Clyde Christensen – October 19, 2017
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Thursday, October 19, 2017
Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen
(How difficult was life without WR DeVante Parker last week and how do you anticipate moving forward this week?) – “We still just keep holding out hope. He’s had some Lazarus experiences out there where he’s showed up at the last second from the dead, so we still keep hoping. We’re so used to it now. I’m not saying that to be cute, we’re just used to it. People fill in and you go and we get a big play out of ‘19’ (Jakeem Grant) and so that’s just the way it is. I think the whole league, but certainly Miami, we kind of thrive on that stuff. It’s harder without him. It’s harder without him but guys fill in and go, and we’re kind of built for that, so that’s a plus.”
(Is your tight end package more evolution based on life without WR DeVante Parker or was that just game plan?) – “It was just game plan. Yes, it was just game plan, because we really didn’t know we wouldn’t have DeVante until the end of the week and kind of the same thing (this week), who knows. But it was just part of the game plan and its part of trying to get (Anthony) Fasano in there a little bit more, trying to change up the personnel groups a little bit. We knew on the road that we’re going to have to close the edges a little bit and run the ball, so all the above right there.”
(How do you explain all the dropped passes?) – “I don’t have one. I do know this, that you just keep trucking. We make an awful lot of one-handed catches and great catches too, and they’re going to balance out. You just keep drilling it and you keep emphasizing it and Jay (Ajayi) had a couple of them that I know he’d love to have back. With him, it’s kind of an issue that he doesn’t practice every single day, so he probably needs the extra reps in the passing game, but when you get him in there you want to get your runs called. I think he just gets more and more. He’s still a million miles ahead of a year and a half ago when we first got here, receiving wise – I’m talking about (Jay) Ajayi – but he’s not where we want him to be. He’s getting there. He works hard at it and then sometimes when they’re working on his knee and he has to rest that thing a little bit, then he doesn’t get that extra work. That’s where it takes a toll. I don’t see it as epidemic, maybe; but I do see it as a factor. We’ve got to make those plays and it’s not as much just dropping easy balls, it’s not making big plays. You just need big plays. You need someone to make a big catch. We need to catch the deep one to Julius (Thomas). We need to run that down and hook that thing up. We need to pull one off our shoelaces on that slant that can go for 40 (yards) or we’ve got to throw the ball better or something; but somebody – they’re kind of 50/50 deals where somebody has to make a play. We just keep emphasizing it. We keep emphasizing it and just keep working. I do think, again, it sounds like an excuse and it’s not, but just the more Jay (Cutler) gets comfortable with these guys and they get comfortable with Jay, I think it’ll make it easier. We make everything hard. We do everything the hard way for some reason and so hopefully that’s going to translate. We’re going to get better and better gradually at it and make some of those plays.”
(What did you like most about what C Jake Brendel do?) – “I liked Brendel because he jumped in there and went without a hiccup. I thought he played really well. I think he’d probably tell you he wants … There’s three plays maybe that come to my mind, that really weren’t hard plays and he would make them; but overall, (it was a) really solid performance. I think it was you’re in the bullpen, you warm up, (Mike) Pouncey was kind of fighting through that thing and so you’re kind of up, you’re down, you’re up, you’re down, then you’re in there. Then you’ve got the rest of the game and it’s not … For a center, that’s the hardest ballpark to go into because it’s on the road, it’s indoors, it’s noisy. For him to go in and us not to miss a beat, us not have to change anything was big, and I thought he really played well. It was really encouraging and I think he would have played great if you took three plays that he’s going to make this week if he gets another chance.”
(The improved play of the offensive line, was it anything you guys did minor that we didn’t see to clean things up or was it them playing better?) – “I don’t think so. I think we just played better. I think we blocked better, we got off the ball better, we ran better. We did everything better. So I didn’t see anything. I do think you saw some, a little bit of variation in the run game, some gap schemes and a couple of little change ups in there that may have given us a lift. They weren’t perfect but they maybe gave us a little bit of a lift there, just to give them a couple of looks they hadn’t seen, and Coach Gase did a good job mixing them in there. I think all of the above right there.”
(After the last Jets game, I think the first thing Head Coach Adam Gase said was, he said “They just beat the blank out of us.” What need to change? What needs to be different?) – “A really, really easy question. We have to be as physical as them. When we leave the field, we have to have out-physicaled them. They know it. We know it. Players know it. (It was) really, really obvious that they got after us physically. They were underneath us. They got their pads under our pads and we’ve got to play with better leverage and we’ve got to match their intensity physically and it’s going to be a physical ball game. Then we’ve got to make those plays. We were one-of-15 on third and fourth down. You don’t get many chances, you don’t get a chance to wear them down, you don’t get a chance for them to have to stay on the field a little bit, which is all helpful. We were dismal on third and fourth down and that leads to a lot of problems. That keeps them fresh, they’re not on the field very long, etc., etc., etc. But the bottom line is they did out-physical us in the ball game and that can’t happen.”
