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Durham Smythe – October 2, 2023 Download PDF version

Monday, October 2, 2023

TE Durham Smythe

(The day after, are you a little more encouraged about the performance? Or discouraged? How do you feel about it?) – “I mean, offensively, which is all I can really speak for, I think we can obviously be better. We’ve shown that through the first three weeks. I think we did some good things. But to beat a team like that, in their stadium, you have to be perfect and we were far from that. There are definitely things to be encouraged about. No one in this building and no one on this offense is losing confidence, but we know that we can be better.”

(You guys have done a good job of kind of compartmentalizing victories and losses. Does it feel like you’ll be able to get over this one by tomorrow?) – “Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s never easy when you lose a division game, especially to a team like that where we’ve had some big games in the past two, three years. But it’s like anything else in this league, it all happens fast. Another good team coming in this week. If you don’t turn the page, those things can kind of pile, snowball a little bit and we’re not going to have that in this building.”

(QB Tua Tagovailoa had mentioned a little confusion in maybe getting the plays in and lining up. What was behind that and is that easily fixable, or something that might take two or three weeks you think?) – “I think that’s an easy fix. There’s a lot of things that play into that over the course of a game. Noise in a stadium like that. When the play clock is low, you have to speed things up. Some motions have to be scrapped. There are a lot of things that play into that. A lot of easy fixes. It all comes down to just communication, really, from all of us. But that’s something that we can clean up pretty quickly.”

(You mentioned to beat a team like that you almost have to be perfect. How much pressure does that put on an offense, personally, to know that the margin of error is so slim?) – “It’s kind of something that we talked about. I think it really comes down to everyone just doing their individual job. In a game like that, people can try to make plays for other people – offensively, defensively, special teams. That’s kind of where things go wrong. So I think when you’re in a game like that, against an opponent like that, you just have to focus on doing your job. I think if we can all get on the same page and do that well, which like I’ve said, we’ve shown that we can do, there’s no added pressure compared to anything else.”

(How would you measure QB Tua Tagovailoa’s growth in the second year here in terms of ownership of the offense, trying to get to the second, third, fourth read of the offense? How would you kind of measure how far he’s come in that regard?) – “He’s come a long way. I think we all have in terms of just being comfortable within this offense. I think lot of those things, like you mentioned, progressing through reads and stuff, that comes with the confidence. Obviously when you do well, you become comfortable in this offense. And after a year and a half, those things become a lot easier. As he’s performing well and his confidence continues to grow, he’ll continue to work through those things and really, there’s even more room there.”

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