Mike McDaniel – August 12, 2024
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Monday, August 12, 2024
Head Coach Mike McDaniel
(Will WR Odell Beckham Jr. and LB Jaelan Phillips come off PUP this week, do you believe? And also TE Tanner Conner – Tanner Conner left with discomfort the other night. Do we have an update on whether he’s out short term or long term or neither?) – “The backstory to this is unbelievable because I was assuming you wouldn’t state the right question and I was going to have to offer up as a gift to your diligence just that Jaelan Phillips will be off PUP today. What does that mean? I don’t know. It means he’s going to be practicing with his guys. Really excited for him because if you haven’t noticed he’s one of the most involved players through the whole offseason program and he hasn’t taken a snap yet so excited for him. And that was the news I was ready to break. I don’t expect to see Odell (Beckham Jr.) this week, but I would put it in the week-to-week category after that. I’m just feeling really open so I’m just throwing that information out.”
(And TE Tanner Conner?) – “It was uncomfortable and so he’s going to be with the training staff today. I think he will be working his way back. When do I expect – I don’t expect it in the next couple practices. Beyond that is really hard for me to forecast.”
(A bunch of other wide receiver questions that you guys have had – WR Jaylen Waddle, WR Braxton Berrios, WR Anthony Schwartz – what wide receivers do you expect to see at practice this week?) – “I expect to see a couple – there are some guys that haven’t been practicing that I expect which will help the depth for that position. I think I expect to see – in what amount, that will vary depending on how their body feels through stretch and warmup and stuff – but I expect to see a little bit of Braxton (Berrios) here soon and expect to see Erik Ezukanma today.”
(In talking to QB Mike White after the game, he said one of the things that he wanted to accomplish was being a calming influence on the team and in the huddle. He knew that some guys were out there for the first time. He knew some guys were going to be stressing over making the 53. Are there other things like that, that you are looking for from the backup quarterbacks? Things that aren’t on the stat sheet?) – “Absolutely. Those things are monumental. That’s cool that Mike (White) said that because that’s what we’re talking to each quarterback. You’re in a competition that is inherently within the game, a little different. You’re working with different players, different portions of the game like Mike alluded to and so you may not – and just knowing that from a coach’s perspective, very clear with the quarterbacks that there’s various things that you’re looking for when someone is in those types of situations in a close competition but with different controlled variables. How you handle yourself, how you add value to players – you can tell by the coordination of an offense the conviction and the confidence of the quarterback simply by how players exit the huddle. When I say we evaluate everything, it’s literally that deep of a dive because you’re responsible for conveying the initial conviction of every play with every play call and then your assertiveness and how you emphasize different words in a huddle call; that can bring clarity and conviction to just how people approach the line of scrimmage. And can you do that while also juggling a ‘Hey, make sure you tell the Z to run a high corner because he doesn’t know what that is.’ That happens in preseason games. And all of it is – you take that into account so you can make sure that you present those types of challenges, the equivalent challenges to both quarterbacks. Skylar (Thompson) has the same opportunity in that way and we can assess from there.”
(I believe the last three years you’ve had two running backs atop the depth chart as co-starters. Can you describe your balance there between maybe a planned approach and then an adaptive or reactive approach as it goes through the season?) – “I mean, who says we have to stop at two? Maybe we can just have four. I think you have to let the players determine who gets the ball and how frequently and how much during the game, and that’s very important. I think the cool thing when you have a position group that on the front end you know by NFL standards is very, very talented – one of the most, if not the most talented that you can remember or you’ve been on teams with – you don’t worry about how that is going to unfold. You let it unfold and it’s always very obvious. You can tell by how people execute their blocks and their belief of the player carrying the ball and you have to be able to be open-minded to how it plays out. So I think the residuals of a deep room, you can see on each individual player. I’m seeing for instance some of Jeff Wilson’s best ball that I’ve seen him play. I worked him out as a player in North Texas back in 2018 and some of his best stuff has been in this camp and I can’t help but attribute that to the overall talent of the entire room. So it’s something that you just keep coaching, you keep seeing how much guys’ games can develop. You don’t put a ceiling on that because guys will continue to surprise you in a positive manner if you let them and we just know that a strength of ours can be handing the ball off to some pretty good backs and we just go from there.”
