Darren Rizzi – January 28, 2016
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Thursday, January 28, 2016
Assistant Head Coach and Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi
(Opening Statement) – “I just want to say I’m obviously thrilled to be back for my eighth season with the Dolphins. It’s a pleasure to work for this organization and it’s really an honor to be back and to be asked to be back by Coach (Adam) Gase. Again, (I’m) just thrilled to be back. I’m always excited to work with these players here in Miami. It’s been a thrill to be here for as long as I’ve been here and I’m as excited to be here right now as I have ever been. With that said, you guys can fire away.”
(On if there was any serious consideration to moving on) – “I was under contract for another year. In this profession, when you get to that time of year at the end of the season, you get into a situation where, when the head coach gets fired after the fourth game, you never really know as an assistant coach what the end of the season is going to bring for you. You’re always keeping your options open and you’re always looking but again, I was under contract and all of that stuff has been resolved now and (I’m) just glad to be back, very happy to be back.”
(On if something will change on the way the coaching staff will operate with the players) – “It is early. It’s very early in the process right now. Obviously, I can just speak from Adam (Gase)’s standpoint but obviously a fresh face in front of the room, with fresh ideas and a new way to do things is certainly going to change. We’ve obviously changed the coaching staff dramatically. I know there has been some talk about a lot of people coming back but from where I sit, there are 17 coaches that were here last year that aren’t going to be back. There’s going to be a lot of new faces in front of the players, a lot of new coaches in front of the players, different ways to do things. So from that standpoint, when the players come back here in April and they see that, naturally there is going to be change. There’s a new offensive play-caller, a new defensive play-caller, a lot of new position coaches so there’s going to be a lot of change that way. So the players are going to see that from the start, for sure.”
(On having so many assistants returning to the staff) – “I think it’s a little bit misleading, to be honest with you. Obviously, one of the three coordinators, myself, stayed. And I think two position coaches stayed on – Terrell Williams and Lou Anarumo. I think the rest of the guys that stayed on, two of the coaches that were here last year were moved off the field into off-the-field roles. I think one of our strength coaches stayed on and then three guys that are really more of quality control type coaches. they do a phenomenal job in their area and really deserve to say. I think the mix that Adam (Gase) has put together is quality. I got a chance, obviously, to meet all of the new guys that have come in. I know all of the guys that were retained and I think they all deserved to be retained in certain ways, so I think it’s a good mix. I think that maybe the general public doesn’t realize how many people are actually involved and the way I look at it, again, I look at it like 17 guys aren’t here from last year. More than the nine guys that stayed. But the nine guys that are here, I think, deservedly so. They’ve all done a great job. I think any turnaround like this, you have a fresh start, I think there will always be guys in the building that can really lend a hand to the new head coach and really help him. So I always think it’s a good blend. I think it’s a good mix to have some guys that were previously here and again, obviously bringing in a bunch of new, fresh faces. So from where I’m sitting, I think Adam’s done a great job of putting the staff together.”
(On what being an assistant head coach entails and whether he will be involved in game management) – “It’s a really fluid situation. I think obviously we are going to get to all of that. Adam (Gase) knows my skill-set as a coach. Obviously, I’m going to coach the special teams, we all know that. I think the assistant head coach title is more of a thing on a daily basis, being able to help out within the building on a day-to-day basis. Obviously right now, we are dealing more with the personnel and free agency and the draft and those types of things. We really haven’t explored the game day thing to the n-th degree. We’ve talked about it on the surface. I’m sure that, again, Adam knows what I have done here in the past and will lean on me for certain things but as far as specifics go, we really haven’t gotten to that quite yet.”
(On his thoughts on the roster and how he foresees the young guys playing a major role in the 2016 season) – “I’ll speak from a special teams point of view. I think we certainly didn’t have a perfect season but we were productive in a lot of ways. I know special teams wise, we were in the top 10 in five categories, so that was obviously a good thing. There were some other categories that we have to get a lot better in. Again, I deal with obviously the whole team, with the exception of maybe the quarterbacks, so I get a pretty good view of it like you said. From where I sit, to be honest with you, I think we got a lot of production out of the reserves. Obviously the guys I’m dealing with on a daily basis are a lot of the guys that are not starters. A guy like S Ced Thompson, you bring up that he didn’t get on the field. But you look at the guys in front of him, guys like S Mike Thomas (and) S Walt Aikens. Those guys had tremendous seasons as special teams players. So it is hard for a guy, like S Ced Thompson, to maybe break in. LB Chris McCain I know had a little bit of the injury bug going on. He was a little bit up and down. It’s tough to sometimes get certain guys to the 46-man (roster). So my job is to make sure to get everyone ready so when they do show up to the 46-man (roster), we can get some plays out of them. Overall, I think that certainly we are never going to bat a thousand on personnel. Everyone knows that, that’s every team in the league. But to be honest with you, from my seat, the special teams guys that have come here, I think RB Damien Williams, S Mike Thomas, S Walt Aikens, this year LB Spencer Paysinger, I thought LB Neville Hewitt had a real good season. We got a lot of production out of a lot of guys and really we got a lot of production this year from undrafted free agents. You look at LB Neville Hewitt, you look at LB Zach Vigil, you look at K Andrew Franks, P Matt Darr. I mean there were times out there we had five or six undrafted free agent rookies on the field on special teams and I think that’s something to be said for our personnel. Although some people may focus on the guys that didn’t do well, I’m really going to keep the focus on the guys that did do well and I thought that we got a lot of positive plays out of our reserves.”
