during the pregame. There’s sometimes on one end, the field goals could be a little bit trickier than the other in some stadiums. Pittsburgh, for example, at the one end of the stadium there’s a low percentage in the open end and then you go to the other end and it’s a drastic difference. When you’re going in, you play that and decide when you’re going to take the wind. The coin toss, deferring and which way you’re going to kick, having the ball third quarter, fourth quarter. All of those things come into play and that’s something me and Coach Gase talk about a lot pregame and where you want to end up at the end of the half or the end of the game. Those definitely factor in and New England is one of those stadiums.”
(What about Paul Brown stadium?) – “On this stadium? I can’t … Ask me on Monday. I’m not going to tip my hand on that one. (laughter)”
(Is there a stadium you would say is the best or more conducive to kick at?) – “Yes, the ones that are closed. (laughter) The ones that have no wind at all. We had an interesting one in Dallas about five or six years ago. It’s a closed stadium but they opened the sides up in the end zones and there was like a venting systems. There was nothing at pregame and all of a sudden there was like a 10 mile per hour wind going one way. All they did was open the end zone, there was like a window system that opens up, and all of a sudden the wind is coming in. You’re like, ‘wait a minute. The roof was close, what’s going on?’ We’ve had some interesting deals that way, but obviously it’s much easier to kick in the indoors. Every outdoor stadium, especially the ones up north, have a little bit of a trick to them. You have to figure them out and play them out. Our stadium, to be honest with you, is another one that before they put the roof on, there were a lot of kicker that didn’t enjoy coming down here, especially some of the road teams. We had a field goal percentage book on every stadium. Every stadium we keep a 10-year stat book on field goal percentages and things like that. Our stadium is actually one of the lowest one until … It’s made a little bit of a difference, the roof; but it’s still open air so there can be some trickiness in ours as well.”
