Mike McDaniel – December 15, 2023
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Friday, December 15, 2023
Head Coach Mike McDaniel
(On player statuses) – “DeShon (Elliott) is still in the protocol. He is out. Rob Hunt is out. Everybody else will practice with exception to Tyreek (Hill) and there’s going to be a ton of questionables.”
(WR Tyreek Hill will be one of those questionables?) – “Yeah.”
(If OL Liam Eichenberg is unable to play, can you share – I don’t know competitively I guess if you can share who would start if Liam can’t?) – “You can take me surface level on this. It’s one thing when you’re trying not to divulge a competitive advantage for studying purposes. This is not the case. This practice I get to see one of the potential starters for the first time ever. So we have plenty of, a lot of moving parts, a lot of contingencies. If you’re voting for Pro Bowl offensive line coaches, submit your Pro Bowl vote for Butch (Barry). We’ve been getting his money’s worth with his work and there’s multiple scenarios whether our working plan of Lester (Cotton) is involved, whether it’s one of our new acquisitions, it’s important for practice because I don’t feel comfortable just making blind crystal ball ‘this is what’s going to work.’ I’d like to see it and be able to move forward from there. So again, I apologize, but it is what it is.”
(With all the injuries up front, how much does that shrink your playbook?) – “I wouldn’t say shrink because there’s a lot of guys – you’re attempting to do your best job at the art of multiplicity of doing the same thing. With a lot of guys having a lot of experience doing a lot of things, with the offensive line having to block certain things with certain rules, there can be a happy medium hopefully to the point that it would be unnoticeable to all of you guys, so I don’t expect it. There are always things that change, ways you attack defenses. You’re doing it to the strength of your team. When there’s less experience and you’re trying to win a football game, you have to really strain and see how multiple you can be with being very similar for what their piece is. I think we’ve done a good job of putting together a plan where it’s not unreasonable for those guys to really execute it as well as being multiple and keeping the defense honest. But we’re also playing a defense that prides itself on fundamentals and technique. It’s similar to what we do from a defensive standpoint where they’re trying to get their players, the Jets try to get their players to play as fast as possible with as much conviction. They do a good job of being versatile within their system, but it’s also manageable for them because they’re all about the performance of their guys and maximizing their players, knowing Coach (Robert) Saleh and (Jeff) Ulbrich extensively. It’s a good opponent for them to identify stuff. However, that opponent brings it at an aggressive level, so all of our guys have to be very confident and intentional. The bottom line is this defense is – wherever they’re ranked is not fair. They should be higher. I think those guys over there, the energy that they have played with since we last played them, just being involved in some tough times myself, I know what type of coaching that takes. All three phases for the Jets, I pretty much know all those guys and it’s really, really cool to see. We don’t want them high-fiving this week. But just the whole locker room, it says a lot about the players. They have played with energy and I think they’ve had two out of the three best defensive performances when everyone was saying, oh this season is this, that and the other. That’s my favorite stuff. Hats off to them, we’re going to have to be super prepared because they are going to be coming to Miami with a point to prove. I can assure you that.”
(What, if anything, should we or could we read into WR Tyreek Hill not practicing?) – “It’s not really a read-in, in terms of where – like I think he in theory, he would be able to practice if he didn’t have the standard of practice that he has. Right now, we’re just focused on getting it as healthy as possible and then bottom line is, we’ll have a conversation that will be based upon – remember this is Tyreek Hill’s career. He’s a very experienced player. I handle very experienced players different than I handle younger guys because they know what they signed up for and it’s his career, so when we talk, this is what will happen. In his season, in his career, on his team as a captain; if he’s confident and I have the support of the medical guys, he’s confident that he can go be himself and I have the support of the trainers that’s responsible to the risk, then he’ll play. If it’s not that, then he won’t and literally every hour for him is imperative. He has had the same energy that he has had all season, which I’ve never seen somebody take a step like this who’s already a great player and he is in this building – what is that, a 12-hour day – of focusing, knowing everything to do and rehabbing. So he’s doing everything he can. I don’t know. I don’t have a feeling yet because we’re getting ahead of it, but he’ll be spending time rehabbing. We’ll see what happens.”
