Adam Gase – March 2, 2017
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Thursday, March 2, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase (transcribed by the Pro Football Writers Association)
(How did LT Branden Albert perform season) – “Branden had a good year. For what we were asking him to do it was probably a little bit different scheme. With the outside zone he was really good in protection. I think him getting injured and coming back and really playing hurt toward that back half of the season was very impressive. It showed great toughness and leadership, showing those other guys that you might not be 100 percent but you’ve got to play through the pain.”
(Laremy Tunsil ready for LT?) – “I feel really good about where he’s at right now. He did a good job going to a position he’s never played before. We’ll see how that transition goes. It’s going to be more about health, keeping whoever our five are healthy. If we do that, that whole group, whoever we end up putting in those pieces, we should have a good group there.”
(See from WR DeVante Parker this offseason, expectations next season) – “I think just consistency. That day in, day out. Coming in the office at the right time, making sure that you’re doing every little detail right. It’s one of those things that some of us that have been around some really good players take for granted. He’s just got to understand everything he does is important. It’s a trust level with everyone in the building. If you tell someone you’re going to be there at 11 o’clock to lift, be there. Don’t call in and ‘Hey, I’m not going to show up today.’ He’s done a good job at the end of the season and what he’s been doing it sounds like so far is he’s doing good with just staying with his regimen. And that’s how he had some success last year. He had three really good weeks in practice and everything he did during the day in meetings and that’s why he was able to have good games. That’s what we need from him, we just need that consistency.”
(What about WR Leonte Carroo) – “We’ve just got to keep bringing him along. When you’re trying to figure a guy out that’s not in your top three it’s always as easy as you’d think. The longer I’d been around him the more we’ve kind of figured out how we need to use him. He’s done a good job trying to figure out his role on special teams and where he really fits in with those receivers. With free agency it is where it is right now. We’ve got to figure out where’s he going to fit it? Do we still have (WR) Kenny (Stills)? Are we going to lose him? We’re not sure about that. So our group, our young guys have got to be ready to step up.”
(Where do you start in building the run defense) – “I’d like to say up front but we’ve got a pretty good front. So we’ve got to make sure we do a good job with our linebackers. We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got our safeties healthy and those guys have got to be huge contributors to what we’re going to do. We’ve got to get some more guys to help (LB) Kiko (Alonso) out. We’ve got to keep him healthy. I think that front four is pretty good as far as what we have right now. We need some consistency out of (DT) Jordan (Phillips), which I think we’re going to get this year. I like where our D-ends are at right now. Obviously, (DT Ndamukong) Suh, I don’t have to talk about him because he’s probably the best in the business. And if we can get a couple of more D-ends to help out what we already have that would be very helpful for us.”
(Comfortable with DT Jordan Phillips playing 45-50 snaps a game) – “That’s where he we need to get. He knows it. We talked about it before the end of last season that we need to get his reps up. Twenty five plays a game is not really going to do anything for us. We need his snaps to get up, we have shorten snaps on defense altogether and that starts with the offense holding onto the ball and the defense getting off the field on third down. If we can do that it’s going to be better for us as a whole team. So if we can get Jordan to that 45, 50 snaps per game, that’s what we’re looking for.”
(How do you feel about WR Kenny Stills returning) – “I don’t know. One day I feel good about it, one day I feel like crap about it. I hate free agency. You just want to get your guys back. Kenny and myself have a very close relationship. The worst thing about the NFL is sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes the money is what guys are looking for. Kenny, obviously, he’d love to stay here but he’s going to stay for the right price and what’s comfortable for him and I don’t think anybody would blame him for that.”
(If Jay Ajayi will be their featured back in 2017) – “I think so. I think he was really that for us last year. We were trying to use all three of those guys because they’re different skill sets and they’re good. We do need more snaps on offense, which would entail him getting more carries. He did a great job off coming along last year. We really felt good with the run scheme we were doing, just sticking his foot in the ground and getting vertical and running through tackles. If he didn’t lead the league, he was up there in yards after contact. It was really a great thing to see, his development throughout the year. Hopefully we can go even further with the passing game. He did a do good job of improving in that area. Hopefully we can take an even bigger step.”
(How his opinion of Ryan Tannehill has changed in the last year) – “I don’t know how much it’s changed. I think it’s really probably more perception for everyone else outside. I was able to just be with him that spring and see who he was and how he went about his business, his athletic ability and his ability to be accurate and throw down the field. It was really a matter of time of just showing it in a game. Which he did. We went through some rough times early in the season. I probably put it more on myself than him. It was us trying to figure each other out, all the guys on offense trying to figure each other out. As we got going and we kind of rolled a little bit last year, he really played well and did exactly what we needed him to do. Guys made plays when they had to, third downs there were some plays that he made there, and ad libbed a lot during the season. When he got hurt, I think that was an even bigger development for him. Just seeing him in meetings. I told him in the season, ‘You’re actually going to grow for the better because of this.’ He took a different mentality in our meetings. You saw him teaching, coaching a little more, and guys accepting it. That was probably a good thing for him, even though for all of us to watch him in a cast and on crutches. At the end of the day, it was probably good for him.”
(Concerned about Tannehill’s mobility?) – “No. He feels good about it. He feels good about the brace he’s going to wear. I’m not worried about it.”
