Mike McDaniel – September 4, 2024
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Monday, September 4, 2024
Head Coach Mike McDaniel
(I know you don’t want to ruin the surprise of the first injury report of 2024, it comes out in a few hours, but with that being said, can you share with us what’s been keeping CB Jalen Ramsey out of practice? And do you expect him to play on Sunday?) – “He’s gone anti-grass; he just doesn’t play on grass anymore. (laughter) I’m very proud of him – I’ve never been prouder of a player not practicing, like honestly. No puffery. On the regular, the dude practiced both with starters and on the scout team, did the entire practice last year as he was coming back. He’s just making me proud because he knows how important he is to this team and what he’s looking to accomplish with the team as a captain. So I think everyone’s kind of impressed because – that’s a different headache, dealing with him trying to be on the field when he’s not supposed to. So it’s good, and the human body tells us, I don’t really forecast that, but I know he’s doing everything he can today and there weren’t any setbacks today. So you know me, that’s where my mind lies – good day.”
(You are 6-1 in September in your tenure, including two 3-0 starts. Why have you had immediate success the last two years early going?) – “I think the key, we were better at the point differential, for sure – scored more points. (laughter) No, I think it’s a multitude of things; each team is different, there are some commonalities. I think for me, people talk about starting and finishing and all the things in between. I think you do your best with what you can and max out your team and everything works itself out. I think there’s been times in the first two years that we’ve, as a team, won some games – correlation, causation… No, I think what you get to see in the first month is a – it’s probably 230-some days from the last time that you’ve competed in a box square that sustains. And in that time, from one season to the next, you get to see what people have put in and how guys have been able to come together in a short amount of time relatively. It’s a new team, generally half the team is new each and every year, for every team, and you get to see where their game is at from last year to this year. I think far too often people just take names as names and almost look at people as how they viewed them last year. Every season, every player is either better or worse and no one is really staying the same. There’s generally competition that (General Manager) Chris Grier makes sure that will heat you up if you start getting complacent. So I think where the team is at – 2022, that particular team, 2023 – this team I will say, regardless of we haven’t played a game fully, this is our first Wednesday practice, but I think I wouldn’t be the only person to say that the team has tried to build upon what the former teams have taught them. And how you can get a lot out of each and every single day in the offseason and really transform yourself, and behind closed doors, it’s unveiled on Sunday.”
(You’ve got a couple of rookies making their professional debuts on Sunday including LB Chop Robinson and RB Jaylen Wright. In general, what have you said and would you say to a youngster playing a real game on this stage for the first time?) – “This juncture, you kind of just wait. Ironically, the major ones have already occurred. It’s weird for guys to play in rookie minicamp. They don’t talk about it but you can feel just uncertainty, that’s with every person. The unknown is the No. 1 cause of stress. And in that, I think guys, they’re football players that want to feel comfortable. You do that, you earn your stripes with your teammates; it’s not given, but you can feel when the guys are anointing you – one of the people that can help them accomplish a team goal. That’s a big deal, especially for a veteran team. So there’ll be a moment, but it’s football and it always comes back to that. There’s a lot of stuff in between. We’ve talked about football for 230 days since the end of the season. We’re all very fortunate to be a part of something like that, however, it’s all built up for your opportunities that are few and far between. Even the longest career, relatively – NFL games are special. I think there’ll be a moment for those guys. They are ready for it, but it probably won’t even get to my desk because they’re right in the midst of the locker room, the team, where it would probably take two seconds for Duke Riley or any – we have some characters in our locker room that will get guys’ minds right and they’ll be good. They’ve proven their stripes with their teammates.”
(I can’t tell you how many texts I got yesterday about your depth chart, mostly from fantasy football players, about the F position. Could you explain what the F position is?) – “It means a lot of things. Namely, for our team in particular we’re fortunate to have some – I think everyone has been talking about the different type of weapons we have or the good football players we have that have a multitude of skill sets. So in that, when you say starters, to me you’re talking about a caliber of player and there’s about 15 of those guys on our team. No one has noticed that fact that there wasn’t one depth chart last year that was the first play of the game exactly right. Right? It would’ve been illegal every game. There’s 12 – there’s only 11 on the field. For our football team, you can have – in an F position, the starting point is you are inside the X and Z away from the tight end, or to him, to 3 by 1. And then whether that you’re playing any iteration of those formations, 2 by 2, 3 by 1, 1 by 3, whatever, there’s five eligibles. Any one of those you kind of get more of a sense like you are in the blocking core. Maybe you’re in the perimeter, maybe you’re doing both. You have skill sets that sometimes we have – most of the time our fullback by definition of what a fullback is known to be isn’t playing fullback. He’s playing receiver, or tight end, or a multitude of things. For us, F can be a third down target, can be a core blocking tool, an asset, a guy you’re trying to get the ball to in space. Maybe if you have some players that occupy a lot of space that defenses have to regard, Fs can take advantage of underneath space in defense. Really, I don’t even know by – it’s not fair to categorize certain guys as just one thing. I think the strength of our offense is that we have a bunch of people that are cross training, because the idea is that everyone is moving in unison. So to move together and to appropriately execute your job relative to your teammates, that multiplicity is endless. What is an F? He’s not the Y, Z, or X, and he’s a good football player that probably has some skills that the football team can benefit from.”