(I wanted to ask you about backup quarterbacks and with some of the injuries we’ve see to starters in the past couple of seasons, backups have come in and played really well. I’m wondering your thoughts on kind of the importance of the backup quarterback role in today’s NFL and I guess how important it is to kind of invest in and develop that position?) – “I think I didn’t give it its due when I first got in the league and then over time, it’s one of the more important positions on your team. Just because they’re not the starter doesn’t mean – I mean, they’re as important as anybody because not only are you supporting the process of the starter, but you have to at a moment’s notice, go and orchestrate full-speed everything you have worked on and you have to have the right guy because a lot of those times those reps aren’t to be had so you have to work extra and then you have to have the right type of mindset so that zero to 60 process, you are able to do best by your skillset to not quiver. It is challenging, challenging, challenging because you never know what’s going to happen and to sit there and say at any position, ‘oh, we’re good, we don’t need depth,’ – I think in just two years of me being here, you can’t assume any position is going to be void of injuries. We’ve had one at least at every position, so the quarterback being able to do that and then on top of that, you have to garner the confidence of all your teammates so that when you walk in that huddle, they can be their best selves and it’s not like, ‘oh, here we go.’ It is an important role that I think Mike White and Skylar Thompson for us, every week there’s residual effects of what they do during the work week through Tua. That is a group. Coach Bevell has said in his 20 years in the NFL being in those rooms, this might be the best one and they’re all supportive of each other. It’s a hard position, but then you have some brothers that can attest and give you feedback and be like, ‘dude, don’t worry, that was a really hard throw,’ ‘oh, don’t worry, I didn’t see that.’ That hits differently to your ear than this guy. So it’s very important and it will continue to be important.”
(What have you noticed about Jets QB Zach Wilson’s performance? I guess he was AFC Offensive Player of the Week? What did you see on tape?) – “I thought it was kind of cool because just think about that. To be offensive player of the week for your whole conference in the same season of getting benched. Fortunately he’s in a small, under the radar media market. (laughter) So I think it’s cool. What I saw was internal fortitude. There’s some conviction and confidence. I saw when the pocket was clean, he was seeing it and then when it wasn’t, he was able to find ways to get on the edge of the defense and do some of the stuff that is the reason he was the second pick in the draft because he has some arm talent that’s unbelievable. I don’t have to be in that building to project. Everybody knows – that’s a galvanizing situation – because everyone knows how hard it has to be, I’ve talked about it before, everybody wants to live up to where they’re drafted and you go and you have to hear questions about stuff. Then for his teammates to watch that happen and then him go out there and really believe in himself and show confidence and then make some plays, I’m happy for people specifically when that happens. I can relate to that stuff. So I see a confident guy that’s dangerous that you have to disrupt. I think that you have to be very, very good with your pre-snap presentations. I think you have to get on edges of offensive linemen and disrupt his vision. And I think if you allow him early confidence, he’s going to play confident, so that’s our objective to start the game and I think guys are up for the challenge there. One thing they’re not doing is – you can tell it hit our locker room, too – they’re not taking this team lightly. They know how tough things can be when you’ve lost a couple games in a row and then the amount of momentum you have from one game. So we’re going to have our hands full, but at this stage in the season, that’s what you want. You don’t want to gift victories. You want to go earn it and they’re going to make sure we have to do that, so we’re going to have to be on all of our stuff, which is why today is so important. It’s the most important day of our lives.”
(You mentioned how one game can kind of flip momentum. Have you been able to sense from the players, coaches, the team in general, from Monday night to today, how have they been able to move past that?) – “You know what it is, but the team, I see a team that is eager to play football again. I sensed the first time I talked to them this week, they wished the game was that day. I know their bodies didn’t, but you want to wash that out. What I’ve seen thus far is guys focus that frustration into the gameplan and preparation for this opponent. I think on the surface, you’re generally kind of worried about that. For me, this team this week, I’m not. Because like I said, they’re eager to go make some things right. And it’d be one thing if we spent that game – watching the film, there were things that were to our standard. So we’ve been focusing on how did the backend of the game unfold. Once we did that, we moved past and it’s been J-E-T-S all week.”
(Along those same lines, where do you think that mentality comes from? Is it the leadership? Is it you guys within the week? After a tough blow on Monday, where’s that core, that base of the way you guys approach this week?) – “I think that all has to do with the collection of individuals. As a coaching staff, we try to do our best to kind of – you end a game and there’s so many things that happen. Individuals think about this play, this play, this play. Then quite naturally, you’re like, how did this happen? I think as a coaching staff, we kind of look at things and then you deliver a mindset message on okay, well, this is how we can kind of categorize that. Then it takes a bunch of like-minded individuals who are interested in things much beyond themselves, who are strong-minded with will, to listen to that and then decide, ‘hey, you know what, collectively, this is the way we’re going. This is how we agree that we can file this under this envelope and say, okay, that’s what that was, and learn from it.’ That’s why I love the locker room because they are not blinking or feeling sorry for themselves. They are 100 percent focused on the Jets, which you have to be in this league. That’s another reason, another example, that will always present itself in every NFL season of why you have to come prepared. Everyone gets paid and there’s a lot of teams that win games that beat Vegas’ odds. So all of that being said, I think the bottom line is none of it matters unless you have the right human beings as players. My expectation is that as coaches, we funnel the information appropriately, because that’s our jobs. I could be Knute Rockne and if I have guys that aren’t about each other and focused on the right things and committed to this team and organization and the city, it doesn’t matter. I would say it’s a credit to the locker room that has been built up and the individuals in it.”
