Danny Crossman – November 21, 2024
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Thursday, November 21, 2024
Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman
(I’m always curious, it’s one of my favorite positions in football. How do you identify a good gunner?) – “Take the talent out of it, you need someone that is just tenacious – (that) would be the best word I would put on it. You can never be out of the play, and that’s what makes the great ones the great ones, where you may think you have them at the line of scrimmage, then they win down the field. You may think you’re OK at the line of scrimmage, you think you’re in good shape down the field, now all of a sudden that guy spins off and still finds a way to get involved in the tackle. No. 1, you’ve got to be a tenacious sun of a gun. If you have that, along with the talent because we’re saying the talent is what it is, but when you are never out of a play – that’s what when we look to evaluate guys and most importantly when we’re playing against guys and you see that, it could be a long day.”
(Is it toughness? Speed obviously is a prerequisite, is toughness a prerequisite?) – “Speed, transition from speed to power. You’re going to get people on you. It’s a little bit like rushing the passer. You got to have a counter. Now they are going to jump set you and take the outside away, what is your counter off of that? Your inside move, do you have a counter off of your inside move. Can you be flat, can you stem, can you stick? So there’s a lot of things and then you got to get into the hand play. It’s not an easy position to play and I’m glad you brought it up – it is hard. In most cases, you’re getting double teamed and it’s a hard way to make a living. The great ones affect the play even when they are double teamed.”
(How are you feeling currently about if and when LS Blake Ferguson could return?) – “Just playing the process of the National Football League. He’s going through his stuff which No. 1 is what has to get taken care of. We’ve got to make sure he’s where he needs to be and then worry about and get ready for the football part of it.”
(How has LB Channing Tindall done on special teams this season?) – “He’s actually done really well the last couple of games in particular. He had a couple of tackles in the Rams game on Monday night and then was in good shape last week. We had a little bit of a misfit on one of the kickoffs where we had a chance to get a little bit better field position for ourselves because Channing (Tindall) was in great shape, the guy made a good cut off of a little bit of a misfit outside of him. But happy with where Channing is right now.”
(I saw the Cowboys took a 64-yard field goal off the board. Obviously, there is some strategy and analytics behind that, but I feel like there was a time where that never would’ve happened. How have you seen that change and are you surprised a 64-yarder comes off the board or not in today’s game?) – “I going to back it up – the idea of kicking a 64-yarder not at the end of the half or the end of the game, 10 years ago that wasn’t even brought up. You wouldn’t even think about that. I think the combination of analytics, understanding the situation and making that part of that we’re going to need two scores. Let’s take it even though it’s a 64-yarder, which again is not a gimme. But any time you take points off the board in a two-score game, if it doesn’t play out right, it’s going to be a topic of conversation.”
(It’s kind of ironic right? Because teams are going for it on fourth down more than ever, even in field goal range and yet they are also trying extraordinarily long field goals. I don’t know how to align those two things.) – “When you look at the numbers, you’re exactly right. You’re gaining points, you’re giving away field position; you’re going for it on fourth down because you’re trying to get seven as opposed to three. There is a lot of different things that are going into those situations and those decisions. Every game is different, how the game is going – you look at the Steelers and Baltimore, you’re talking about a field goal, one-score game. Then you watch Baltimore a couple of weeks earlier they are in almost a 40-point shootout with somebody else. That in it of itself, you could have the same team and be playing two different games in terms of decision making, field position on fourth down, field goal, punt, even though you’re the same group based on the situation and how that game is progressing.”
(Brenden Schooler has gotten you guys a couple of times now in recent meetings. Is there some extra way to give him more attention or what can you do against him?) – “We give him plenty of attention, sometimes it’s not enough. And again, I always equate it to when you get really good players – everybody sort of looks at special teams different, but he’s a really good player. When you got really good players on offense and really good players on defense, even though there’s a lot of game planning involved around those players, great players still can find ways to make plays. You see it week in and week out. Last week, you play Maxx Crosby – he’s a great player. We got a lot of bodies on Maxx Crosby, but if Maxx Crosby comes out of that game with a sack and two tackles for loss, is anybody going to be surprised? No, because he’s a great player. So great players find a way even when you gameplan them to find ways to make plays.”
