Adam Gase – December 8, 2016
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Thursday, December 8, 2016
Head Coach Adam Gase
(RB Jay Ajayi is 92 yards from a 1,000-yard season. Based on the summer and everything, could you have foreseen this kind of season from him?) – “I think we had a good feeling that our total yardage with our running back group was going to be probably where it is. I don’t know if we could have predicted that we were going to have one guy that was going to be able to statistically get up there, 1,000 (yards) or over. And that was just because when we were going into the season, we felt like we were going to use multiple guys. We did feel like we were going to get all four of those guys involved in what we were doing. So we didn’t know if we’d really have enough touches to say a guy was going to have a 1,000-yard season.”
(Do you think that that 1,000 yard barometer is still a valuable barometer in the NFL?) – “I think so. It’s not an easy accomplishment. I know I’ve been on a couple of teams that we had those types of backs, and sometimes the numbers don’t show that. To do that, you have to be available a lot of the times. It’s about kind of that durability factor, and we’ve all seen how the league’s gone as far as trends with the running backs, and it seems like it’s coming back a little bit, where you’re seeing teams like Dallas and obviously we’re feeling pretty good about what we’ve got going on. There are other teams that are leaning on the running back a little more now.”
(Arizona’s got some eye-popping stats all across the board. Have you figured out why they’re under .500?) – “It’s hard for us to look at records and rankings sometimes. You turn on the tape and you go off of that. When you’re on one side of the ball, you really focus on that side and you really lose track of the overall record because you’re trying to figure out a way to win that week on your side of the ball. With me, I kind of pay attention to all three phases. You can see sometimes what happens is you have some untimely turnovers that may cost you a game here or there. Some things that are unexpected happen, whether it be in special teams. That’s why this league is what it is. That’s why it’s so competitive. It’s so unpredictable, and you may have the right squad out there and sometimes the game doesn’t turn out the way you want it to.”
(QB Ryan Tannehill had obviously been playing so well and the first pick last Sunday hadn’t been his fault. How do you think he played last Sunday overall?) – “I don’t think we really had anybody that was really where we wanted them to be. I know he wanted a better performance out of himself. We just have to get to a point where, when things are not going as planned, we have to find a way to make plays. I always look at myself first with how do we get our playmakers the ball? I didn’t really do that with the play calling. I probably forced the ball on a couple of things with some of our play calls and put our o-line in a bad position. I need to really stick with Jay (Ajayi), because he’s kind of the guy that can open a lot more things up. It was just we all took our turns last week. It was all of us having a bad game at the same time.”
(Did you do any studying on Cardinals RB David Johnson when he was coming into the draft?) – “We did, because we were in the running back market. We evaluated … If you had a pulse, we evaluated you in Chicago. He was impressive. One thing I do remember, I just remember so many explosive plays. It was almost like we were trying to figure out how big he was before we saw him, because on tape it almost looked like he was a grown man playing against smaller players, but he was going against Iowa and some of those other schools, where he was playing at a different speed than everybody else.”
(When it comes to Cardinals RB David Johnson, he was a guy in high school that played a lot wide receiver. They didn’t know if he was even going to play the running back position. Now you guys have a guy like RB Kenyan Drake, who plays some receiver. Do you feel like he has a similar skill set and can do some of those types of same things?) – “He can, but I do think that they’re different – different styles of players. What we do with Drake, we are trying to expand what he does for us as much as possible, but at the same time him being a young player, we have to understand that the more we put on his plate, that’s more for him to really have to process. The thing with him is we want him to be able to play fast, because that’s what gives him a little bit of an advantage over some of the defenders in this league, especially linebackers when he gets on those guys. His speed is really a problem for a lot of those guys. We try to be smart with what we do with him. We don’t try to overload him. We try to make sure that he knows exactly all of the adjustments he has to make and that he can play fast. We don’t want him to think and we want him to react.”
(Any feel yet as to whether this will be the week for CB Xavien Howard?) – “I don’t know right now. We just keep putting his name next to somebody else and we just keep waiting until Saturday and figure out what we want to do that night.”
(I know you have always had the next-man-up mentality, but what has it been like as a defense to play without your entire starting linebacking unit? I mean you’ve lost LB [Koa Misi] early. LB Jelani Jenkins is off and on and now you might have to play without LB Kiko Alonso. What is that challenge like? Does it force you to switch how you’ve got to play?) – “I think it says a lot for what (Linebackers Coach) Matt Burke’s doing in getting his guys ready. I think it says a lot for ‘V.J.,’ (Defensive Coordinator Vance Joseph) trying to put our guys in the right position. This league, that’s what it is. We’re not the only team with injuries, especially multiple injuries to one position. It is about getting guys prepared, and that’s why you go through the spring. That’s why you go through training camp. You try to get these guys as prepared as possible so when something like this happens, to where all of a sudden we’re so banged up to where we have a completely crew in there and we have to switch personnel around just to function to where we can get the right guys in there, that’s what this league is. It’s who can adjust and then who can make it work at the end of the day.”
