Danny Crossman – September 27, 2024
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Friday, September 27, 2024
Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman
(With regards to your special teams unit, is there a point at which where if one person commits multiple penalties, you believe in repercussions in terms of yanking them off of your special teams units during that particular game? Or is that simply not feasible because of the number of bodies you have?) – “I think it’s a combination of a lot of things. What are the penalties? That’s the first thing. There’s many different types of penalties, and you don’t like any penalty because it’s going to hurt the club, but there’s certain penalties which I call, in the course of the game, aggressive, not dumb, that are to the decision of the officials. They’re going to call some of them, they’re going to call some of them correctly, some of them incorrectly. But an aggressive penalty in the course pf the game working the right technique, I’m not happy with them but I can accept those. The ones that you don’t like are pre-snap and post-snap penalties. Those are the ones – if they get egregious by anybody, those are things that you’re going to have a major issue with.”
(And the LB Anthony Walker Jr. penalty seemed to fall in that second category, so are you upset with that?) – “Well again, I’m not going to identify and talk about one single penalty. That’s just the philosophy that I and we have is they’re going to go in different buckets and then you’re going to account for them based on what those things are.”
(In that same line of questioning though, there have been five illegal formation penalties, moving too early on the kickoff in the first three games. Beyond reinforcing it or making a player switch, what can you do to get that fixed?) – “Well again, and this is something we talked about going into the season; you get veteran players who are used to playing the game a certain way and for six or seven years, the ball is kicked off and you’re a kickoff return player in you’re so engrained in having to get your depth and your width and whatever your drop zone is. You’re retraining the brain to, ‘The ball is kicked and I can’t move.’ So you have six or seven years of training on doing something, you got to remind yourself and we have to remind them on the sideline, ‘Hey, we’re not moving until the ball is caught or hits the ground.’ Like I said, for years and years guys have been trained to play the game a different way and with the new rules you got to adapt, and we’ve got to adapt quicker.”
(The opening kickoff, TE Tanner Conner slips. It looks like he could have made the play. Did he have contain on that or was that DB Elijah Campbell on contain?) – “Again, I’m not going to get into the specifics – we didn’t execute the play. We had people in what we thought were going to be in position to make a play and we weren’t able to execute. We got to be better, stay on our feet and be able to execute a little bit better, but I thought for the most part, the guys did a good job when the ball was in play on Sunday. What we got to clean up is before the ball is in play and after the ball is in play.”
(TE Tanner Conner seemed to have a good game special teams wise. He made the tackle the next play, he might have had a key block for WR Braxton Berrios’ punt return – maybe him and TE Durham Smythe. How did Tanner play overall on special teams?) – “He played well. Again, he’s a transition player from positions, from where he was and healthy now which has been a little bit of an issue and a concern, but we feel like he’s a talented player that can really give us some things in the kicking game.”
(LB Chop Robinson seemed to get in close to another punt. Talk about his progression on special teams.) – “Again, he’s a talented guy who we’re going to keep trying to find ways to use him. And like anything, I got to do a better job when we’re in those positions to make a play, we’ve got to be able to finish those plays.”
(K Jason Sanders, looked like somebody came in off of his left, is there any chance that impacted him?) – “Zero. Had nothing to do with it.”
(League wide, the field goals that are 50 yards or more – 76.5 percent, last year it was 68.7. Is there a trend of kickers getting stronger legs or this kind of an anomaly and it will even out to where it’s been?) – “I think it’s the latter. No. 1, I think the kickers in the National Football League are very, very, very talented guys. So those numbers rising, that doesn’t surprise me. I expect that everybody is like us. Those mid to short 50-yard field goals, the game has changed. You’re not thinking about those the way you did maybe about 20 years ago, but it’s a week-to-week thing. I think if you guys look a week ago, I think around the league it was over 90 percent on 50-yard field goals and then this week it’s less than 50. So you don’t know. I look at us and I look at how we approach it, and when we send Jason out, we feel good about getting points.”
(Just in general, your football knowledge – it seems like September is different now with the veterans doing joint practices and not preseason games. Has September football changed? Is it almost a little more experimental in your mind than it was a few years ago?) – “I don’t think it’s experimental, but I think what you’re seeing is maybe some of those, the first heavy opportunities of play time aren’t happening now until games matter. So it’s something that’s around the league, and it’s interesting and something I think that everybody is going to look at going forward, because when the games matter, they matter.”
(On WR Braxton Berrios’ long punt return, outside of the obvious, is there something that maybe wasn’t so obvious that you can tell us that helped spring him?) – “I think No. 1, we did a good job early on the gunners. If you’re going to get opportunities in the return game and the punt return game particularly, you got to make sure the gunners aren’t down in your face. We talked about it conversely when we talked about punting the ball. You got to be good at the gunner position and if you can control those guys, at least to get started, then the other aspects go into it. So I think we did a good job both outside on the gunners and I think they did a good job on the inside in creating that space and I thought that Braxton (Berrios) did a good job of hitting it.”
(With CB Siran Neal having a hamstring injury, obviously he’s a huge player in your phase. How difficult is it to replace a gunner like that?) – “It’s always difficult to replace good players – I don’t care, and you guys know that. Offensively, defensively, kicking game – you have certain guys, but we’ll let the trainers do their job. They do an outstanding job. We had Elijah (Campbell) a couple of weeks ago that was banged up and they were able to get him ready, so we’ll put a little bit of faith in the trainers and the doctors. But good players are good players, and you don’t just have another one.”
(Where is CB Ethan Bonner in special teams?) – “He’s doing a good job. It’s a matter of time and everybody’s going to get opportunity – that’s the way the league is now. So when his opportunity comes, I expect him to do a good job just like he did last season when we elevated him and brought him up from the practice squad. This year, he’s already on the roster so when he gets the opportunity, he’ll be ready to play.”
(What has impressed you about the career of Nick Folk still kicking? He’s going to turn 40 this year.) – “He’s done a great job. He’s really done a great job like all good veterans. He understands himself and understands what he has to do and adapted his game to play to his strengths and minimize some of the things. Like every veteran player, you’re going to lose certain skills and attributes, you got to find other skills and attributes to accentuate what are your strengths to stick around in this league. So I think Nick (Folk) is an outstanding kicker and been a pleasure to get to know him over the years.”
(I think there was a field goal attempt by Seattle where you guys maybe overloaded the kicker’s left side and seemed to do pretty well. What do you do – do you just file that stuff away, like we got good results? What do you do with those plays going forward?) – “Well, it’s a lot of things. It’s personnel – our personnel, their personnel. Then you get into the elements of where and how you want to attack people, so there’s a lot of moving parts. But again, it comes down to players and trying to put players in positions to make plays.”
(Now that there’s been kickoffs for three weeks – not necessarily a month. Is there any common theme in what teams are trying to do?) – “There’s a couple of different buckets that you’re starting to see develop, so it’ll be interesting. I’m looking forward to – not looking forward, but the bye week, I’m glad it’s an early bye week this year to be able to get on a lot more in-depth studies at that point of the season where you have a little bit more time (and) where it’s not nine, 10, 11, 12 weeks into the season where most of the season is gone before you get to spend a lot of time really diving into that. So anxious to really take an even harder look at it here in a couple weeks.”
