Ryan Fitzpatrick – November 6, 2019
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Wednesday, November 6, 2019
QB Ryan Fitzpatrick
(I think we’ve asked you this question in a few different ways, but I don’t know if you’ve been asked directly. Your plans for next season – do you want to be a starter or do you want to be in the league somewhere?) – “Way too early for that one. (laughter) I want to win this week.”
(I know you talked a little bit last week, but we got a chance to see you in the locker room with your boys. What was that moment like and sharing that with them?) – “It’s cool. It’s neat to be able to share that with them and for them to be of the age where they’re going to remember it. They’re going to remember some of these moments and they make friends with a lot of the guys in the locker room. It’s just neat for me to be able to share the experience with them. They were pretty excited after the game, that I was able to pull them down onto the field.”
(You had mentioned before that you felt like football had taught them life lessons that you couldn’t teach otherwise. Has football taught you any life lessons that you can share?) – “Yeah. I think a lot of it is teamwork, how to handle adversity, how to work through adversity, being able to to put a lot of hard work into something and actually see results and see it pay off. There’s a million different lessons. I think the one for me in my career though has been the adversity and fighting through it and never giving up on myself and always remaining confident and always working hard. Those are some of the lessons I think that will get passed on or at least that they’ll see and try to emulate in some way.”
(Your thoughts on when you heard the news about WR Preston Williams?) – “It was tough. That’s tough news to hear for anybody whether it’s somebody on our team or an opponent or somebody around the league. You never want to see a guy go down and get injured like that, but he’s such a talented player. He’s got such a bright future. For him, just doing as best he can to – after he does whatever rehab he does – just attacking every day and focusing on each day and getting better, and then he’ll be out there good as new in no time. I’m sure it doesn’t feel like that right now, but he’s going to be an amazing player in this league and he’s got an amazing career ahead of him. Just keep putting in the hard work and good things will continue to come for him.”
(It’ll obviously be more or presumably be more for WR Albert Wilson and WR Jakeem Grant. How much work have you done with them? I know you rotate all those guys through, but you didn’t have all of camp I suppose. What’s your comfort level working with both those guys going forward?) – “I think in general with me, I’ve thrown to a lot of different guys over the years. It’s fairly easy to get accustomed to different guys and I’ve worked with those guys, especially as the season’s gone on. It’s just a lot of communication, a lot of talking, making sure that they know what I expect out of them and having a two-way conversation and them telling me sometimes how they prefer things; but (it is) a lot of discussion in the huddle or after a play or in the film room and go from there. I feel good with everybody we’re putting out there.”
(We saw a bunch of dynamic plays from WR Albert Wilson and WR Jakeem Grant last year. We haven’t quite seen that yet. How do you get that out of them?) – “Just opportunities. I think the more opportunities they get, the more those flash plays that they can make. Just continue to try to get them opportunities and obviously with a guy that got a lot of balls in Preston (Williams) going down, there’ll be more balls to go around now.”
(What do you see when you look at the Colts defense?) – “They’re young. They fly around. They have fun. You can tell there’s a lot of youthful energy. They’re edge guys. They’re veteran guys that have played a lot and (been) very productive in the league, so it’ll be a nice challenge for us, especially going into Indy and playing there. Historically that’s just kind of a tough place to play. It gets real loud – not as loud as RCA (Dome) used to get – but it’s a loud place with fans that really know and love football. It’ll be a good challenge for us.”
(What do you think of TE Mike Gesicki?) – “(laughter) I think Mike continues to get better and I think that in terms of a guy that in the past maybe he hasn’t produced or he hasn’t lived up to whatever people thought he was supposed to be or is and he’s just put his head down and worked hard. Again, a good lesson of just continuing to work. He knows there’s a million things he can get better at, but the last few weeks have been nice to see that some of that hard work we’re putting in throughout the week is really paying off on Sundays and he’s done a nice job, become a really reliable target and he’s got a skillset in terms of his length and his speed and his size that is something you can’t really coach. Now, getting him coached up and running things a certain way and really gaining more confidence as a football player, he’s just going to continue to get better and better.”
(I know you guys haven’t been together long this week yet – Victory Monday and an off day yesterday – but are there things that you can tell from the victory with the team either tangible or intangible right now?) – “I just think – and I don’t know what it was a few weeks ago – but really the last three weeks of practice now going into this one, there’s been a shift in attitude of guys really working hard and being really focused. That’ll hopefully continue this week and it was good today out there. It’s a fun group to come to work with every day and that’s a lot of the reason why and I think we’ll just continue down that path and see what kind of results we’ll get out of that.”
(Is there anything that you could point to that caused that shift?) – “I don’t know. I don’t know if it was one particular thing, but it has been a noticeable difference of good energy.”
