Adam Gase – November 9, 2018
Download PDF version
Friday, November 9, 2018
Head Coach Adam Gase
(Are you expecting T Laremy Tunsil and T Ja’Wuan James to play or is that going to be more of a game-time decision?) – “Yeah, it’s going to be game time. The fact that we had them out there today, it’s always good. But we’ll see tomorrow how they feel. It’s going to go up to the game.”
(We saw C/G Ted Larsen kind of doing some stuff on the side.) – “He’s struggled the last couple of weeks. We didn’t do as much with him this week. He’s going to be probably doubtful for the game. We’ve got to get him some rest and get him recovered.”
(So it would be C Jake Brendel…?) – “Yeah, I mean, we’ll see. We’ve got to see what happens with the tackles too. We’ve got about nine different lineups.”
(Is C Wesley Johnson also in the mix there for C/G Ted Larsen’s spot?) – “If you’ve got a pulse, you’re in the mix. (laughter) We’re out of guys.”
(LB Kiko Alonso, obviously he’s having a very good season. I talked to him about he takes care of his body. We always talk about DE Cameron Wake and how he doesn’t put any bad stuff in his body. It seems like Kiko is sort of similar to that in terms of sleep, nutrition, recovery. What are your observations about how he takes care of himself?) – “Training-wise, he’s one of those guys that you always see around the weight room. You always see kind of doing activation type things, sports science type things where he’s always working on flexibility, Pilates and those types of activities to keep his flexibility. His eating, I mean, you never seen him really eat anything that I would eat. (laughter) He does a great job being disciplined with all of that kind of stuff. I’m sure from where he was when he was younger compared to now, it’s probably light years different.”
(What do you eat?) – “Pizza. I’m trying to think of what else. Rice Krispies treats. Candy. It’s not good. (laughter)”
(Keeping with LB Kiko Alonso, the mentor role that he has with LB Jerome Baker and LB Raekwon McMillan, having a veteran presence to help those two younger guys out there.) – “It’s been interesting to watch those three guys kind of work together and the two young guys grow up. With Raekwon being here for a year, that has helped him almost like help ‘Bake,’ but at the same time he has somebody else to lean on. I think the communication really is what I’ve seen really develop over time since we started in the spring. I think it’s just three guys that love playing football and are able to sit in a room and talk about what they’re thinking about doing and how they want to communicate some things and how they can work through a game when the team is doing something and they’ve got to make adjustments.”
(The special teams group has been pretty good. What do you think makes Associate Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi a good coach?) – “It starts with the experience he has. When I got this job, it was nice that there was a guy that was here that was a veteran coach that had been around in multiple systems within the organization. His relationship with our players, knowing those guys so well, he’s able to put them in the right spots. He uses guys to the max. Whatever their potential and their max ability is, he uses it all. And he knows … Whether it be to simplify or complicate things for the other team, he does a good job of using that group and whoever it’s been because we’ve had some moving pieces. We’ve had injuries to where he’s had to kind of shake some guys and move them around and re-train them on the fly. I think his communication is off the charts with how him and ‘Mouf’ (Assistant Special Teams Coach Marwan Maalouf) do things. They’re able to split things up. There’s a lot of trust between those two to be able to do what they do. It seems like every year there’s somebody that you almost think, this guy might go to the Pro Bowl. They always seem to have somebody that you never expected. Like last year, with (Kenyan) Drake. He was having an unbelievable year before he basically started playing offense all of the time. He seems to always find one guy that you don’t expect to really be that big of an impact player and they end up being an impact player.”
(How would you evaluate the progress of the two rookie tight ends, Mike Gesicki and Durham Smythe?) – “I think they’ve done well. They’ve gotten better. I know everybody wants to look at stats and all that type of thing, but Mike has gotten better in a lot of different areas. I think Durham, he constantly is improving. We see a lot of things in practice that you don’t actually get an opportunity to do in games or we’re not getting the right coverages. Really, you’ve just got to pay attention to the type of things when we’re doing it out here and we see that type of growth. We just know at some point either this year or down the road it’s going to be good for us as an organization because I think those two guys can help us for a long time.”
(A little bit of an odd one but guys always have their routines before games and whatnot. What’s the most unusual one you’ve seen in your career?) – “I don’t know. I don’t pay attention. I mean, the only one I ever really associated with was when Peyton (Manning) would … like in 2012 when he first got there, we kind of started doing his throwing routine, but he had to do less throws than what he did. Him and Marvin (Harrison) and Reggie (Wayne) and those guys were out there. I mean, it was like 100 throws. I think we were down to like 14 or something like that before the game. But then we quit going out because it was like every place we went it was like a circus for him. He’s like, ‘I’m done.’ After like five games, he started doing something different staying in and then just going out.”
(How did DE Charles Harris’ body respond to his practicing Thursday?) – “Good, because he was actually able to do some stuff today. He looks different. Last week when I saw him kind of doing some of those drills, I was like, how far off is he? And then when I saw him this week, you could tell he’s confident, he’s bursting. He looked like what we want him to look like. I think we’re close. I think we’ve just got to keep monitoring him and make sure that we don’t jump the gun.”
(Do you anticipate making any roster moves on the o-line this weekend?) – “I haven’t even thought that far. Are you talking about like after this game?”
(No, I’m talking about just like getting extra bodies.) – “I don’t know if we really … we’re not really worried about that right now because I think we have enough guys to get through this game and then after that, we’ve just got to re-assess and see where we are injury-wise.”
