Adam Gase – October 5, 2018
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Friday, October 5, 2018
Head Coach Adam Gase
(What can you tell us about the game statuses for the key players who are hurt?) – “Well, right now we’re still going through our process. We still have time. We’re hoping we can get as many guys back as we possibly can. We’ll just kind of see how it plays out and see if some guys can travel, some guys can’t. I think the majority of the guys are going to be able to at least travel and give us more time.”
(We saw you speaking with WR DeVante Parker for a while. In general, I don’t know if that conversation was part of it, have you been trying to keep him up a little bit? This has obviously not been the start to the season that he wants.) – “Yeah, I just want to make sure he doesn’t get frustrated. This is a long season. You guys can see, we’re at that point where everybody is banged up. The team we’re playing right now, they had a lot of injuries last week. You’re trying to find bodies to make sure that you can fill out that active roster. I just don’t want him getting too low thinking, is this going to stop happening? I mean, this is football. That’s what happens. You’ve just got to keep taking care of your body, get as healthy as you can because you’re never going to be 100 percent and when you can go, be ready to go.”
(Has WR DeVante Parker been down? Has he struggled…?) – “It’s just sometimes you can tell when a guy is thinking about ‘why is this still bothering me?’ It’s just kind of knowing people.”
(How is DE Cameron Wake?) – “We’re making progress. We’ll kind of see how this ends up turning out.”
(DE Cameron Wake could possibly play despite not practicing?) – “Yeah. I mean that’s a guy that I never worry about. We’ve got things up in the air right now.”
(When you look at the low snap count this year, you had the same thing in 2016 but you made the playoffs. You had a low third-down conversion rate in 2016 but you made the playoffs. How did you do that in 2016? Was the defense contributing?) – “(Laughter). I don’t remember. I have no idea. All I know is we found a way to win games. I feel like right now we’re a better offense than what we were in 2016. We just need to do a better job of staying on the field, keeping our defense off. That would help us because I just feel like if we stay on the field, they’re going to get less snaps and it’s going to balance out a little better. And we’ve got too many playmakers and guys that can do a lot of good things with the ball to not be on the field longer than what we’ve been.”
(Can you get around that with big plays?) – “Yeah, you can. It’s just the percentages aren’t going to be very good.”
(How do you get the running game established? Speaking of playmakers, I know that RB Kenyan Drake is not having the season that he’s been accustomed to.) – “I mean we’re four games in. Let’s not everybody get all riled up about the first four games of the season. We’ve got a long ways to go. If we get our play count up, I think things will get a lot better as far as dividing the touches up and guys having more opportunities to make some plays. Really, the run game, it’s all about efficient runs. We’ve just got to do a good job of making sure we stay ahead of the sticks. We keep putting ourselves in bad situations with being third-and-7-plus. We need to live in third-and-5 or less. And we can do that by getting positive plays, whether it’s in the passing game or in the run game. When you do that, then everything balances out and you look at the numbers at the end of the game and you go, ‘Okay, well, we had 40 rushes and 30 pass attempts or 35 pass attempts.’ That’s what you want. We have the players to be able to do that. We have to find a way to sustain drives and convert on third down.”
(Have you and RB Kenyan Drake talked this week about … I’m sure he wants to be more involved than he has been. Have you had a conversation?) – “No.”
(When you’re dealing with as many injuries as you’re dealing with on the defensive line, does that force you to change or alter your approach? I know you’re going to have to probably play DE Jonathan Woodard and DE Cameron Malveaux) – “When you have the injuries that we have and we’re kind of up in the air on some things, you always just have to do what’s best for that game to win, especially when you’re kind of in that situation. The defensive staff knows that. I’ve never been one to stop them from trying anything. I’ve always told (Defensive Coordinator) Matt (Burke), ‘Be as creative as you want to be. You can do stuff nobody else tried. I’m not going to say no.’ I’m all about however we can stop a team and get them off the field. I don’t care how we do it. And then keep staying on the field on offense.”
(With the receivers, when you have WR DeVante Parker out of the mix, I know you’ve got packages for those other guys. Do you lean on those packages or do you incorporate them in the packages that you had for DeVante?) – “We mix it all up. It’s all over the place. These guys know how to do all of that stuff. You’re trying to divide up the game basically with those guys. It gets interesting sometimes because you’re trying to see how has the hot hand, but you’ve got to have plays to do that. You’ve got to stay on the field instead of going three-and-out. That’s really our main goal is let’s get our first first down and convert on the first third down and see if we can get something rolling.”
(How do you feel in general at the end of the week about the mental state of your whole team?) – “I thought those guys, once we hit Wednesday, they were good. They turned the page; they’ve moved on. They had great energy on Wednesday, got after it yesterday. I thought today was really good. There was a lot of juice out there. Guys went hard. That’s all you can ask. As a coach, you tell those guys just prepare as it’s a new week, it’s a new opponent. We can’t change anything that happened in the past. We put it behind us. Once Monday is over, we’re done.”
(How did DE Andre Branch respond to yesterday?) – “He was good. He’s been working hard. He saw, especially being able to watch this last game, he saw kind of what was going on and guys going down. He’s chomping at the bit to get back out there. He does not want to be left out of this. He wants to get out there as fast as he can.”
(Is Sunday possible for DE Andre Branch or is that too much?) – “We’ll see.”
(Where are you guys in the development of QB Luke Falk? Particularly with him missing practice today, that’s why he’s on my mind.) – “He’s getting checked out for something right now. He was doing well for us. He was really … mainly working with (Offensive Coordinator) Dowell (Loggains) after practice was really the biggest thing. The amount of reps that he’s acquired just from that alone, working on a lot of our schemes, working on some of the under-the-center stuff, because he hasn’t done a lot of that in his career. It’s been mainly (shot)gun; but he naturally does that really well. His footwork is really good for somebody that hasn’t really done it before. I like his anticipation. When I watch him throw, I really like how the ball comes out of his hand. He’s a very confident kid. He’s smart. He’s been a fun guy to be around. That room has been really good. That room has been really tight.”
(So you definitely see a future here for QB Luke Falk?) – “I’d love the opportunity to get him in the spring, especially, and then start from there. He’s going to have a head start because he’s got a year to really get that under his belt.”
(So, is IR a possibility for QB Luke Falk?) – “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