(It’s that simple?) – “It didn’t dawn on me; I should make it a lot easier. (laughter) It would be a lot easier just to kind of give you depth charts of any personal package, but I don’t even know what those are until a given day because players decide when they make plays, how much they want to be used. We may have our five running back set come out. Who knows?”
(From a game preparation standpoint, what would you say is the biggest difference in QB Tua Tagovailoa from the first year you were coaching him to coming into this season and what you’ve noticed in him from that standpoint?) – “A complete refinement. The first year, you’re engaging in conversation to make sure the expectations of what preparation – everyone knows preparation. So am I doing a good job of preparing? What are those kinds of standards, what was he used to, and the one benefit I knew that I could offer Tua (Tagovailoa) as well as our tremendous coaching staff is examples, connections. We had Drew Brees come out, just trying to understand just how you can find different ways to be better prepared for when you’re playing football. There is nothing more fun for these guys than to be confident and execute on things that they’ve trained for hours and hours and hours, but that’s only affective if you’re doing it appropriately. Those are things that we were talking about Year 1. This year, he’s in full – he thought he had exactly the way he wanted to operate nailed down and then went the extra step. I can feel him being – even Wednesday walkthrough, which is the hardest for quarterbacks in our system by far, it always has been because we’re so verbose. You can just tell by that walkthrough that he’s refined how to divvy up the time to effectively absorb what he’s learned and what he already knows.”
(One of the things that seems to be agreed upon on the part of teammates was how vocal QB Tua Tagovailoa is now compared to year’s past. What have you told him in terms of demanding excellence out of everybody and how to get that point across to teammates in the correct way?) – “I’ve told him that the way he wants to lead, if he wants to lead, he’s fully capable of doing in a manner that no one should tell him how and he has – you just knew there are certain guys that have an it factor with large groups, especially teams. You know when a team believes in the quarterback, quite honestly, and the appreciation for what his skills were I think were strong, but nothing compared to the respect and the regard that his teammates had for not forced, ‘OK, this is my first rep at being a quarterback in the National Football League. I’m going to do this, this and this,’ and finding himself as a person. That’s been front and center with the team, so he’s being him. I think that’s – I don’t know the measurements, but there’s ways to measure energy waves, and the strongest energy wave you can give off it authenticity. Write that down. (laughter) So I think that’s what people feel and that’s why people follow, is not only do they like and believe in him, believe in his skills and his ability to lead them to places they haven’t been, but they also trust it and regard it for what it is, which is true. And that’s why I think everyone can feel there’s – we talk a lot about Tua (Tagovailoa), and as we should, he’s an incredible part of this franchise, but there’s a lot of players on the same trajectory – I just hog all their press conference time because I talk too long at questions. (laughter) There wouldn’t be a better way to represent his leadership in that people aren’t copying what he’s doing but they are seeing and adjusting; he’s found his way to make sure we are on our business, our walkthrough tempo, we get all our plays in with extra time to spare, but does so while being able to make fun of, I don’t know, Jaylen Waddle’s shoes or something. Guys can feel that; they can feel his confidence level. I think you guys can too, it’s just real. He’s more confident because he has more confidence.”
(How is LB Jaelan Phillips? Will he operate with some kind of snap count limitations Week 1? Or how will you kind of manage his situation?) – “Yeah, you know the ‘Jaelans,’ they’re always messing with me with the way that it’s the greatest problem to have, quite honestly. Just naturally, I think there’s a couple components – for so long, there’s just been positive checkboxes. I think realistically we’re just trying to – I think everybody is kind of on board to, we’re not trying to play a whole game either. You got to manage it in some regard. I think we’re getting closer to what that will be nailed down to with maybe 15-20 reps to spare. Who knows? But regardless, we also have to keep in mind that it’ll be his first game back, we have a game four days later and just being able to manage professional athletes.”
