Adam Gase – October 19, 2018
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Friday, October 19, 2018
Head Coach Adam Gase
(Obviously you have a healthy DE Robert Quinn, you have a healthy DE Cameron Malveaux, among the others what’s your expectation for Sunday — DE Cameron Wake, DE Andre Branch, etc.?) – “The fact that we had all those guys get an opportunity to practice, we’ll kind of see how tomorrow is. I don’t want to jump the gun. I hear guys say, ‘Hey, I felt good after practice.’ (I) wait until the next day to see if they say, ‘Hey, I’m sore,’ or ‘I’m good to go.’ Tomorrow I’ll have a better idea as far as just kind of how everybody feels after today.”
(Do you feel, if DE Cameron Wake, doesn’t play, you have enough defensive ends to make it through the game?) – “Obviously him playing would help us a lot. But we just want to make sure that we’re being smart with him. Those guys do a good job of having contingency plans and making sure if we’ve got to change some packages around and put some different guys at those spots to make sure that we are somewhat fresh during the game, we can do that.”
(Are you surprised that what was probably perceived as the deepest unit on the team has been the most decimated by injuries?) – “I’m not surprised by anything. That’s just how it goes. We’re kind of in that part of the season where every team in the NFL is banged up. Probably about this time or in the next couple of weeks, that’s when everybody kind of starts getting a little healthier, getting guys back from the early injuries. And then everybody makes that push at the end.”
(CB Bobby McCain is on track to play Sunday, correct?) – “We’ll see. Once again, it’s always nice to get a starter back in the lineup.”
(How do you view the course of this season or any other season? When you guys started 3-0, you were talking about how there was still a lot that you needed to correct. At some point, you have to be past that.) – “It never gets past that.”
(I know there’s always things you can do better, but at some point you kind of have to roll into form, no?) – “You want them to be more like the little, tiny mistakes. You don’t want it to be things like formations, alignments, those type of things. And I think we’ve moved away from that for the most part in all three phases. But at the same time, all it takes is one to creep in and throw a whole thing off. That’s why you’re constantly trying, as a coach, you’re reminding your players over and over again about probably the most basic things just to make sure, all right, we still have it. You don’t want to ever think you got it because that’s when you find yourself in trouble.”
(When do you typically get out of that finding-your-way phase at the beginning of the season?) – “It’s probably in the next like few weeks, where you’re hoping everybody is kind of really kicking it in all cylinders, everybody understands just kind of the process that you’re going through for that season. It changes when your guys changed. You start losing some guys and all of a sudden you can take a few steps back as far as what your process is getting ready for a game.”
(Every week is played toward Sunday, but with Thursday next week, do you have to think injuries, work load, as far as having a game right around the corner?) – “Our main focus is this week. That’s all our players need to worry about. We’ve planned out what we need to do for the next so many days a long time ago and we have some ways to adjust if we need to adjust. With where we’re at right now, injury-wise, and after this game where we’re going to be after this game because two years ago we played in a Thursday game, we lost a ton of guys in the week before. I mean, we were scrambling to put a lineup together. It changes fast. Every Sunday is so different. We’ll see how it goes on Sunday and then we can adjust, but for the most part we’ve thought this through pretty good.”
(Does your familiarity with Lions Head Coach Matt Patricia add to that?) – “For me, when I’m calling plays, I can’t go to the next one. I’ve got to wait for this one to be done because then it just gets all jacked up in my brain.”
(TE A.J. Derby practiced last week but wasn’t cleared for the game. Is it just a matter of waiting to see him get healthy?) – “It’s really just … I mean, it’s never going to be no pain whatsoever, but I think it’s just where he can do the things we need him to do in the run game, pass protection and with his routes. I think his routes are really the one thing that he’s good. It’s just being able to hold up against either a defensive end or a linebacker’s blitz or safeties, to where he feels like he has the right amount of strength in his lower body.”
(Sticking with the tight ends, how does with TE Nick O’Leary’s performance last week impact how you use him and the rest of the tight ends going into Sunday?) – “We’re always going to use multiple guys. We have certain personnel groupings for everybody and we just keep moving guys in and out. The key is to try to stay as balanced as you can with all of the groupings. You don’t ever want to be one-sided to where another team can just say, ‘Hey, they’re doing this when this guy is in.’ We’ll just keep rotating. I like all of those guys when they play. That’s a good group.”
(How much does TE Nick O’Leary being able to help you as a H-back sort of expand your offense and what you’re able to do?) – “It’s always helpful because you’re more multiple. You can do some things that we really haven’t been able to do in this offense. There’s a couple of things we did last week that were new that (the Bears) probably didn’t think like, ‘All right, they’re going to run this.’ That’s always nice to have. Any time you have a tight end that can play in-line, kind of like that ‘F,’ off-wing guy, and then can play in the backfield, it just makes it hard to game-plan for.”
(How did the end of WR DeVante Parker’s practice week go from a health perspective?) – “It stayed pretty consistent. We’re just waiting to make sure we’re all good. When you’re dealing with soft tissue stuff, things can creep up out of nowhere.”
(Was there a specific thing with TE Nick O’Leary, blocking for example, one particular thing that you saw from him right away, where you thought we can definitely play this guy? He can do that and he’ll figure out the rest as he goes.) – “I remember last year him catching a touchdown pass against us. That’s probably the first thing that comes to mind, but then when we started practicing – I’m trying to remember who were playing, but it was somebody that had a fullback, and he was going in there and he was hitting with the linebackers pretty good (for the scout team). I don’t ever remember having as many defensive players come up to me and ask me when I was going to get him up. That tells you something like, ‘All right, they think this guy’s got something to him.’ Then we kind of started working him in on our some of our stuff because he was trying to learn our offense. He picked it up pretty quick. Once we started working him in, it worked out because we were down a guy. So we were able to get him up and play him and just kind of see how it went.”
(What’s the longest conversation you’ve ever had with TE Nick O’Leary?) – “Three seconds. (laughter) He doesn’t say much.”