(Through 12 games, wins and losses, good times, bad times, you seem to be pretty even. How do you manage that and have you ever lost your [cool] with this team?) – “That’s a good question. Every day is a different day. I think our coaching staff and the players have done a good job with staying with what we’ve talked about one week at a time. When we were in the situation where we were in training camp, where we lost a couple guys here and there, and you’re trying to put everything together, and you’re really starting over, if you look too far ahead, it can either frustrate you or really take you off the course that you want to be on, which is focusing on getting better for that day. I think our guys do like the fact that we stay in the moment. We’re not trying to get ahead of ourselves. We don’t look back at all. We try to improve on what we did, and move on and get better off of that. Really, that’s been our main focus and our guys embracing that helps me as well, because it doesn’t allow me to do that. And if I did that, they’d call me out really fast. Our guys are not shy about letting me know if I say something and then go back on what I said. So for me, it’s been a great thing for me, as a coach, to be held accountable by our players of, ‘We’re talking about this game. We’re not worried about last game.’ So that’s really been helpful for me.”
(Another big picture question for you, when you became head coach, what did you learn about yourself to be in that top position?) – “I think the first thing that I learned was you can’t do everything on your own. You have to use the resources you have and being involved with (Executive Vice President of Football Operations) Mike Tannenbaum and (General Manager) Chris Grier, they do such a good job of one: handling so much of the personnel stuff to where my focus is coaching the team. But also, Mike’s been around a long time, and he’s dealt with a whole bunch of different head coaches. Just those little suggestions here and there to help me free up time to be able to help the offense more or to get with the defense to give my two cents or special teams, that has probably been the biggest thing of just allowing myself time to listen. That’s where Mike’s really come in to help me, more than anything, with those little tiny suggestions, that don’t seem like a big deal at the time, but we end up doing something like that and it opens up a lot of things for myself and the coaching staff.
(How cognizant have you been along the way of the fact that the eyes are on you? Like you’re talking about here where players are hearing your message, you’re setting the message, you’re setting the tone and the importance of being aware that because of how it affects the performance.) – “That’s the hardest thing for me is to make sure what I say is I’m following that same message. Sometimes when you’re in coaching, you get kind of in that bunker mentality and your mind can kind of go all over the place. You have to do a good job of staying in the moment, focusing on what we’re doing at that moment, instead of worrying about all of the other things that possibly could be going on. That’s where your coaching staff gets involved, your personnel, your front office – all of those guys are there to make sure all of us stay on track, don’t go outside of that box and really focus on the moment.”
(You’ve said that you kind of feel this, I don’t know a week or two stretch – or even the final four games – you’re going to learn about your team. What elements do you expect to come to the surface over the next week or so?) – “This week, I want to see how we rebound from really all of us not doing our jobs well enough. I’ve loved the way our guys came in on Monday, they found a way to learn from that tape and it’s not easy to watch. When you put something, ‘I don’t like that,’ and you’ve done a good job of getting better week in and week out the previous six weeks, that’s a tough pill to swallow – that we went in there, we played cautious, and they took advantage of us and they poured it on us. And there was nothing we could do. We just were not good enough. To go in there and watch that, and then have to learn from that and correct it, get that day off on Tuesday, and then come back Wednesday and go to work, I thought guys did a great job of moving past that last one, learning from it, and then now pushing forward to the next one. When we show up on Sunday, we know what we’re going to get from that team. We know we’re going to get their ‘A’ game. We know we’re going to get their best performance, and we have to meet that challenge and we have to make sure that whatever we have, we have to give it.”
(Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen said something today – you know how Clyde is (laughter) – where your five-star players need to be playing like five-star players. Do you feel like you’re getting that from everybody in the high-ranked district area of the team?) – “I think a high percentage of the time, yes. I think we’ve all had our moments where we could look back after a game, where we’re like – we need that player or coach, as far as play-callers go – we need to do better. But a high percentage of the time, I think we have. I think our big-time players have played big time a lot of the times. Has there been a couple of games where I’m sure some guys would rather have back or a couple plays back to get them over that hump of really impacting the game? I’m sure. You want as many as you can. It might not be 16-for-16. But if we’re getting 13 or 14 like that, that’s a big step for us.”
(Is there anything significant to report with any of the guys coming off injury?) – “Not that I can think of.”
(And why yellow [no-contact practice] jerseys now?) – “I don’t know. Why not?” (laughter)
