Jerry Schuplinski – July 28, 2019
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Sunday, July 28, 2019
Assistant Quarterbacks Coach Jerry Schuplinski
(With Assistant Head Coach/Quarterbacks Jim Caldwell taking a leave of absence does this mean you are going to take over that role?) – “I think we’re all trying to do what we can right now to prepare the quarterbacks as best we can as a whole. I know ‘Coach Flo’ (Brian Flores) said that he’s basically going to divide up Jim’s responsibilities and, as a result of that, we’re all taking on a little bit more. If that’s me in the quarterback room with those guys doing that, doing more, or (Offensive Coordinator) Chad (O’Shea) or whoever, I think we’re ready for that and we’ve been working at it pretty hard so far.”
(I know this came about quickly with Assistant Head Coach/Quarterbacks Jim Caldwell. How do you mentally prepare for that to take on a little bit more?) – “I think the good thing about Jim, and working with Jim for four months together with him, is we built a great relationship together. He’s someone that I really respect on a personal level. Getting to work with him from a coaching standpoint has been really good. I think we were working together as a unit anyways, which has been really beneficial to us. As sad as we are not to have him here right now, I think we took it as business as usual minus one guy. I wish he was here, but that’s not the case.”
(What’s it like to have one guy with one year experience and a guy with 15 who’s probably smarter than everybody in the room?) – “That’s a good one. It is pretty challenging. I think it’s really good though. Ryan (Fitzpatrick) has been around a long time, obviously – I would say not just years but the experiences in different systems and stuff – so his breadth and wealth of knowledge is really good in our room. I think we all have a good relationship with one another. I know working with those guys, it’s far from, ‘I’m the only one talking for now.’ Sometimes that happens on occasion, but we have good dialogue amongst ourselves, amongst everybody, and there’s good questions going around the room with Josh (Rosen) and with Jake (Rudock) and with ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) and with everybody else. It’s been really fun and really interesting. It’s challenging because people are at different levels, but that’s just the way it always goes. Sometimes you’ve got to – I would say the goal is to work everyone up to the level of the highest we could go and not work downward. It’s constantly a challenge on maybe the younger guys a little bit, but that’s a good thing.”
(I was going to say it’s probably a challenge, because how do you evaluate a guy who’s of course going to look good because he’s seen it all?) – “We’re definitely evaluating on a daily basis, but I think we have also a long-range evaluation in mind. I think that’s really important.”
(Is part of the challenge not to lose QB Ryan Fitzpatrick to where you’re boring him with stuff he already knows?) – “I don’t think we’ve worried about that yet. He’s very engaging and he’s got a lot of good questions and so you really have to be prepared for all those guys, because they all ask really good questions. So far, I hope we’re not boring everybody, because it’s been really fun and then there has been so much material to cover that you don’t really have a lot of time for, ‘I’ve heard this.’ For all of us, we were just saying this the other day – for all of us, the four of us – we have never all been together before. Even though Ryan has a little experience in this system, none of us have ever been together before. So, we’re all still learning from each other and figuring things out.”
(Why through four days has QB Ryan Fitzpatrick gotten the vast majority of first-team quarterback snaps as opposed to evenly splitting them with QB Josh Rosen?) – “Actually, when you look at the whole thing, it’s pretty even in the midst of all the team reps and all that stuff because there are some other periods involved in there. When Josh came in, he came in and whatever it was, four weeks we had already started. The way it is with the rules, you only get a limited time to work. I think this training camp has been a good opportunity for him to learn and grow in our system from the ground up as opposed to catching everything on the fly. Ryan’s experience and knowledge in that area in terms of an operational standpoint may have been ahead a little bit at this stage when we first started training camp, but really the reps are pretty even.”
(Is that one reason though why we’ve seen QB Ryan Fitzpatrick open with the first team all four days?) – “Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, pretty much.”
(Is QB Josh Rosen way behind QB Ryan Fitzpatrick? Obviously, I know it’s four days of camp and there are weeks to go in this, but would you say Josh is way behind Ryan at this point in terms of knowledge of the offense, what needs to be done to run this offense?) – “I think we’re all still learning together. Nobody’s perfect on anything. There’s plenty of mistakes that are going around and plenty of good things that everybody is doing. In terms of who’s behind, who’s ahead, really, I’m sure ‘Flo’ (Brian Flores) has said something (like) this, we’re all just trying to compete and get better every day. I understand things have to be done and positions have to be made and decisions have to be made, but really we’re just trying to work harder every day and get better and everyone’s really in the same boat. Nobody’s perfect. There’s mistakes out there to go around; there’s good stuff. That’s really what it is.”
