Adam Gase – November 11, 2017
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Saturday, November 11, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase
(The decision with T Ja’Wuan James, I guess the second opinion validated the first?) – “Yes.”
(What is the nature of the injury?) – “I don’t know. It’s like a hamstring-ish type thing. They were trying to explain it to me, I was pretty much like, ‘Okay, we’re getting too deep here.’ This is the best decision for him. Really, it’s going to be about him just getting healthy again. He’s got a lot of time right now, so once he gets this going, we’ll just see how quickly this heals for him.”
(Does T Ja’Wuan James require surgery?) – “Yes, I think it looks like that’s what’s going to happen; but I don’t want to say 100 percent and be wrong, so we’ll kind of see.”
(Is there a chance that T Ja’Wuan James would be able to return for a playoff game if he was healthy enough?) – “That’s hard for me to answer right now. We’re a ways away from that right now.”
(Did he tear it?) – “Once again, a lot of the times I don’t ask all of the details because we’ve got to get to the next decision and we just knew where we were at as far as possibly him being out for a good amount of time and possible surgery.”
(C Mike Pouncey went back-to-back practices this week for the first time all year. What led to that?) – “Probably more him. He feels like he needs to be out there more. It was a good thing. We’ll be smart. We’re not going to give him a gazillion reps, but him going out there, especially on the day we work on third down, (was important). We have a lot to clean up there, which has been pretty obvious, so I think he feels like he can help in that area and it starts in practice.”
(The good teams, as you would know from experience, start playing their best football at this time of the year in November and December. What goes right in those scenarios? What do you have to do to make sure you’re peaking at the right time?) – “You get better in the beginning of the year. That’s why when people panic (after) the first four games, don’t. Just keep going to work and getting a good Wednesday, Thursday, Friday in, get better in the game. That’s what makes me excited in the second half of the season. I saw improvement over the last few weeks. Really it was last week. It was a big jump (from) that Thursday game to this last game. We’ve got some things to clean up, which we’re always going to have; but if we just keep finding ways to get better, it will fall the right way for us.”
(We talked to Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen yesterday, and he suggested that a pride factor of being on national television twice and not showing up – certainly in the first game and losing close in the second – bothered him a little. Do you feel that sense in the locker room?) – “I think any time we lose, it bothers guys. At the same time, they’ve got to look at big picture and they’ve got to look at process over outcome sometimes. They’ve got to see where we’ve done things better and they have to really take a look at things that we haven’t improved on and that’s what we’ve got to get better at. It’s fairly obvious that one of the things we need to correct is our penalty situation on offense. Sometimes it shows up; sometimes it’s been pretty clean. We’ve made a big emphasis to make sure we’re doing it in practice right. That’s why we have officials out here. We keep looking at, ‘Does it correlate between practice and games?’ It’s hard to really tell, because sometimes it may not be called exactly the same. We don’t have as many guys out there. If we clean some of that stuff up, I think we’ll see a different result.”
(Has it been relatively clean this week, would you say?) – “I think guys have really focused on doing things right. It starts in individual when you’re using the proper technique, you’re understanding what you’re trying to do, your assignment. When you put all of those pieces together, that gives you the best chance of having a clean play. I think our guys are really working towards that.”
(With the officiating, do you instruct the officials that are here to tighten it up or be more aggressive in their calls?) – “They’re pretty aggressive as it is, so I don’t think we have to tell them to tighten it up. The hard thing is we have three and it’s hard to see everything, so we may miss a few here and there, but those guys do a good job to make sure they call it like they would if it was an NFL game. They don’t have the numbers. That’s really the biggest thing.”
(Do you expect the chemistry between S Reshad Jones and S T.J. McDonald to pick up where it left off in the summer or is it going to be…?) – “I think we have a good chance for that to be a pretty good combination there. They have a good feel for each other. I think when you’ve got two veteran players like that, it doesn’t take a long time for them to click, especially when you got two guys that are as selfless as they are where they will do whatever they need to do to win the football game. It’s fun to watch them practice. It has been fun to see T.J. get back out there. It has been a long eight weeks for him. I know it was tough for him. When it’s taken away from you for that long, when you get back, you can tell he’s enjoying every snap.”
(To get back to T Ja’Wuan James for just a second, would you like to see him on the roster next year?) – “We’ve got to go through a long process before we even get to that. Obviously, I’m really big into making sure our guys stay here. We’re so far away from it. It’s hard for me to look past tomorrow. It’s hard to go that far.”
(How would you assess C/G Ted Larsen in a week of practice?) – “I thought it was good. I know he was tired on Wednesday. It was good though. It was good to get him conditioned.”
(Safe to assume C/G Ted Larsen will start Monday night?) – “We’ll see.”
(Does it feel like you’re starting a fresh new line considering they’re probably going to be two newcomers in that unit?) – “I don’t feel that way because we’ve rotated them so much since the start of OTAs that all of these guys have played together at some point. I know you’ve asked me about this in the past as far as the chemistry and trying to get guys together and how that all works out. Sometimes you see a group click sometimes quicker than others. We’re always going to hope for the best as far as how fast things happen. Really, we’ll see what happens. You never really know. Things start getting … Games start getting wild and it’s getting physical, how are we going to react with a new group? I’m excited to watch those guys play.”
(Do you expect teams to attack G/T Jesse Davis?) – “We’ll see. I feel like right now, we’ve been seeing some interesting (things), whether it be pressures or coverages. We’re getting good variety of stuff. Defensive coordinators keep getting creative. A lot of times it doesn’t matter who’s out there. Guys go in there with a certain game plan. I don’t know who they’re going to attack or what their philosophy is behind attacking our (offense) sometimes. When you start seeing things different, you’ve got to make adjustments really quick.”
(Does S Michael Thomas have a very good chance to play?) – “I hope so. We’ve just got to keep taking it one day at a time. I know what his mindset is; but at the same time, we’ve got a long ways to go and we just want to make sure whatever we do is the right thing.”
(With RB Damien Williams having the issue that he’s having and S Michael Thomas battling the knee, how concerned are you about special teams, the core unit?) – “The good thing is we’ve kind of prepared for situations like this. That’s why we do keep a pretty deep roster of special teams guys. (Special Teams Coordinator/Associate Head Coach Darren) Rizzi and ‘Mouf’ (Assistant Special Teams Coach Marwan Maalouf) always have a good plan to make sure guys are in the right spots and what do we take off, who do we put on, where can we have a newcomer in a group. ‘Rizz’ has got a good plan. I feel good when he’s at.”
(G/T Jesse Davis, how much will he benefit moving forward from focusing pretty much on right tackle as opposed to going back and forth?) – “The thing is you always have to keep getting prepared at multiple spots. If you have one injury sometimes, guys start shuffling around. Really at the end of the day, if somebody goes down, whoever it is, you’ve got to do what you need to do for that game to have your best five out there. We’ve just got to keep preparing guys to play multiple positions, because we only have seven up. One injury can really put you in a bind if you don’t prepare for it.”
(What gives you the most hope offensively, overall, that the second half of the season will be different than the first half?) – “Probably the last game. That was really what I I’ve been waiting for. I felt like guys were in a good flow. I loved the energy that we had. We made mistakes, but we were giving ourselves a chance. If we eliminate some of those penalties, it’s a different game. We were inside the 20 – at the 20 or inside the 20 – two other times that we get a holding penalty and we have a fumble. Those are two lost opportunities that we could’ve had points. So, if we can keep trending in that direction and then find a way to keep those possessions where they were at, I feel good where we’re going.”
