Adam Gase – November 23, 2017
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Thursday, November 23, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase
(Anything new for us on QB Jay Cutler?) – “No. He’s in the (concussion) protocol.”
(You kind of touched on this yesterday, but at what point do you think you have to make that call for this week?) – “I mean once they let me know what’s going on with the stages of protocol or whenever, however that goes, then I’ll go from there. It’s like one of those things, I can’t do anything about it. So we’re not going to rush to make any decision.”
(Would you be comfortable playing QB Jay Cutler if he hadn’t practiced all week?) – “Because of being a veteran player, yes.”
(With the offensive line situation and G/T Jermon Bushrod’s status, I know you’ve worked G Isaac Asiata at right guard primarily. Is that his job or is it sort of going to the top eight guys?) – “We’re looking at what’s our best five for this game and who’s going to be healthy and who’s available. That’s why sometimes it does take the whole week to kind of figure out what’s best for us, because you have to move a lot of guys in practice because when we’re only practicing with eight guys and we’re doing scout team and they’re taking a lot of reps, so we’re getting good looks.”
(With G Isaac Asiata where is he in his development?) – “I think there’s a lot of things he hasn’t seen and I know we’ve talked about this 1,000 times, that’s really the hardest thing for rookies is trying to … How fast can you learn what the NFL’s really about? And that’s just variety and multiple things and different defenses, different structures. It just takes a minute to kind of get all those, that library, built in your brain.”
(Is T Laremy Tunsil feeling better?) – “It sounds like it. I’m not going near him so … (laughter)”
(Is there a bug going around this team?) – “Not that I have heard of. I mean he’s the only one.”
(When you play the Patriots, they’re always one of those teams that they figure out your weakness and they sort of attack it. Do you know how they’re going to attack it going in, or do you have theories and…?) – “You can try to guess. You just need to be careful doing that because when you think you know how they’re going to approach you, then it can be severely wrong and it can hurt you. You really have to just be aware of some weaknesses you think you have versus them, and just have that idea in the back of your head, have calls ready to go. Really the hardest thing is they take away what you do really well, so you better be ready to go to something else or not do that and have an idea there as well. It’s a difficult challenge to game plan this group.”
(When you say they take away what you do well, do you mean like your number one run…?) – “It could be player, scheme. They’re not going to get beat how other teams possibly can get beat. They make sure at the end of the day, this guy is not going to beat us and they’ll make sure that happens. They’ll make you beat them a different way.”
(Thinking back to last year, playing up there, it seemed like the slow start was kind of your undoing. You played well in the second half, but it was just too much of a deficit to overcome. Is there any message this week like, “Hey guys, this is one team we cannot sleep on early?”) – “I’m all for us starting fast any game. If we can do that, that’s ideal. You don’t want to spot this team 20 points like we’ve done the last two times we’ve played them. It makes it very difficult to fight that battle, because right when you think you’re about ready to make a breakthrough and make it real tight, something else happens – whether they make a drive to put it out of reach or, like they did last year, they created a turnover. Every play gets magnified the later in the game it gets.”
(Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen was talking the other day about how he thinks stability and consistency are two of the reasons that the Patriots organization has had sustained success. What are some ways that you plan to try to create stability and consistency within the organization?) – “Really, that’s why we do like keeping a lot of the guys that – whether we drafted them or they’ve been here – that have really taken to how we do things and like being in this program. Those guys we want to keep around. It’s just like anything else you do. Once you get used to how things operate, it only gets better. They’ve done a great job of when they started that thing, of finding their core guys, building on that and then whether it be free agency or draft, they’ve brought in enough guys over time that have fit their culture and fit their program, and they’ve been able to keep the key guys long enough to where they just keep building off of that. When guys know what to expect every day when they walk in the building, it makes their job easier in the aspect of they’re learning every day. They’re not guessing what’s going to happen and thinking. They’re able to play fast and they’re able to react.”
(WR Jarvis Landry has always set a career high in touchdowns. Has it just been a concerted effort looking for him more and more in the red zone? Why is he getting into the end zone?) – “He’s getting open. It seems like we got some different looks this year than what we were getting last year. It allowed him to get some opportunities where he’s had some one-on-one matchups. Last year he was getting doubled a lot. This year, it hasn’t been as much, so we’ve been able to get him the ball. Even a couple of times when I think he was doubled, he found a way to get open and we found him. I don’t think we’ve changed anything schematically to try to really emphasize getting him the ball in the end zone. It’s just worked out.”
(Are teams doubling WR Kenny Stills more?) – “No. We haven’t been seeing a ton of that. We’re seeing more guys are playing a little more one-on-one down there. That’s why we’ve thrown it probably more. People are loading up the box on us.”