(On what P Matt Darr added to the team) – “It’s no secret that a lot of people criticized that move because we got rid of a Pro Bowl punter in Brandon Fields and understandably so but we saw something from Matt right from the beginning. He was just very consistent, had a very cool head about him. It was one of those deals where through OTAs and training camp I kept asking myself ‘What am I missing here?’ This guy, we obviously got him as an undrafted free agent. I went in and worked him out and liked what I saw, but he really exceeded our expectations. (He) did extremely well to finish third in the NFL in gross punting, I think he had 30 punts inside the 20 and probably could have had a few more. The crazy thing is that he hasn’t reached his ceiling yet so he can still get better. Really can’t say enough good things about him. He had a phenomenal year.”
(On how he sees WR Jarvis Landry’s role on special teams moving forward) – “It’s a fine line. It’s a little bit of a double-edged sword. Jarvis is one of the best returners in the league when he has the ball in his hands and you want to give guys like that opportunities. The one thing that Jarvis can’t complain about the last couple of years is opportunities with the ball in his hand. He’s gotten plenty of those. The thing I always compare it to is a guy like Antonio Brown with the Steelers. He’s also their punt returner and arguably, you hear people say he might be the best receiver in the NFL. It’s that fine line, where do you get those opportunities? I think Jarvis ended up having 36 punt returns and (13) kick returns so he had another (49) opportunities. So when a guy like that, you can get the ball in his hands and be a game-breaker, you like to do it. But obviously you like to keep the risk out of it of him getting hurt. I’ve said this for seven years so I will continue to say it, I’d love to get as many return options on the team as possible. We had a bunch going into camp and then some guys get cut, some guys move on, or whatever. With where we were this year, we just felt like we kind of attacked each week on a single-case basis and said ‘Alright, this week we are going to try to get (him) opportunities.’ Jarvis obviously handled most of the punt returns the whole year. We tried to give him a little break on the kick returns. So moving forward, again you have a Pro Bowl-caliber athlete like that so you’d love to get him involved but at the same time you’d like to have other options on the team so he’s not your only one.”
(On what he has learned about Adam Gase in the past few weeks and what makes him optimistic) – “I really love his personality. I really love his presence with our coaching staff. Obviously he is a very, very smart person and clever guy. He’s obviously done a very, very good job with offense no matter where he’s been. He’s very energetic and enthusiastic. We have a lot of the same personality traits, to be honest with you, so we get along great. Again, I’m just excited to be here now going into this season with him and this new coaching staff as I have ever been. I think we have a lot of great things in place. To me, he brings a lot of enthusiasm every day. In the time so far that I’ve been with him, he’s obviously a very good offensive coach. And like I said before, in my estimation so far, he’s put a great coaching staff together. So I’m very, very pleased with where we are.”
(On if he has seen enough out of K Andrew Franks despite only having 16 field goal attempts last season) – “That’s a good question. I think we would have loved to get more attempts out of him, that’s for sure. When you look at his three, he was 13 of 16 with three misses – one was 60-plus yards at the end of the half at New England; one, the grass slipped on him on our home turf, the last miss he had of the year; and then he missed the one in Jacksonville, which he should have made, it was a makeable kick. For an undrafted Division III guy that really was not on anybody’s radar, I’d have to say that I’m pretty pleased with what he did. I think he did an admirable job. Our touchback percentage went up tremendously this year and that was a big thing. I think we ended up being (11th) in the league in touchbacks or touchback percentage. I think he had (43) touchbacks out of (62) tries or something like that. So I was really, really pleased with where he was there. He has an NFL leg, I’ve always said that. We’d love to have gotten him more reps in games but I saw enough from him out at practice where we know that he can do it in this league. Listen, I’m a big believer that you have to bring in competition at every position. I think if we sat here last year and if anybody thought that Brandon Fields wasn’t going to be the punter in 2015, we all thought he was going to be. But we brought in a guy that beat him out. We’re always going to be looking to bringing in competition at every position and so I think it’ll be the same thing with Andrew. But with that said, I think Andrew did a great job. I think moving forward, the sky is the limit for him. He’s only just begun. I really believe this guy can play in the NFL for a long time with his skill set.”
(On why Bobby McCain never had a shot to return kicks last year) – “Again, it was a week-to-week basis. There were times we went into the game saying ‘Hey, Bobby may get a couple shots this week.’ But again, I think we had (eight) different guys return kicks this year. That’s not really the way I’d like to go moving forward, I’d like to kind of get one or two guys. So whether it was RB Damian (Williams) or WR Jarvis (Landry), we had RB LaMichael James, we had RB Raheem Mostert, we had a bunch of different guys, S Reshad Jones back there. So Bobby was definitely in the conversation and, just whatever it was, week-to-week just sometimes he ended up being the second or third guy and never really got those chances. But he was definitely in the mix.”
