Adam Gase – June 13, 2017
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Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase
(What are you looking for specifically from QB Ryan Tannehill in this three-day minicamp?) – “Really, nothing has changed for us. This is just a continuation of what we’re doing from OTAs. We just have a different format with us being able to do the walkthrough in the afternoon. I’m just always looking for consistency and mastery of the offense and communication with him and the skill guys and the offensive line.”
(When did you lose your voice?) – “The last couple of days.”
(Are you sick?) – “Yes, a little bit.”
(How would you describe QB Ryan Tannehill’s consistency throughout the OTAs and into today?) – “He’s gotten better throughout the entire offseason process. You can see he’s more comfortable with what we’re doing. He has a really good grasp of every little detail that we’re trying to fine tune. When you start being able to put your spin on how you see things and you have the ability to change plays at the line of scrimmage, when you feel really great with where you are in the offense, you have a lot of confidence to make those adjustments before the ball is actually snapped.”
(I know you guys probably track every single throw he makes. How has the accuracy and ball placement been throughout?) – “It’s been really good. We’ve had some days where he’s probably a little picky on when he misses a throw. He’s pretty hard on himself. It’s a good thing because he wants to be held as accountable as anybody else. He wants those guys to have extreme confidence that when they really run a great route and they create major separation, he’s putting them in a position to not only catch the ball but he wants to give them a ball where they can catch and continue their momentum and give them a chance to run after the catch. I think that’s a high priority for him always, is making sure that he’s throwing the best ball possible to give those guys a chance to run after catch.”
(Will DT Ndamukong Suh be out the rest of minicamp or was it just today?) – “No. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
(WR Isaiah Ford kind of showed up today. How would you describe his spring so far?) – “He’s improved as it’s gone on. Any time you’re a younger player and coming into this league and you play wide receiver, it’s a little more difficult than what you realize. It’s a lot of adjustments. There are a lot of things that you haven’t seen coming to this level. The defenses really do a good job of changing things up and making things difficult and you have to read a lot of things on the run. He’s able to visualize what we’re talking about in the meeting rooms and then transfer it onto the field. It’s not an easy thing for a young player to do because a lot of times these guys need to see it before they do it where he actually can see it when we’re talking about it, showing it to him on tape, and he’ll get it a lot of times on the first attempt. It’s just the volume can kind of overwhelm you every once in a while. You’ll see it occasionally catch up to him. We’ve got a few OTAs in and you can see it kind of bogging down and slowing him down a little bit; but then he bounced back and started really having some practices where he improved and made some strides. That’s all you’re looking for. You want these guys to keep improving and then once you get into training camp, you want them to be able to play as fast as possible.”
(Last year your offense obviously went through a transformation. Earlier in the year you wanted to be more up-tempo at the line and then in the huddle, you went RB Jay Ajayi-heavy. Is this kind of the time to figure out what that’s going to be again? Do you want to be that no-huddle, fast-paced type of offense?) – “I think every year it’s, once again, we’re starting over from every facet – offense, defense and special teams. We’re always going to kind of start fast. It’s easier to hit the brakes than it is to try to speed up. You always try to stay somewhat up-tempo. I think it helps the defense as well because it forces guys to make the calls and it keeps a great tempo for practice and guys moving around. There’s not a lot of standing around and that’s what you want. Today was a good deal for me just kind of standing back and watching and just seeing how fast some of the calls were coming in and how fast those guys were getting lined up and ready to play, and the calls were coming out and they were ready to go. I think when you can do that in this part of the season to where every week is kind of a little bit of a different theme as far as what we’re doing situationally, it’s a good start to our process. When you hit training camp, once again, you somewhat start over to see where you’re at, at that point. Then as you go through training camp, you try to figure out who you’re going to become during the season. Last year, we obviously found out that it can change midway through the season or at the beginning of the season. It’s just an evolving process. You’re just trying to set yourself up to where when you get into those November and December games, you have some kind of identity of what you really want to become or what you have become, and now it’s about mastering that through those two months and see if you make that push to get into the tournament.”
(Obviously the ‘Zero In’ thing is kind of the slogan this year. Having the players know what they’re doing, would that make it a lot easier to go fast this year?) – “It would, but it’s an entire group effort because it doesn’t do any good if we go three-and-out, three-and-out, three-and-out and we keep putting the defense out there and we’re not moving the ball on offense and they’re constantly on the field. Now all of a sudden we’re lopsided play-wise to where there’s 40 defensive plays and 15 offensive plays. Then you get into the fourth quarter and you get back into the game but now all of a sudden your defense is dead tired and it’s hard for them to stop anybody. That’s where we put ourselves in some bad situations last year to where the defense played so well for so long and then when you need them to help finish that game off – because we finally got back into the game – they’ve burned it all trying to keep us in the game. That’s where we just need to do a better job of keeping those two sides of the ball more balanced, as far as the play number goes. If we can do that, then you have the opportunity to kind of keep that higher tempo of speed on offense; but if you’re not moving the ball consistently, if you’re not getting those first downs and staying on the field, then there’s really no point to doing it.”
