Adam Gase – November 22, 2017 (Conference Call)
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Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase Conference Call with New England Media
(I was wondering what you have seen from Patriots RB Dion Lewis of late, over the past five weeks. His workload has increased and he’s starting to run the ball a lot better.) – “I think it’s probably more about opportunity than anything. They do a good job of rolling those guys (in) and defining the roles that these guys all have, having as many guys as they do have. Sometimes, I can’t explain exactly why a guy for them would get more touches. It could be hot hand, it could be game plan that week. From my perspective, whoever’s really back there, whatever they ask them to do, those guys just do a good job.”
(The Patriots defense has looked quite a bit different over the last several weeks or so. Have you noticed anything specific that’s stood out about why they’ve improved so much?) – “A lot of it probably has to do with chemistry, practicing. I’m sure that they’ve done a few things schematically, subtle little changes that most people don’t notice; but at the end of the day, for them, it’s probably coaching. They just found a few things where they started doing well and they started leaning on that more and help put those guys in good positon, then guys started executing better than possibly earlier in the year. It could be a number of reasons. Competing against these guys as many times as I have, it seems like as the year goes on, they usually get better the longer the season goes.”
(We saw Patriots QB Tom Brady and WR Brandin Cooks connect on a few long passes against the Raiders. What’s the key to containing a guy with that kind of quickness and deep speed?) – “It’s tough. You’ve got to make sure you stay on top of them. You’ve got to do a good job of defending multiple routes. You have to do the best you can of not letting him get going too much. It all starts at the line of scrimmage and really it has to be a team effort, because you have to do everything you can to make sure that Tom doesn’t hold onto the ball forever and is able to pick you apart that way. It’s really got to be connected throughout the entire defense to where everybody’s doing their job. You try to stay as tight as you can on coverage and compete when any kind of ball is thrown to him.”
(WR Danny Amendola hasn’t been quite an every down player for the Patriots this season. It seems like he’s usually on the field when they need a key play or a key first down. What have you seen from Danny Amendola this season and just as a player?) – “A lot of times it just has to do with the personnel grouping that (Patriots Offensive Coordinator) Josh (McDaniels) is using, down to down. You’re right, when they do need a play, his number gets called a lot. Sometimes it may be coverage dictated to where that’s why the ball ends up going there. The thing that he does is when he gets an opportunity, he makes the play that really is asked of him.”
(You guys have dealt with a lot this year in terms of the hurricane and the injuries and RB Jay Ajayi. How difficult is it to keep things together in the locker room when there’s that much turmoil?) – “I guess it’s probably, for people outside, it seems like it’s a lot to deal with; but I guess this is just like normal things that happen in an NFL season. Normally, you have probably 10 or 11 opportunities that actually occur where you’ve got to make some adjustments and find ways to fight through some adversity. That’s what the NFL is. There’s going to be distractions and when you get to this part of the season usually, if you’re good enough and have an opportunity to get a chance to play in the tournament, that’s all it is. It’s distractions and things going on and injuries occurring, that’s what it is. The teams that handle it and can keep moving forward and not sit there and wonder why something’s happening, those teams usually have success. The teams that get consumed by that, they fall off.”
(What are the challenges of essentially not having a bye week? How is your team doing physically? Does this limit at all the opportunities you guys had to maybe do some self-scouting?) – “I think we were lucky enough to have a Thursday night game where we had the Thursday night game and we were able to kind of throw in, basically, a little mini bye weekend for our players to where they were able to get four days off. It gave us a chance as coaches to take some time off, but at the same time, I don’t think any of us went too far away. We were able to comb through some things and make some adjustments over that time. Really, that helped us out a little bit. I haven’t really noticed fatigue in any way with our players. We’ve still got six games left, so I don’t know if down the road I’ll notice anything. I think our guys have been good. Our practices have been energetic. It’s not like we’re out in pads or anything. Our guys, I just haven’t seen really any kind of drawback from us not having a bye.”
(Is there any update on QB Jay Cutler and how confident are you in QB Matt Moore if he is playing again this weekend?) – “Jay’s in the (concussion) protocol, so really it’s out of my hands and we’ll listen to what they tell us and what we should do. As far as Matt goes, I have a lot of confidence in Matt. Calling plays for him last year, we had a couple of situations where he’s had to go in the game and we’ve been able to have success. One game we didn’t play very well as an entire team. He’s an easy player to call plays for and he does a good job. He gets himself prepared and guys have confidence in him and he always knows what to do.”
(Patriots LB Trevor Reilly was on your team the last couple of years. Are you surprised at how many opportunities he’s seeing on defense with the Patriots over the last three games?) – “No, I wouldn’t say I was surprised by it. Sometimes it’s just about getting an opportunity and getting a chance to get in there, whether it be by injury or doing things at practice right to where you flash for the coaches enough to where they want to start getting you playing time. He did a good job for us here and whatever we asked him to do, he was 100 miles per hour. He gave us everything he had. For us, we had a couple of other guys that we liked at those spots and really we just ran out of room.”
(What’s the key for you guys to have a strong end of the season and make a playoff push?) – “I think we have to eliminate the turnovers. That’s probably our biggest thing. The turnover margin, we have to do a better job of getting them and we have to eliminate them. Really, for us, we’ve had a lot of self-inflicted issues when it comes to pre-snap penalties. That’s something that we’ve been really working on trying to fix and making sure that we’re not putting ourselves in a bad position, because what ends up happening is we have a pre-snap penalty on offense and we put ourselves in a bad hole when we’re in third-and-7 or more. A lot of those have been on third-and-10 or more. It’s the same thing on defense, just not helping out the offense by doing something we can control, by giving (the opponent) an advantage by putting them in a third-and-manageable position. I think if we can correct the turnovers and get that thing going in the right direction and really grab a hold of this pre-snap penalty little issue that we’ve had, that could really help us out.”
(How impactful have RBs Damien Williams and Kenyan Drake been for your passing game over the course of the last two weeks?) – “They’ve done a good job. They are two guys that when they’re not accounted for, you get the ball in their hands and it seems like they do a good job of making that first guy miss and giving us an opportunity for some explosiveness in the passing game. There’s a lot of different things that they can do. Having those two young guys back there, you can tell that they feed off of each other. One amps up his game when the other breaks one off. It’s a good combination of two guys to have back there that are both competitive, they work well together, they talk to each other and let each other know what’s going on during the game. It’s really been fun watching those two guys grow and get better as football players.”
(How has Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke been in his first year as coordinator and how do you see his command of that unit?) – “His command of the unit has been outstanding. These guys here, they respect him a lot. A lot of these guys have been with him in other places, so when he was elevated, I think a lot of those guys were excited for him because they’ve known him for a long time. I think guys were excited that we were able to keep the same system and really just build off of what we were doing last year to fine tune some things. It always gets tough because when you’re a first-time coordinator and you’re trying to deal with all of the things that really come along with that and that job, it’s a lot of things that come up that you’ve never experienced before. He’s done a good job of coming up with the solutions and trying to put our guys in the best position possible. I think guys have, for the most part, done a good job of executing it. We’ve got a few things that we need to clean up to help ourselves out.”
(How do you compare Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke’s beard game to Patriots Defensive Coordinator Matt Patricia? A couple of defensive coordinators with some serious beard action this weekend.) – “Yes, Patricia has him beat, hands down. (laughter) It’s not even close. I think Matt (Burke’s) is groomed a little better. I think Patricia’s, it looks like it’s getting a little out of control (laughter).”