(If he was surprised to lose Vance Joseph after just one year as defensive coordinator) – “Not really. We kind of, when we hired him, we knew that there was a possibility this could happen. I’ve known Vance for a long time. This was my eighth year kind of being around him. The relationship we’ve had, we worked together in 2008. And then being around him as a defensive coordinator, I was not going to be shocked. I knew there were some jobs open. He was a guy that people were going to want to talk to. I just kept thinking to myself, ‘It would be hard for a team to turn him down.’ When he gets in a room, his presence and the command he has around people, that would be a tough guy to walk away from and be like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to hire him.’ Anybody would have been running to try to grab him up.”
(If Joseph’s presence in the room is his best asset) – “I think it’s one of his best assets. But I would say his football IQ and the things he does schematically are very good as well.”
(Why Mario Williams didn’t pan out in Miami) – “I think it was, Mario went through a lot of things that we kind of kept in-house early in the season. It really was some personal things. It seemed like one thing after another that was going on with him, and he probably didn’t have as great a spring as he wanted to, and when he came back for training camp, at his age, I think it caught up to him a little bit. He was fighting to get in great shape and make sure [he was doing] the injury prevention type thing. It was one of those years that it just didn’t work out for him it didn’t work out for us. I know that he was trying to do everything he could to contribute. It just wasn’t his year for him with us and vice versa.”
(If he saw pass-catching tight end as a glaring need during his postseason evaluation) – “Not really. We liked where our guys were at. There were some things that I wanted to really try to do with Jordan [Cameron] at the beginning of the season. I couldn’t really click with him. I was trying to figure out what was best. I don’t know how many times I went back and watched Cleveland tape the year he had 80 catches to see what was I doing wrong, what did I have to try to do. We tried to emphasize that a little more as we got going. And when we lost him, I think Dion [Sims] did exactly what we needed him to do. I think we held him back a little bit and didn’t let him do some of the things that he probably could have done more of. We’ll see what goes on moving forward. I’ve got an idea of what we want to do. Obviously, I have to wait until March 9. I kind of know what you’re leaning toward here. There’s a good plan in place.”
(Is there a difference in Year 2 working with a QB?) – “Yeah. After that first year, you really feel more comfortable—especially as a player, to be able to go through things that you want to see more and what you want to do and the point of emphasis that you want to do during practice. Then when you head into games, you know exactly what you want called. I think Ryan is really comfortable with what he wants now and he’s not gonna be afraid to communicate it with me. I think even towards the end of last year he was really good at making sure I knew what he felt about what we were doing, and if I called something he didn’t like, he wasn’t afraid to let me know, which is good and bad. Quarterbacks that I’ve been around that are aggressive will let you know when they don’t like something, and that’s where I want him to be and I want him to feel like this is his and he can say whatever he wants when he needs to say it and I’m gonna be able to react to it. At the end of the day, he’s playing and I’m not. Our job is to put him in the best position possible along with the rest of our players.”
(Cam Wake’s role in 2017) – “We’d like to do, really, what we kind of wanted to do last year. We just kept getting in positions to where we were so far behind that the other team could just run it and we weren’t doing a good job of rotating him in there and making sure that he was getting the amount of snaps that he needed. Obviously we want him to be the starter. We would like him to really play the downs that are gonna matter. We’d like to have him in there more on pass-rush downs. If we could actually get a lead, that would be nice to let him rush the passer. We need to do some retooling on both sides of the ball to make sure that we’re giving our offense more plays and our defense less plays, and we actually need to play with a lead.”
(How’d you establish a ‘tough love’ voice as a rookie head coach?) – “I just felt like I was gonna do exactly what I’ve always done, and that’s just—The brutal honesty part, you try to stick with that. Just communicate with guys. Just don’t lie to players. That’s the first thing I learned when got in this profession: tell them the truth, tell them straight. Foxy (John Fox) always told me just don’t B.S. them. Tell them exactly what you want and hit them between the eyes, and they’ll respect that. They might not like it, but they’ll get over it.”
(Kenyan Drake’s rookie year) – “He had some good days and some bad days. He did a great job when we got him in the game. He made some plays. He’s a guy that we’re looking to lean on a little bit more next year. We’d like to find some ways to get him and Damien in, but at the same time not take away from Jay. We have three really talented players at the running back position that we’d like to find ways to get in the game. Kenyan’s somebody that we’re really interested in trying to find some good matchups for.”
(Secondary needs another veteran corner?) – “I think our secondary will take whatever help they can get right now. As many corners as you can get, and safeties—I think the way the league’s going right now, you better have guys that can play both post safety and come down and tackle and at corner you need as many as you can. You saw last year, it felt like somebody was out every week. The more corners we can get, the better. I like the guys we have right now. I love how they work. I love the way they’ve been trying to get better, but at the end of the day we just need more bodies.”
(Chris Grier’s role in the draft?) – “He’s the guy we really lean on to organize everything and then on draft day, he’s the guy that sets it up. We’re really leaning on his choice. We feel comfortable with the roles that we all have. I know a lot of people see three of us working together and always think, ‘How can that work?’ but we do a good job of communicating and everybody doing their job. I’d say Chris has got way more of an ego than he puts on. That’s a good thing. He does a great job with how we organize everything and really puts all that stuff together. He’s somebody that’s probably a voice of reason for me and Mike (Tannenbaum).”
(Some players weren’t invited to the Combine because off-field issues) – “No chance you’re getting me to answer this.”