(With the Patriots tight end situation, obviously they have three pretty high level tight end. How difficult does that make it to game plan for them defensively and can you address the struggles you guys have had with tight ends in the last month?) – “It’s a good test, for sure. We’ll see how quickly we can get things corrected. It is tough when you have multiple guys that play that position, especially if you bring them all out on the field at the same time. Now you’re trying to find everybody and figure out what they’re doing because these guys have the ability to get big, stay big, spread it out and do multiple formations. They make it very difficult for defenses to prepare for them. When they do that, they end up limiting the calls the defensive coordinator can have because you might not see it. They might not run it the entire game. It’s time on task. That’s what makes this offense very difficult to go against because you don’t know what they’re going to come out in. They’ll change it up as much as (Offensive Coordinator) Josh (McDaniels) feels like he needs to, to keep you off balance.”
(You obviously have a history with Patriots Offensive Coordinator Josh McDaniels. Do you understand the concepts that he’s trying to get across just because…) – “Most of the NFL is all the same. It’s just different words, different terminology. Everybody attacks everybody different. I probably learned – in our time together in a year and a half, the amount of football that I learned in that time – you talk about getting a crash course in how to do things right. I learned just by listening and just kind of paying attention to every little thing he did. I learned a ton in that year and a half. When I watch them play now, you see a lot of the same philosophies that he does. It might not be the exact same plays that we were running back then in 2009 and 2010; but just kind of the way he goes about it, the way he gains information for the quarterback and the position he puts his players in, he really makes it difficult. If you’re a defensive coordinator, it’s tough to prepare for.”
(The offense has obviously evolved throughout the season. Have you done self-scouting in the last 10 weeks and say, “Hey this is what really works, this doesn’t,” and evolved because of it?) – “Yes, that Baltimore week was our bye weekend, which was nice to have. We had a chance to look at a lot of stuff and just take a step back and say, ‘What’s our best way to go?’ We made some adjustments and tried to put some of those guys that we really hadn’t done a good job of using. I think Julius (Thomas), I didn’t get him going enough early in the season. I feel like we got in a little bit of a groove. I still think there’s some other things we can do and just trying to use the tight ends and the backs and see that receiving group, just keep moving those guys around making it hard. You don’t want to make it really easy to find Jarvis (Landry). You want to keep (moving him) inside, outside, No. 3. You just want to keep finding ways to move him around because if he’s just a sitting target, it’s a lot easier to take him away.”
(If T Laremy Tunsil didn’t feel well enough to play or even if he got sick during the game, would you go T Sam Young left tackle, G/T Jesse Davis right tackle and throw C Jake Brendel in there? That’s a lot of shuffling, obviously.) – “He’ll be better by then. Obviously, this week is a good test for us to move pieces around and figure out what’s our best way to go about it. That’s what we’ve been doing in practice. These are the things you have to go through. Sometimes it’s frustrating when it happens because you just want those guys to be able to get their reps and have a feel for what they’re going to get; but when this happens it’s one of those unpredictable things, like a lot of other things that happen during an NFL season. It gives other guys a chance to get better and be ready to go, so if something happened, this week kind of gave us some confidence in moving guys around.”
(Has G/T Jesse Davis exceeded all expectations? He seems to be playing pretty well.) – “I keep wishing we could keep him in one spot. It just feels like right when he gets going in one spot, then something happens and he’s got to move to a different spot; but I thought last week, he was playing well at right tackle. Then you get thrown in there and, all of a sudden ‘93’ (Buccaneers DT Gerald McCoy) is over you the majority of the time and now all of the sudden, it’s a different animal. You go from, ‘Okay, I feel good blocking this guy’ and now, all of a sudden, you go inside and you’ve got one of the best players in the league coming at you and you really didn’t go into that game thinking that was going to be one of your deals. I thought he did a good job of handling himself. The thing that he always has that he can rely on is his strength. When he gets his hands on somebody, that’s a big man anchoring down. He held his own. It wasn’t easy for him; but he’s shown us a lot of things that we’re really looking for. We really like him, whether it’s right tackle or right guard.”
(What is G/T Jesse Davis’ ideal spot based on his strength?) – “I wish I could say. I just see him play well at both spots at times. I thought right tackle was good for him because he was really flattening out that edge. There wasn’t a lot of penetration there. He hasn’t really had to go out against that Cameron Wake-type guy. Everybody we’ve played so far has been more the physical type guys that are coming right at him, which is good for him. When we go and practice, going against Cam for him is great, because ou’re not going to see a ton of guys like that, but when he does see it, he is understanding ‘Alright, this is what I have to do, this is how I need to protect myself.’ He wants to get his hands on him. That’s the hard thing about blocking Cam. You don’t know if you’re always going to get out there and then when you do think you can get out there, all of a sudden he ducks underneath you and now you’re in big trouble.”
