Steve Marshall – September 2, 2020
Download PDF version
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Offensive Line Coach Steve Marshall
(G/T Jesse Davis told us yesterday that he’s primarily a right tackle for now. Have you decided and I don’t expect you to share with us who it is even if you have decided, but have you decided if G Solomon Kindley will be your right guard or if T Robert Hunt will be your right guard?) – “That process is ongoing. We’re pretty close to making that decision and we’ve got a long way to go to the Patriots, so there’s really no reason to make any decision right now; but we’ll go from there. Jesse – like you said – he’s been at right tackle, he’s been at left tackle, he’s been at left guard, he’s been at right guard; and he’s got a lot of versatility, and he’s had a really good camp. We’ll see where it all kind of shakes out here.”
(Where is G Michael Deiter in his development as a center?) – “Mike (Deiter) is a guy who came in here last year, played left guard. He has center in his background. He’s working basically every day. I’ve been very pleased with what he’s done at center, and he’s multi-position learning. He played center at the University of Wisconsin when he was a sophomore, so it wasn’t unfamiliar to him and it’s just like Ted (Karras) and all our other centers – Keaton Sutherland – that we ask those guys for a lot, and there’s a lot of things. Every day’s a new adventure for them; but again, Mike has competed extremely hard and I’ve been very happy with his development.”
(I know you mentioned G/T Jesse Davis, but it seems like overall in the unit there’s a lot of young guys on the o-line as a whole. Are you comfortable with maybe the lack of veterans, kind of having a young group as a whole?) – “We are young, that’s for sure. Jesse (Davis) is one of the old graybeards. I think he’s 28, 29 or whatever he is. Ereck (Flowers) has been in the league four years and he’s still 26. Ted Karras – 27. So there’s a sense of – yeah, there’s guys that – the only way this league is so different as we’ve talked before, this league is so different than college football as far as the speed of it and the mental aspect of the game, and some of that stuff only comes with playing and experience. The young guys that we do have, we’ve just got to get them in there and see where they are and put on top of it no preseason games, where they could get a little taste of what the speed of the game is. We’re going right into the first ballgame. It just happens to be the 12-4 football team that’s the Patriots. It’s a big task; but again, it’s been a great camp. We’ve had a lot of competition. There’s been a lot of good. We’ve had our hiccups, but I’ll tell you one thing – the guys have fought their tails off and are working hard and like I said, we’re anxious to get this season rolling.”
(I was hoping you could go a little bit more in detail about those three rookies that you have – the three draft picks – something quick on each one of them for me?) – “Rob Hunt – he’s the (University of Louisiana-Lafayette) Lafayette kid that came out and came in here and has done extremely well. We’ve asked a lot of him as we have ‘AJ’ (Austin Jackson) – Austin – and Solomon (Kindley). They’re multi-position learning. So that on top of just learning a new league, going against the d-line that we’ve got, has been a big challenge for them. Every day like I said before, every day with Rob Hunt and Solomon and ‘AJ’ has been a new adventure. They’ve got to learn and one of the things I think they’ve learned where they were the big dog at their college game, in practice it’s highly competitive every single snap. You’re going against (Shaq) Lawson. You’re going against (Emmanuel) Ogbah. You’re going against Christian Wilkins or any of those guys on the d-line. It is a battle every day; and that’s the thing that I think that young guys coming into this league – and ours are no exception – that hey, every game, every practice is a highly fierce, competitive practice. And that’s where they’re learning every day a little bit better as far as handling that kind of pressure or competitiveness – whatever you call it – and then obviously the chance that they’re being thrown in the mix or potentially thrown in the mix if they go. That’s kind of the whammy; but hey, they’re talented young guys and like I said, we’ll kind of see how it all comes out. They’ve learned a lot in a very, very, very short period of time and they’ve gotten better every day, and I can give you that right there.”
(I’d like to go to an offensive line coach convention one day. I think that’d be fun…) – “I don’t know – they’ve got them – I don’t know if you – Bob Wylie used to (do them). I haven’t been in a few years, but they have one in Cincinnati every May where eight or nine of the o-line coaches go and talk a little football and do a few other things there. It’s become so big. When I started college coaching, (former NFL coach) Jim McNally and some of the older guys – Hudson Houck – some of these (guys) used to have it. I have great memories of those type things. Yes, that would be very entertaining for if you wanted to learn kind of that world.”
(My question was – you’ve done this for a minute – so I’m curious how would you describe your own style? What’s your approach?) – “I’ve been asked that through the years. I don’t know if I have an approach. It’s hard to kind of – I’d love to say that I’m a teacher of it – and part of being a teacher is learning from an o-line spot, there’s a tremendous synergy – I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I’m going to use it anyway – that between, hey, you play with a lot of fire, you play with a lot of intensity, but you’ve also got to play with a sense of smartness, a sense of ‘under control.’ There’s a fine line there. I think that’s kind of – the line coaches that I’ve learned from through the years and I’ve taken away a lot of things from that, is where I see great coaches can get guys to learn things where their mind is clear enough, where they can play at the optimal speed. And I think you know what I’m talking about there and that’s really the fine line, and that is truly – as you’ve heard the word through the years – a process to get a young guy from one level to the next and a lot of it is just pure repetition. A lot of it is having the type of offensive system from a call standpoint where they can come up to the line of scrimmage and their minds are clear and they don’t have to think about a thousand things and they can go play ball. And that’s the fine line between getting them to be where they need to be to win in this league.”
(I don’t know how I can top the offensive line convention part of it…) – “That’s hard to top. (laughter) That would be hard to top. You guys would like that stuff. Now, it goes Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It’s a three-day deal, now. It’s not like a two-hour deal. (laughter)”
(I’ve got nothing on that, but what I would like to ask you – earlier on you had mentioned something to the effect of we’ve got some time before the Patriots game. Just to clarify – even if you’re not going to tell us what your five will be – what is your timetable for deciding that five and how confident are you that those five are going to be your guys for a while, not just one or two games?) – “You never know what the future holds. I think we’re really zeroing in on really not the five because you really can’t zero on the five. You guys, again, think about who the starters are, but we’re really zeroing in on the eight or nine that are going to be there because you’ve always got to take in the what-if factors. What if a guy gets hurt? What if one of our guys goes down? Who’s the backup? Who’s got to play two positions? So I’m more focused on that as we get ready to start into the season because again, those guys have to play multiple positions and you’ve got five starters, but you’ve also got – if we travel with seven – if we have seven up on game day or eight up on game day, okay, one guy goes down and who’s the position? Now if you lose two of them, then you get into do we need an extra tight end or what have you because it’s really more of – that’s kind of my job. I think as we go forward, we’ll have a pretty good plan on going into it who is going to get the ‘starters’ reps and who gets the backup reps. So it’s more from my standpoint because I’m right there every day, getting eight or nine guys ready depending on how many I get on game day. I think there’s a new rule now that you can take eight guys to the game. And so that’s my focus, is getting not only the starters but the other guys ready to go, too.”