(It’s been a few weeks now obviously without WR Braxton Berrios, and I know things are fluid, but do you feel good about moving forward with WR Malik Washington on punt returns and RB Raheem Mostert and RB Jaylen Wright on kickoff returns?) – “Again, it’s always a weekly thing and we’ll play who’s available, what’s available, how the game’s going, but obviously, losing Braxton (Berrios) was big. He was really having a good year, was really off to a good start. So any time you lose a player with injury, you hate to see that, but we’re fortunate that we do have some guys that we feel strongly about and their abilities.”
(Two questions about your field goal block team; their first field goal, you guys have LB Quinton Bell, DB Elijah Campbell and CB Siran Neal on their left side. No. 74, it looked like Elijah was coming through and No. 74 stuck out his leg, should that have been a penalty?) – “That’s a hard call. There’s penalties – again, I’m just talking about my opinion and when you look around the league – there’s certain penalties I think that are easier to see for the officials and recognize. Sometimes those edge plays from some of the vantage points of where officials are stationed aren’t as easy to see. So when you go back and look at the tape, there’s always plays that you’re like, ‘that could have been,’ or ‘should have been.’ I always look at it, as we talked about in the past, I look at it both ways; whether it’s a penalty called on us, if I was the opposite team, would I expect the same call if they call something on them? Would I expect the same thing to be called if it was us? Those are hard decisions, and some of those plays are hard for those guys to see. There’s other ones that in my opinion that aren’t that hard and that they need to be 100% on.”
(The 22-yard field goal there at the five-yard line, you had DB Elijah Campbell and S Marcus Maye back off, CB Siran Neal and CB Cam Smith go straight in. Is that defending against the fake? I don’t think I had seen that this year.) – “It’s a call we have based on certain situations in the game. (laughter) I like your film study though.”
(On the play DT Calais Campbell came close to blocking the punt and got the penalty, is there a teaching point there or just bad luck?) – “There is. The angle of where you’re playing the ball, and it’s a great teaching point because the trajectory of a punt – here’s a great example of where the foot contacted the ball and where Calais (Campbell) was with his hands was a yard. So you got the launch point of the ball off the foot of the punter and a long, long-armed individual only a yard away in terms of where the hand is on a vertical plane and the ball clears the hand. You got to change that vertical plane to a flatter plane. So we always talk about ‘out, not up,’ you’re not going to block going up, you got to be out.”
(DT Calais Campbell went and talked to LB Duke Riley on the sideline after that, and that was…) – “Yeah, out not up.”
(Has DT Calais Campbell always been on punt teams this year?) – “Again, that’s one of our packages and one of the groups that we play in certain situations and have certain calls based on what’s going on in the game, so he has been a part of that.”
(Snapping on field goal attempts, it says here: “You cannot directly tackle the long snapper. While contact is not entirely prohibited, you cannot directly hit him, especially to the head or neck immediately after the snap because he is considered a defenseless player.” I feel like that happens all the time. Two parts: 1. Non-reviewable, right?) – “Correct.”
(OK, and 2. Are there times where it’s worth trying? Because it seems like it’s happened.) – “That’s a great point because you look around the league and it’s called sometimes, and that’s one to me that as big an emphasis that we put on player safety, that’s a spot and a position and a visual where that’s a call that needs to be 100%. Again, is it worth it? That’s one of those situations where if you get away with it and you win the game, it’s a good thing. My whole thing is always about what do we want to teach? What am I telling the players? What am I telling my bosses? We don’t want to teach something that is a foul because then when you get called, it’s a foul and there’s no complaining.”
(It’s 15 yards?) – “Yeah. You know what the situation is, you’re giving a first down or you’re giving another opportunity from closer. So what do you want to teach? As long as there’s uniformity in the calls and you know what you’re going to get and it’s around the league, it’s better for the players and obviously it’s better for us as teachers of what can we teach and what can we not teach. To me, you don’t want to teach and coach something that, i.e., you read the rule and then you’re saying, ‘This is illegal, why are we putting this in?’ And then when we get called for it, we have no leg to stand on for complaints.”