(What is S Patrick McMorris showing you so far in camp and Friday night as well?) – “It’s been cool to watch ‘Pat’ (Patrick McMorris) develop in non-padded situation, because you got to see a player directly take technique training and drill work and apply it in his game and evolve his game from the first day we saw him. Talking about breaking, being in a pedal and breaking at a direct angle towards an eligible as opposed to rounding out of it, those little things I’ve seen him develop. And then I think the team got to see him tackle, and we thought we’d be happy with it, but you never know until you get to see someone with the pads on in a tackle situation, and that part of his game is live and active. So it’s been cool to watch him really take some extreme – he’s taken advantage of the opportunity. The opportunity is that he has a room headed by Jevon (Holland) and (Jordan) Poyer that have an immense amount of knowledge. You have – Elijah Campbell is really going after it, Nik Needham is getting in there sometimes, Marcus Maye has done a lot of stuff in this league, and all those factors he’s taking advantage of. So he’s in charge of how far that goes and what he’s able to do on this team as a rookie, but what I do know is he’s taking full advantage of his opps, and his game continues to grow and it has to as a rookie. It’s very, very hard to contribute as a rookie in the National Football League, and the rookie year is not built for everyone to excel during. So it takes a special commitment and so far, so good with him. We’ll see what this week and this practice has in store for us from him.”
(When you went over the film of the offensive line, obviously I’m sure T Patrick Paul kind of stood out to you. What else were things that stood out positively and maybe something that needs to get addressed?) – “Overall I think there were several technique principles that we’ve really taken a look at how we articulate and coach them and emphasize them and so one of those being the line of scrimmage. And one I was happy with at times during the game and particularly in the group that Patrick (Paul) was playing with, I saw the line of scrimmage be reset and that is something that we work diligently at. We’ve tried to kind of reframe how we articulate it to engender better results, and I think overall you get to learn a lot about your overall team and where they’re at by some of the twos and threes and where their game is at, because it’s almost like a baseline of what is your starting point with where your game is at and what has clicked for the group. And to see the line of scrimmage reset at times, that was very encouraging and then I think there was some communication stuff that we will always be working on so we can have conviction and unity whenever we’re executing whatever phase. But I saw the line of scrimmage was a big positive coming out of that game with the younger guys in particular really gravitating towards their new technique and fundamentals. That being the first time in a competitive situation and game-like situation, they were able to execute those fundamentals.”
(How does the T Kion Smith injury impact that offensive line going forward?) – “It’s going to give some opps to some guys that – Kion (Smith) is a guy that, that was a hard – it’s always really, really hard to in real time watch a player really digest the reality of a season ending injury, because I don’t think … people don’t really think of it this way, but you have all these objectives and this forecasting that’s built up just like coverage for the National Football League is built up for months, and then all of a sudden, boom, wow, it’s all different. So for Kion, who’s really been bold in how he’s gone after his job and he’s developed since we’ve been here as much as anyone. One of our favorite guys to coach, that was tough. That was tough. I think there are some real strong battles going on on the offensive line that what does this do? Well, it forces guys to kind of clear those battles up, give some opportunities. Fortunately, I don’t know how many NFL offensive lineman we have, but it’s more than you’re able to keep on a roster. So that’s the good news, is that there will be guys that will get opps and have to step their game up because Kion is somebody that we’ve learned to rely upon more and more and somebody’s got to step up in his place. Who that’s going to be? They’ll have the first opportunity to tell me today.”
(I wanted to follow up on LB Jaelan Phillips. What was maybe your biggest takeaway about the way he attacked his rehab process?) – “For me, what I got to learn about Jaelan Phillps is that he is a very capable, strong learner because this was a test of internal fortitude. For Jaelan, his game, he’s always been an impact player. But right when he got injured, there was momentum swinging in a positive regard towards his conviction of how to play his position. He was feeling a different level of confidence and then for a guy that has ambitions as he does – he wants to be great in the worst way – it is a long vision challenge to attack this injury appropriately and not something that by nature is totally his speed. He wants to fix the issue and go play. So to watch him diligently go about the process – I thought he was going to be a No. 1 violator of secretly overdoing what he was supposed to do – to be patient and to have the vision for his teammates and what we’re all really relying upon him coming back and him being able to first find his footing from a health perspective and then be able to contribute to his team, I’ve been very proud of how he’s attacked that and while doing so, doing things that leaders do. Which is you feel his presence as a teammate. I think even when he’s not playing he definitely took note, both him and Bradley (Chubb) did, of how Jalen Ramsey attacked his injury last year and as a result he’s already impacted the 2024 Dolphins before he’s set out on the field. So excited for him to go to the next stage and we’ll see how his body responds to that.”
