Ryan Fitzpatrick – November 13, 2019
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Wednesday, November 13, 2019
QB Ryan Fitzpatrick
(How much better is this team now than when you played the Bills before?) – “I don’t know. We’ve won a few games so I guess there’s a little bit different feeling in the building, but we’re still going to play our very best game to compete with these guys. It’s a good football team and their defense has been great all year long and really the last few years. They’re really good in the scheme that they run. They’ve got really players and they’re tough to move the ball against, so we have our work cut out for us.”
(Is there any extra advantage in that you’ve already seen this defense this year and that it’s take two?) – “And they’ve already see us too, right? (laughter) It’s a little bit – it goes both ways there. It is helpful sometimes when you’ve gone against or historically gone against people, but in this case we’ve both gone against each other the same amount. I don’t know that it’ll be any better or worse for us or for them.”
(How important in your skillset is pocket presence? Is that something that can be taught or is that something you just have to have?) – “It’s a tough – probably a little bit of both. I think you have to have some awareness – just innate in you – ability there, but there’s also some of it that can be learned in that the time clock in the back of your head, having a feel for rush patterns or knowing if there’s a guy free or knowing techniques of guys rushing around the edge or inside moves and things like that; there’s a certain feel – a head start you can give yourself with some of that stuff going into a game. For me it’s just always, it’s come naturally to me a little bit and I’m not the fastest or most athletic guy in the world but I kind of try to pride myself on being a guy that has decent awareness back there. It’s a hard thing to acquire, but over the years I think you get better and better at it as you do it.”
(Very broad question for you – where has this team made its most significant strides this season?) – “I think confidence is probably somewhere – if you would have walked around the locker room after Week 2 and walked around the locker room today and compared notes – I think confidence is a big one for us and I think that goes with a lot of different things, but obviously getting a few victories gives us a little more confidence. I think guys buying in and seeing some results transfer over from the practice field to the game, even though we weren’t winning some of those games, you could just see it building in guys and guys really buying in. I would say that’s probably the biggest thing.”
(What do you hope other players on this team take away from the experience of playing alongside you?) – “I think part of it for me, every stop that I make is – even though it’s the NFL, you’re still allowed to have fun (and) still allowed to enjoy your job. There’s a lot of hard work that we put into it. Physically and mentally, it’s a grind all season long; but at the same time Sunday is the reward and you’re allowed to go out there and play free and have fun. Trying to do your best but not worrying about consequences, just going out there and playing loose, and hopefully that rubs off on guys a little bit.”
(I’m doing something on quarterbacks who were drafted in the first round, and I know you’ve been around a lot of guys. When you see a guy who was drafted No. 1 and a guy who was drafted say in the top 10 – is the pressure, can you tell that there’s more pressure on the No. 1 pick or is it just all the same if you’re a top-drafted quarterback?) – “Some of that is hard for me because I obviously wasn’t that, but just in seeing it over the years I think there’s – if you’re No. 1, I think you have added pressure, more pressure than anybody; but really a top 10 pick where you’re all of a sudden the face of a franchise from Day 1 and being on a team that had a top five or top 10 pick, maybe not necessarily going to the best team in terms of throwing a guy out there. I think that’s why sometimes you see guys that are drafted a little bit later, they get into a system where there’s a good infrastructure, a good running game, there’s a good defense; and they can kind of have time to learn a little bit and not necessarily rely solely on the quarterback to win games right away. I think Russell Wilson is a great example of a guy that went to a situation, has been a really good quarterback but certainly developed into an elite top-five type quarterback; but that just didn’t happen on Day 1. He was given some time to develop and has always been talented, but that’s an example I think you point to of a guy that went somewhere with great infrastructure and has really done a nice job in his career to continue to get better every year.”
(And where does the pressure manifest itself in highly-drafted quarterbacks? Is it off the field? Is it on the field? Is it just everything surrounding them – the media attention…?) – “There’s a lot of different things, but I also think as a young guy walking into a locker room with grown men, it’s a little bit different than college in that all of a sudden you look around and there might be a guy five years older, 10 years older than you. You might be playing with a Hall of Fame receiver or left tackle or whatever it is; and all of a sudden your job is to keep these guys happy and that’s a tough job sometimes – one that maybe you haven’t had to do before. I think the other thing is no matter what, in the NFL you’re going to face adversity. You’re going to struggle. You’re going to make mistakes. Everything is not going to be perfect, and sometimes a No. 1 pick is a guy that in high school probably went undefeated and then in college was very similar; then you get to the NFL and there’s a struggle and you’re not sure what that guy is made of in terms of something he’s never faced before. That’s why I always like and enjoy kind of the stories of the struggle – the guys that haven’t necessarily always had it perfect. You get a glimpse and a snapshot of how they responded to those situations, and I think that’s really important for a quarterback and sometimes hard to see (when) evaluating guys.”
(I know you’re busy doing your job week-to-week and focused on that, but from a mentoring standpoint a little bit, where do you see QB Josh Rosen? Has he been as involved? Has he been as immersed in – he’s a play away – the assignment as he always was?) – “Yeah, he’s always here before 6 o’clock and he’s always here late when we’re watching film and whatever else. Josh is putting in the time and I think right now, too, he’s doing a lot of listening and a lot of observing and I think that’s really important at this point; but part of it is just immersing himself in it and being around early morning, late at night, and he’s doing a nice job of being in here and really showing that he wants to be in here. He wants to learn. He wants to do all the right things. The longer you do that and really dive into it, the better you’re going to get. There’s been some really positive things that I’ve seen out of Josh because it’s obviously hard when you go from playing to not playing in terms of keeping yourself not necessarily motivated, but ‘up’ and still having confidence and all that and he’s done a nice job.”
(The NFL is setting up a tryout for QB Colin Kaepernick for Saturday open to all the teams. What do you think the challenges are for any quarterback who hasn’t played for three years? Obviously playing quarterback period is a challenge in the league, but for someone who has been away for that long, what do you suppose the challenges would be?) – “I don’t even really want to touch that one. Sorry.”
