Adam Gase – December 14, 2018
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Friday, December 14, 2018
Head Coach Adam Gase
(We saw CB Xavien Howard testing out the knee. What’s the prognosis or status for Sunday?) – “He’ll be doubtful. We’ll just dig a little wiggle room just in case. Like I said to him, it’s all going to be about how you feel tomorrow and then (we’ll) kind of progress from there.”
(So you feel comfortable with CB Xavien Howard playing despite not practicing the past two weeks?) – “I’m not worried about that. It’s all about how he feels athletically. Can he move the way he needs to move?”
(How would you assess CB Torry McTyer’s performance?) – “I think he’s getting better. He’s not the biggest guy, but he’s not afraid to stick his face in the mix. He tries to get hands on guys. He can run and he can stay with guys. It’s just that repetition of getting your head around, getting your hands on the ball, finish the play. He does it a lot of the times, it’s just we have to eliminate some of those plays that completions happen on him.”
(Did CB Xavien Howard say that he was feeling good? Was there any pain or anything?) – “It’s kind of the process of what that is. He’s always going to kind of feel a little bit of something early. We’ll keep working through everything and kind of see where it takes us.”
(How much do you trust a guy to tell you when it’s a medical situation and guys are being honest with you about it?) – “The majority of times when we had to make a decision like that and you’re talking to a guy, I haven’t found any times where we’ve been like ‘There’s no way that they can go’ and they think they can go kind of situation. Guys have shot us straight. I don’t remember when somebody hasn’t, I guess is the best way to put it.”
(Has there been anything that QB Ryan Tannehill has done especially well since his return whether it’s decision-making or pocket presence or anything along those lines?) – “I think off of some of the play-action stuff, he’s done a good job of kind of moving and finding the window he needs to find. The one throw he had to Kenny (Stills) last game down the field, that was pretty impressive. That was an adjustment and those guys, for whatever reason, I don’t know how that’s possible at 40 yards down the field for them to make eye contact and they were on the same page. He was in great position to throw it as far as his balance. He threw that thing pretty far.”
(Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke said yesterday that S Minkah Fitzpatrick came in Monday morning to watch film even though you gave the players the day off. How unusual is that for a rookie to do something like that?) – “I think there’s certain guys that that’s the way they are. I think there was a lot of guys that showed up and did something. A lot of guys had been around long enough to know if you come in Monday, you can get a lot of the soreness out of your body. Some guys want to stick to their routine of that Monday, Tuesday off. Some guys that are really young, their bodies don’t feel the same as some of the older guys, so they take advantage of having a couple days off. They’re sore on Wednesday, though.”
(I want to ask you about WR Kenny Stills. Is it easy to move a player around or does it complicate things? I know he’s more advanced than most guys, but does it complicate things for the other players?) – “It’s easy when that’s the plan. It’s harder when, like the Indy game, we lose Danny (Amendola) and now we have to move him inside and now we’re going ‘All the stuff we worked on during the week, we have to kind of figure out how we’re going to do that.’ If we had something outside that was special for him, who do we slide inside if that’s the second option for the quarterback? That’s where it gets difficult. If we go into the game and we have it kind of planned out and the plays kind of accordingly work out that way, then it’s easier. If it’s an in-game adjustment, that’s when it gets tough.”
(I wanted to ask you about S Minkah Fitzpatrick. What can he learn from that Patriots game?) – “Every game that he plays, especially at corner, he’s learning so much so fast because it’s like … Especially when ‘X’ (Xavien Howard) is out there, they’re going to go opposite a majority of the time. They’ll test ‘X’ a couple of times and then you see what happens, he gets a couple of picks. Minkah is getting a full gamut of routes. He just needs to keep progressing, which I think he’s doing. I think he’s been going against some really tough receivers. It’s going to be those little details. He needs to understand the rules in the NFL. Sometimes you’re going to get called for the slightest thing, where you might have gotten away with it in college.”
(You guys drafted S Minkah Fitzpatrick because you thought he was versatile. Have you been surprised with how well he can hang at outside corner?) – “I don’t know if surprised … I’m surprised that he’s had to move as much as we’ve had to move (him). It hasn’t been by design. It’s been by … We don’t have another choice. It’s been unbelievable how he’s handled it. He just goes, goes to work and figures it out.”
(I’ve always been taught if a guy has the hips and the feet and the speed to play cornerback, they’re a cornerback. If they don’t, they get moved to safety. S Minkah Fitzpatrick already proven that he can play cornerback, is that more of a natural position for him?) – “He does such a good job. One, as a safety, his communication skills are really good. He’s smart. He helps a lot. He makes other guys better when he’s playing safety, which can let some of our other guys just roll. When he’s out at corner, it’s probably him and another guy that would have to communicate. He does give us a lot of range back there, too, to give us a chance for turnovers. T.J. (McDonald) and Reshad (Jones) are so close … Their skill sets are similar. Those two guys, they want to get in the action, they want to be down in the box. They’re both good at what they do. It’s just there’s two of them, so we’re trying to rotate who’s down, who’s back and all of those things. And then Minkah’s athletic ability, especially when we slid him inside, caused problems for some of these smaller slots because he’s so big. He can move with those guys, get his hands on them and they can’t go anywhere. That’s where the versatility is great to have. I think corner is just so tough. He might not get a ball thrown his way, whereas at safety, he’s involved in so much and that’s the value of that.”
(When you’re trying to get sack from your edge rushers, how much can you scheme something, or is it pretty much you’ve just got to beat the man in front of you?) – “No, there’s some things that defensive line coaches do that can free some guys up to where you get a tackle running up the field, he picks the offensive tackle and then you duck underneath. They’ve got a whole gamut of things they can do off of that, where it just confuses the guard and the tackle and makes it tough on those guys. There’s a ton of stuff these guys do, especially now. It just keeps getting more and more to where they find ways to free up some of these ends.”
(The edge sacks, are they mostly beating a man?) – “If they come straight off the edge, it’s just one-on-one. On that play, the best guy wins.”
(It seems like now you have four guys that can give you some juice or something different in the run game. When you decide plays, are there plays for certain guys? How do you kind of determine when this is a RB Brandon Bolden situation or this is a RB Kalen Ballage situation? Particularly for those guys because RB Kenyan Drake and RB Frank Gore have bigger workloads.) – “Outside of the speed sweep stuff, all of those guys can do it. That’s not something we’d really want to do with Frank. But, really, if one guy went in, I can just call … I don’t have to worry about who’s in because they all can do everything else in the run game. We try to put certain packages in for – alright, Brandon and Drake, or Ballage and Frank – or whatever we’ve got that week. We just keep trying to mix those guys in. Those guys are all good players. They should play. It’s just trying to figure out, alright, who comes out, who goes in, receivers, the tight ends. You just keep trying to mix it. It makes it tough on the defense. They’ve got to start paying attention to who’s going into the game.”
(On RB Brandon Bolden’s big touchdown, you had both of those guys in the backfield. What do you like about that, the two-back setup?) – “It’s a lot of speed. It’s a lot of speed. Brandon is a tough runner. That’s a big dude coming downhill real fast, and he’s a good running back. When he came out of college, he was a good running back, and he played a lot for them early. He became such a good special teams player and then they got deep at running back.”