(Could you talk – we know by now watching you work and talk that you’re not constrained by tradition or doing things the way just because they’ve always been – training camp this year you guys scheduled days off. Little things like last week the Falcons were running sprints, you guys don’t. Can you talk about your mindset on training camp and sort of what you hope to get out of things like that?) – “To me the ultimate focus for our team is as rudimentary as, what do we want our football to look like? How do we want it to feel? How do we want to approach our technique and fundamental? And so built around that is, how do we get players adept at the system, adept at the techniques, while also with the long vision of the season? And so for me, it’s really prioritizing how when we go, we recreate game-like enthusiasm, focus, attention to detail. That to me is how you create and build and maintain your standard. Within all those moving parts, you have to develop a trust – from my perspective, comes from whys, but you have to develop a trust with your locker room that we won’t ever shortchange the way we go about full speed stuff, but we have to dive into the science, we have to follow trends, and we have to adjust our rep counts accordingly, so that we don’t do either end of the spectrum: not prepare guys or overwork guys. So that whole thing to me, if you have one group of people moving in the right direction or in one direction and you explain your whys with diligence and get the appropriate buy-in from the locker room, you can go out and we can get infinite amount of game reps more than our opponents. That’s kind of how I look at things. So it is a balancing act for sure which is why I have a hard time absolut-ing stuff and how things kind of change to a certain degree each and every training camp because you have a different problem to solve. And then what happens if you have too many players that need management and then you overwork – you can’t do as many reps. It’s ever-evolving. I think case in point, the practice today with various constraints at certain specific positions, we had to frontload with our full-speed reps and we kind of have to have an in-between walkthrough and light practice, jog-through at the tail end of it. That’s something that you guys aren’t used to seeing all the time, but that’s an adjustment to protect the way we train our fundamentals and technique which if you want to be a good football team or the best football team or anything that falls in the bucket of where we’re trying to go, you have to train those, much like I was talking to the team today about Steph Curry. Got a chance to talk to him this offseason and he talked about every time he shoots, his focus is the same on the front of the rim as in games. Well then you can do some elite stuff, but it comes back to his practice and preparation for those moments are why he can do things that no one else can. So that approach which makes it impossible to forecast exactly how things will play out because you always have to attend to all the – you want to talk about there’s a lot of variables? There’s a ton of variables, but you just do your absolute best with all the controllables that you can control and then communicate that amongst your team so everyone knows why you’re doing everything you’re doing.”
(You said you spoke with Steph Curry? Where was that?) – “It was at the Orlando Four Seasons visiting Disney. I think Golden State was on a road trip to play the Orlando Magic, and I ended up talking to him a little bit. My wife got a picture of us having a conversation. I think he got a picture of us, but I was too rattled to ask for his phone number. If he’s listening to this press conference, I would love to get that picture. But yeah, it was pretty cool. He’s the extreme version of everything I believe in in training for athletics, so when you bump into a guy when you have maybe five to ten minutes, I don’t even know what I said. I just rattled off a bunch of stuff and just remember what he talked about focus.”
(Did you introduce yourself? Did he know who you were?) – “Well, that goes to something that happens to me on routine. He did know who I was, which made no sense, much like every person in public that – people identify me a lot and it never gets normal. It’s always – maybe I’m delusional, I don’t know, I just don’t ever expect it.”
(Weren’t you a Halloween costume?) – “That doesn’t make any sense. Denial. (laughter)”
(How fun was it to face Raheem Morris in that game the other day? How different, how special was it for you?) – “It was cool. It was really cool to see him doing what everybody that’s worked with him has always known that he would be elite at. So it was fun, and it would have been more fun if he would’ve failed at his challenge. Unfortunately, he didn’t.”