(When you look at RB Jay Ajayi now versus a year ago, are you seeing a lot of really fine-tuned improvements, particularly mentally, from him?) – “Yes, that would probably be beyond an understatement. It’s slowed down for him a lot from where we were last year at this time compared to where we are right now. The questions that he brings up to us are very detailed. They’re really beyond next-level questions. They’re almost kind of quarterback-ish questions for a running back. I love the way … His intrigue into every little detail of what’s going on at his position has been outstanding. He wants to be a guy that can be counted on first, second and third down. You can tell he does not want to come off the field. I know everybody gets concerned with the amount of carries and his physical style of running, and we’ll handle that as we go; but I love the mentality that he has right now of he wants to be a guy that is relied on as he’s our bell cow. At the same time, he’s our top third-down guy and red area and 2-minute guy. He wants to be the guy that no matter what the situation is, that we will have him in the game.”
(With the way you’re working now, non-contact, are you going to be able to see any kind of manifestation of some of those mental improvements from RB Jay Ajayi?) – “Absolutely. Just because it’s no pads doesn’t mean you can’t see where … A lot of times it’s going to the right guy in the right situation, especially in protection. You start getting into some of these exotic fronts that teams run and we’ll set some periods up to where we’re doing some fronts that are tough pick-ups, and he’s got to be on it with the quarterback and go to the right guy. You can see on film, you can watch how their heads are kind of looking around or if he’s looking at the right guy and then going to the right guy. As far as everything I’ve seen right now, he’s really, really taking it to the next level.”
(In your eyes, has RB Jay Ajayi become a better pass catcher or route runner at this point?) – “Yes, he’s really spent a lot of time on that. A lot of it is to his credit because he’s done it when he wasn’t around here. I’m going to say he must have spent a ton of time with his routes on his own and catching the ball. Whoever he was either … The guys he was working with, whether it was Ryan (Tannehill) or the other quarterbacks or if he was working with somebody else or working out somewhere else, he really must have spent a lot of time because he is on every little detail and way more comfortable catching the ball. He’s very hard on himself. Even if he slightly bobbles a ball, it’ll almost … You have to de-compress him a little bit because you don’t want him to be as angry as he gets because he’s striving for perfection so hard. We’ve been talking about, ‘Hey, when something like that happens, we’ve got to move on to the next play and we’ve got to clear the conscience and move on and learn from that experience.’ As we’ve gone through this, he’s done a better job of even that, of trying to make sure if he has a slight hiccup somewhere, ‘I’m moving on to the next thing.’
(I think there a point where you were sort of half kidding when you said that you would be open to giving RB Jay Ajayi the ball 22-25 times a game, because that would mean that you’re going to be doing a lot of winning. And that got blown into ‘You’re going to give him the ball 350 times this year,’ or 400 times. Is that serious?) – “I guess every game is so different. It’s hard to make end of year predictions, because every game is such a story on its own. You wish you could say it’s going to be 22-25 times every game, but I’ve been involved in games where we’re had 47 plays on offense and scored 42 points. It’s so crazy. Then we had 12 rushes. You just never know what’s going to happen within a game. You stay aware of what’s going on. You understand how many carries there have been. Nobody probably even counts – how many carries did Jay have last year where we had a holding penalty or something like that and it doesn’t get counted on the stat sheet officially. We look at the amount of attempts he had last year, well how many of those were considered no-plays? I know he didn’t consider them no-plays because he got stroked by somebody. You have to be conscious as a coaching staff of ‘we’re getting up there in numbers. Let’s be aware of it.’ Each week, that’s our job is to come in and take a look at that. Sometimes there are certain running backs that find ways not to really take that square shot. The way that he runs, he’s taken … He’s taken some big hits last year but there were a lot of times where they’re glancing blows or he sees a guy coming or he delivers the blow. Every run has its own little narrative behind it. As coaches, you just have to stay on it. The communication is really a huge thing as well with him. Constantly, every week, I’m always going to him and am like, ‘How are you feeling?’ I’ll check on Monday, Tuesday, even Wednesday to see how is he recovering, how does he feel compared to where he was last week, because if he says he’s still hurting on Thursday, then I knew we worked him pretty good last week and it’s affected him a little more than what I initially realized. You have to stay on it throughout the week and then throughout the year.”