(You have no experience at all with QB Jay Cutler prior to this season correct?) – “That’s right.”
(So have you found QB Jay Cutler him to be interesting to work with based on the image that he might have had coming in and the reputation? Or what have you enjoyed about coaching him?) – “Really, Coach Gase and (Quarterbacks) Coach (Bo) Hardegree handle him the most. They have an experience with him so I’m not in there a bunch with him. I don’t know him great, but I think probably it has been fun, because you hear or you just watch … I had what you guys had – just what people said and then watching him on TV. I’ve found him to be really pleasant. He’s fit in. He’s got a humility to him and I think he just goes to work. He just works. I’ve enjoyed that about him and I think he’s improving. You love a guy who’s retired and just missed … He wants to play football. I appreciate that about a guy, that he wants to play football and he comes off the couch and catches a plane and everything we’ve asked him to do, he does. That’s probably the most impressive thing about him. And I think a calmness. A guy like him who misses all that stuff, right? You can could get really anxious and tight and all of those things and that’s not been the case with him. He’s been relaxed and he just keeps grinding in some tough situations.”
(We’ve seen WR Jarvis Landry get touchdowns in the last two games. Up until then, what have you seen from the way teams defend him in the red zone. Is it any different from other receivers for example?) – “I don’t think so. I think, again, we just have so few trips to the red zone. Again, it was a number of snaps, it was a number of trips. I think we were the lowest number by far of trips to the red zone. I think when we have gotten down there, he’s been extremely productive. We’ve just got to get down there more, which happened in Atlanta. Then all of a sudden you have a chance to dial up, right? Coach Gase has his little section on the game plan that he wants to get to and we have to get him to the red zone so he can use them. That happened in the game (last week) and (Landry’s) extremely productive. He has a gigantic catch radius. He can catch it with one hand, two hands, whatever he needs to do, and that makes him really dangerous down there, because all you need to do is find an open hand, stick it there and he is going to have a chance to catch it. He’s an extremely good red zone receiver and we’ve just got to get down there and get more chances to throw it to him.”
(Do you craft two different game plans? One with WR Devante Parker and one without him?) – “Not really. We really just game plan it. The trouble for us is just personnel-ing it up for Jakeem (Grant) to know, ‘Hey, if he plays and I may be in (three wide), I may be at Z. And if he doesn’t play, I may be at X.’ I think it does cause some cross training of those guys, but I don’t think it’s as much game planning as it is harder on the wide outs, it’s harder on the tight ends. ‘Where am I going to be lined up in this game?’ All of a sudden (Parker) shows up, he makes a miraculous recover, he’s in the ball game and bang, now all of the personnel groups … Something that maybe you practiced out of a different way when you were the left receiver, now you’re at the slot on the right. I think it’s more of that, and it kind of falls on Jarvis (Landry) and Kenny (Stills) to get us lined up correctly. That’s where the pressure really comes, almost more than the call sheet or dialing them up for Coach Gase. I think you make your plans without him. If you get him, he’s a bonus; but you can’t afford to base a ton on him and then all of a sudden he doesn’t play. I think you kind of make your game plan without him and if he shows up, great. Then we’ll adjust from there. We’ll find some ways to give him a couple of shots and then he’ll just fit into the game plan.”
(You had so much more success in 12 personnel and 13 personnel in the run game) – “Yes, I don’t know. I don’t know that. I don’t know. It’s just kind of week to week and something gets going. There’s probably no explanation for it. We do it a lot. We’re doing it a lot. I don’t really have an explanation for you on that. I didn’t see anything that jumped out. We’ll mix it up again. I think some of it is just the mixing it up. We got in (three tight ends). We threw the three tight ends in there a little bit and I think that gives you a different surface and closes some edges. That’s part of it. I think the change up, and I think again – I always say this to you guys – the more snaps you get, the more variation you give them, and the more they don’t get into a rhythm and you do get into a rhythm, and you can show some different stuff. That’s what I thought Coach Gase did a great job of in the Atlanta game is just mixing it up. It is three wide (receivers), then it is two wide (receivers), then it is three tight ends. He was kind of in and out of his stuff and it was because in the second half, we converted some third downs. You got extra snaps. That’s big. That’s really, really big.”
