Adam Gase – October 20, 2016
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Thursday, October 20, 2016
Head Coach Adam Gase
(Adam, Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen said one of the reasons you guys had success offensively this last week is because you huddled more, there was better communication between QB Ryan Tannehill and the rest of the team. Would you say that’s a fair assessment?) – “I think huddling for us has helped us a little bit. We took a little bit more of a step back and doing less on the line of scrimmage, it just makes … when you’re used to doing it, guys are more comfortable. They know what they have going in the line of scrimmage sometimes whereas when you’re in a no-huddle situation, a lot of communication is going on. When you’re the quarterback, you’re burning a lot of mental credits there before you even take a look at what the defense is doing. It’s a lot on the quarterback when you do things at the line of scrimmage. When you huddle, kind of everybody already knows what’s going on. Then you (Tannehill) has got to go from there. He’s got certain tools that he can use to really kind of save the play call and he did a good job this week of getting us in the right play.”
(Adam, it’s hard to see in the numbers but how would you gauge DT Ndamukong Suh’s play this season and also how would you explain his specific role in the defense) – “I think he’s done a good job as far as he’s consistent every week. He seems to always be a guy that causes disruption. He knows his defense in and out, so he knows how to play it. He knows where he can take his shots. He knows when he’s kind of got to play team defense. That is something where, when you’re a younger player sometimes you feel like, ‘I’m going to make a play here,’ and you don’t do it at the right time. He knows when it’s the right time. When you have the experience he has with the talent he has, obviously that’s a very effective combination to have.”
(How hard is it to not get frustrated with the amount of double teams, to just kind of keep playing through?) – “It’d probably be a better question for him. It can’t be fun by any means to constantly be going against two guys and just getting pounded on throughout the game – getting double teamed. But he does such a good job of fighting through a lot of those things. He understands leverage so well that he uses his body position correctly. He eats up a lot of blockers. Statistically, sometimes you might come out of the game and not know how well he’s played. He does a good job of just kind of sticking with his process. He understands why teams have to do that. If they go one-on-one against them, there’s a good chance that he’s going to win, whether it’s in the run game or the pass game.”
(You didn’t know DT Ndamukong Suh before you got here, did you?) – “No, I didn’t.”
(What have you experienced with DT Ndamukong Suh’s personality since you’ve been here?) – “We’ve always had good dialogue. He asks really good questions. He thinks outside the box. I haven’t been around a whole bunch of defensive interior linemen that have really … some of the discussions that we’ve had have been productive, as far as what we’re doing as a team, especially with what his experiences are as far as taking care of his body (and) aking sure that he’s available every week at the highest level he can possibly be available at. A lot of guys you see they miss games, they miss practices. He’s one of those guys that consistently is ready to go on Sunday. I’m sure he doesn’t feel great all the time on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but you would never know it.”
(Does DT Ndamukong Suh speak up a lot in the locker room?) – “You’d probably have to ask a lot of the other guys. He doesn’t talk a whole bunch. If he has something to say, he’ll say it; but he hasn’t been somebody that’s really going to say anything out of turn for him. If he feels like he need to say something, he’ll speak up.”
(Even though you lost TE Dion Sims in that game, you utilized the tight ends pretty consistently against Pittsburgh. Was that a matchup thing or is that just what you felt comfortable with, even though TE Dominique Jones had only been here two weeks?) – “Yes, we kind of stuck with what our plan was for that game, and that was mixing personal groupings and trying to do the best we could as far as making them play base (defense) and sub (packages). That’s what we wanted to do for that game and I guess I’m comfortable with ‘D.J’ (Dominique Jones) because I’ve had him before. I know what his skill set is. He did a really good job filling in because he did something really well that I haven’t seen him have a lot of opportunity to do and that was run blocking. Those two guys did a great job of stepping up and having that next-man-up mentality. We didn’t lose anything at those positions because those guys really, they sold out. They did everything they could just to make sure that they did their job.”
(Now, how do they build off of that?) – “I think they just keep doing what they’re doing right now. They’re going to practice, they’ve started the week over, they’re trying to make sure that they know their jobs inside and out. It’s a tougher assignment for both of them really, because it’s more of a role. I know with ‘Q,’ (MarQueis Gray) it’s tough on him because now you go from primarily a special teams guy and our third tight end to start. And now all of a sudden, you’re vaulted into the starting position, plus we can’t completely take him off of all the special teams because he’s one of our impact players. He’s a guy that we rely on so much, as far as doing the right thing, such as in punt. He’s a big part of that.”
(Even last week, red zone offense I think was 2-for-6 in red zone efficiency. What needs to get better there?) – “I think we’ve just got to finish a couple of plays. We had a penalty when we scored a touchdown; we had a dropped pass when we have a touchdown. We don’t have the third-and-1 conversion, which probably wasn’t the best call. We’ve got a couple of things to clean up there, but a lot of times we’re looking at, ‘Well, we were in the red zone six times.’ So as long as you’re getting points – which we didn’t on the one drive – if you’re getting points, it tallies up there at the end. If you keep getting in the red zone, you might not score touchdowns, but it’s kind of that, ‘you get three, you get three, and then you score and then all of a sudden you get another score and you look up,’ now you’ve got 20 points. So if we can score two more touchdowns somehow, whether we finish the play, we make the right read, we get the conversion on third down. Now, that’s when you really become impactful as far as getting a score up there to where now the defense can do their thing.”
(What’s a good touchdown percentage for you [in the red zone]? I know you want 100 percent but is it 50, 40?) – “Yes, you want to try to be really two out of three. You want to try to be in that 60 to 70 percent. That would put you in the top five.”
(Adam, I think you said that you looked at the AFC East games before you met with the team, back in April. What is the one thing that really stood out against Buffalo that this team struggled with?) – “I mean, it’s hard for me to pinpoint one thing. You know that first game … nothing went right for them. It’s hard to rely too much on those games, because there are so many different guys on both sides of the ball. Last year was last year and we’re moving forward. We got through that first part of our schedule so far, just six games in. Now we’re going to play a tough team that’s hot right now. Is there a little bit of a past there where they’ve kind of come in here and bullied us a little bit? Yes. But, we need to figure out a way to go in there and play the same level we played last week, where we were aggressive, we attacked and we didn’t hold anything back. Guys were emotional and they played hard for 60 minutes.”
(The math of division games are pretty clear, if you win those, you make up a lot of ground; but emotionally, if you start to dominate your division, what can that do for this team?) – “Any time you win a game, it’s a confidence booster. That’s the whole key to this sport, ‘How many wins in a row can you get?’ We’ve won one game (in a row right now). Really, at the end of the day, I’ve said it before, no one cares next Sunday if you won last week. What are you going to do this Sunday? That’s why we’ve got to put last week behind us and make sure we do everything we can to prepare for this game Sunday and then bring the same intensity.”
