Minkah Fitzpatrick – August 5, 2019
Monday, August 5, 2019
S Minkah Fitzpatrick
(Is it fun to be more at safety the last couple days? That’s one of the many things you’re good at. Was it enjoyable to be paired with S Bobby McCain a lot at safety?) – “I mean, that’s what I’ve been doing most of camp…“
(Some slot a lot though, too?) – “Yeah, I’ve been playing a good mix of the slot corner, the safety and everything else and all that; but it’s just different schemes, you’re seeing different looks and everything like that. Mostly I’ve been playing at the same position, so it hasn’t been too much different.”
(Was there anything different in practice today with this being a game week unlike the first couple of weeks of camp?) – “Today was hot. I’ll say that. Today was real hot. (laughter) But no; today, (Head) Coach (Brian Flores) challenged us just to play faster. He put us in shells, so he wanted to see us just move around and play fast, play quick, get in and out of the huddle, lining up fast and stuff like that. I think we did a pretty good job doing that. Execution could have been better, but I think it was a faster pace, faster energy, faster getting out of the huddle just to prepare us for Thursday.”
(Looking forward to seeing a different team out there as opposed to just those guys all the time?) – “Yeah, for sure. It’s your team. Going against your team, seeing the same guys every single day, it’s real repetitive and everything like that, so I think…”
(How much can you actually put into motion in these preseason games without giving away some of the state secrets that you want to accomplish during the season as far as multiple looks and just keeping the other team guessing?) – “I think you can keep it as basic as you want and get as complex as you want. It all depends on what Coach (Flores) wants; but I think if you’ve got your fundamentals and your basics, then you know you can run the more complex stuff. If you go out there, you run the easy calls, the fundamental calls, the coaches know, ‘all right, they can do this. We know that they’d be able to execute this in a real-game situation.’ You don’t want to give away everything and all that and on multiple looks, but you want to try and challenge us at the same time.”
(What aspect are you the most excited that maybe people don’t see coming from you guys?) – “As a team, I would just say just, honestly, just being hungry. I think a lot of people are counting us out. We had a lot of things going on and stuff like that. A lot of people are just saying whatever about us, and I think a lot of us are real hungry. A lot of us are winners on this team and just ready to show everybody that.”
(How comfortable are you with S Bobby McCain? I know Bobby says he’s really excited to play centerfield.) – “I’ve been playing with Bobby since last year. He’s a great player, a versatile player. He communicates really well. He’s easy to play with. I love guys like that that are just easy to play with. You know you’ve got some guys that – they don’t like to communicate. You’ve got to scream at them every single snap, but he’s not like that. You give him yes, no, maybe so, and we’re good to go. It’s like I said, he’s easy to play with. I love playing with him.”
(S Bobby McCain is kind of loud. He talks a lot, too.) – “He talks a lot? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In a sense of communicating, yeah he talks a lot. He’s a passionate player. I’ll say that about him. He’s a passionate player. He loves the game. He puts a lot of energy into the game, and he shows that.”
(LB Jerome Baker is also in his second season now. What can you say about the stride that he’s made since last year?) – “I think he’s made big strides. I think this defense has definitely helped him out schematically. It allows him just to play fast, play his type of football because he’s a fast linebacker. Downhill, east-west, whatever you need him to do, he’s going to do it. I think this defense allows him to do that.”
(With LB Jerome Baker, if you don’t have him, how do defensive guys get their play calls?) – “The next man comes in and they call it.”
(When you think about Head Coach Brian Flores and coming here and starting a new program and trying to build it up, what’s the most impressionable sign that something is different here?) – “I would say just the constant challenge that he’s putting on us. I think every single day, every single rep, he’s challenging us – whether it be just challenging us to run to the ball, challenging us to execute, challenging us in conditioning. He’s just constantly putting that challenge on us, and I think with that, we’re all going to grow as players, as men, and we’re just going to be able to win more games.”
(Can you give me an example of one of the challenges that and how it looks?) – “I would say just not accepting little mistakes. Like I think in past seasons, people would just let things slide that he won’t let slide – whether it be just, instead of taking, ‘the pass goes over my head. Throw it to another receiver.’ Instead of just taking a little burst one step out, he wants me to run and get to the ball. Tag off on the ball. That’s what he wants you to do. It’s going to help you in the game. If somebody tips the ball up, you’re running, practice habits and everything else like that, you’re going to get to the ball. It’s little stuff like that. Making sure we’re doing the little things right and making sure our habits that you relay over from practice to the game are right.”
(From a DBs perspective, what have you seen from QB Josh Rosen? What’s it like to play against him?) – “He’s a good quarterback. He gets the ball down the field really well. I’ve just seen today and other days, he fits the ball in windows real nice. He has a good eye. He takes chances, which is a good thing as a quarterback. You can’t play too safe, but obviously you don’t want to do too much. He’s a good quarterback, and he’s going to keep growing in this system and keep making plays.”
(Your coach – the defense he ran in New England really revolved around the secondary. That was really the strength of the team and really the safeties, they kind of all revolved around the safeties. How exciting is that for you now to kind of be in the similar situation?) – “It’s exciting. It’s really exciting. The scheme I ran at Alabama was kind of set up that way. It was based around the DBs. The DBs would move around, do different things, and obviously, we had a great d-line in front of us to support us and help us. I got excited when I heard about we’re installing and what we’re doing. I like just moving and making plays. It’s a challenge, though, at the same time, but it’s definitely going to benefit us.”
(Are you watching film of New England Patriots S Patrick Chung?) – “I’m watching them all. Patrick Chung, the (New England Patriots DBs Devin and Jason) McCourty brothers, (New England Patriots DB Jonathan) Jones – all of them. Just watching all of them. That’s who we watch. We watch a lot of New England.”
(Is that how you’re going to learn the defense by watching Patriots film?) – “Some of the stuff, yeah, and then obviously we have to put our own little wrinkles on stuff. They show us a lot of Patriots stuff in film.”
(Are you Patrick Chung, and is S Bobby McCain like Devin McCourty? Like are you doing the one-for-one comparisons?) – “No, not really. I think we have a little bit of different type of personnel than the Patriots – just body-type-wise and skillset-wise – I think it’s a little bit different.”
(Also, everyone here talks about Head Coach Brian Flores’ punctuality. Apparently with the media, if you show up five minutes early, you still might be late. Is punctuality a big thing with him?) – “Yeah, he has a saying. ‘Early is on time. On-time is late, and late is forgotten.’ He has that up on one of the walls – as soon as you walk in where the players walk in. He has that saying on the wall. He’s just real big on punctuality because that carries over onto the field. If you’re late to the meetings, you’re going to be missing something in the meetings, and then you’re going to be missing something on the field. It’s going to lay over and snowball effect and all this other stuff. I think the punctuality is something that he’s definitely enforcing.”
(Have you experienced where you thought you were early and you come in and the meeting’s already going on or anything?) – “Nah, I’m always early. (laughter)”
