Adam Gase – October 26, 2018
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Friday, October 26, 2018
Head Coach Adam Gase
(When you watch the film of the performance against Houston, what did it show you, particularly on the defensive side?) – “Well, we did a bad job of executing quite a few calls, which is obvious when you look at the numbers and score. Anybody with the naked eye can see things weren’t quite right. We have to do a way better job of doing what we’re asking players to do. We have to do a better job of coaching it. Really, the simplicity of it is we have to do what we’re asked to do and we have to do it correctly, and it has to be 11 guys doing that.”
(How will you spend the weekend?) – “Good question. I’d like to say that I’d actually get to see my kids this weekend but with the amount of points we let up and playing as bad as we did on defense and we’ve got a lot of things to clean up on offense, I’ll probably spend most of my time working through all of this stuff.”
(Do you feel like you have the personnel, particularly the defensive tackles, to get the job done defensively?) – “Yeah. I mean it’s not one position. I know everybody wants to blame that because it’s the easy out, but it’s the whole group. We have to do a better job of a lot of things. There’s just a lot of things that we need to get cleaned up. We have to use our hands better at linebacker. We have to stop running around blocks on the defensive line. In the secondary, we have to know who we’re supposed to cover. We can’t cut guys loose. Some of the stuff that has occurred is fixable just by doing what we’re supposed to do.”
(To what extent do you feel like you’ve been overmatched physically, either up front or in the back end?) – “Well, it’s hard to tell because we don’t play what we’re supposed to play right. If you have 11 guys that are doing close to what you are asking them to do, then you can start looking into physical limitations or who do we have to protect or what do we have to do better. But when you don’t execute anything right, it’s hard to evaluate that. That’s where we have to do a way better job of doing what we’re coached to do and then if we actually do do the right things, then we have to adjust and figure out where’s our strengths, where’s our weaknesses and now we have to adjust to that.”
(How much of the blame should fall on Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke?) – “First, I always look at players because to me, at the end of the day, they have the final say on a lot of this stuff. I’m not going to blame anybody for anything because it’s not like we’ve been ripping it up on offense over the last three years. I just think the entire group – players and coaches – on that side of the ball just needs to do a great job of working together and making sure that everybody is on the same page and everybody is trying to do the same thing on the call. You can say all you want about scheme but all of that (expletive) doesn’t matter. Play what we’re all supposed to play.”
(You have some established guys on the defensive side of the ball that haven’t been playing well. Are you willing to bench some of those guys based on performance?) – “Who are you talking about?”
(You could look across the defensive line. You could look at tackling in the secondary, the linebackers. It’s throughout the entire defense.) – “I think that’s where you have to evaluate and figure out … If one person is playing bad over the entire group, then you can look at we need to make some adjustments here. But it’s not like you’ve got 40 guys waiting in the wings here. We only have so many guys on defense.”
(Is this something that’s happened in the last … the results say the last few games but the first month of the season, the defense was playing well. Are offenses doing something differently or is it just all of a sudden…) – “Yeah, there’s a couple of plays that … We’re getting some copycat stuff. I think some teams are taking advantage of the things that we were doing as far as how we were playing certain things. It’s like a back and forth of we see it as one thing, we’re going to try to fix this and then they might make a little adjustment to where now it’s not as good for us and it hurts us a little bit with our adjustment. There are some things that we’ve kind of noticed that we’re getting consistently that we need to clean up and play better. It’s one of those things where when you watch it, you kind of think to yourself we should be able to fix this no matter who is out there. That’s where it gets frustrating. You want to make sure if it’s something where it’s like this is a better player against our player, that would be one thing. It’s just something that I feel like is correctable and it really comes down to 11 guys all doing the right stuff.”
(Could this be possibly the wear and tear of having a heavier workload early in the season and then some injuries coming in? I’m not looking for excuses but there has to be a reason why they played well early and now they look horrible.) – “Yeah, I mean that’s always my concern at the beginning of the season when we play so bad on offense the last two years and they’re getting 80 plays a game. Then all of a sudden it’s like we flip the script. And then are they gassed? Are teams doing…? That all goes into that evaluation of it. That’s where my mind goes first because … You’ve heard me say it since the beginning of the season. We need more plays on offense to where those guys aren’t on the field as much. Then at the same time, the good defenses I’ve always been around, they don’t really care because they say we’ll get off the field on third down and we won’t be on the field so much. I think there’s a little back and forth on that one but at the end of the day, if you’re a good defense and you get off the field on third down, and then on offense you find a way to get into a rhythm to where you have more plays and that also helps the defense.”
(Is there an update on QB Ryan Tannehill, and did he throw this week? And was it a football?) – “I mean, you’re just asking me all the questions I don’t want to get asked anymore. He’s going through a good process right now. I haven’t gone down there to watch him do anything. I hear that … the trainers talk to me. It sounds like we’re close to the stage where we could get to that point where he could start throwing soon.”
(Realistically, with the layoff from QB Ryan Tannehill’s injury, how many practices would you like to have under his belt before he sees game action again?) – “I’m going to have to get with the trainers and figure out what’s the best thing to do. When we get to the point where we’re actually having practice and he’s going to go, I’ll have a better idea of, ‘Okay, hey, he’s throwing this many balls to the trainer or a wide receiver staying stagnant.’ I have to get a lot of information before we get to that point. I know it’s five days from now that we have our next practice, so at least I have some time here to evaluate that and figure out what’s the best thing to do. I’m going to speak to the guys we need to speak to, doctor-wise, and make sure I’m not putting him in a position where we just have some kind of relapse and he goes through this all over again.”
(WR Jakeem Grant, WR DeVante Parker and WR Danny Amendola played practically every snap on offense; how did they hold up and is that something that is sustainable?) – “I thought they did a good job of being in good shape to where they could go that long. Obviously, getting Kenny (Stills) back at some point, that’s going to help us with our play count. We’ll be able to kind of move some things around. I know for the most part, most receivers would rather do that and play the whole game. The only thing that really gets you is when you’re on a normal week, like work week, when you play that many plays on Sunday and then you’ve got to come back Wednesday and practice, it’s tough. Toward the end of the game, I think Jakeem took a pretty good shot there at the end. Those are the ones that can hurt you when you have 60-plus plays kind of pile up on you and then all of a sudden you get whacked like that pretty good and (it can) do some damage.”
(You mentioned with QB Ryan Tannehill the worry of making sure that he doesn’t relapse. Is that more of his own throwing, or is that with contact with a defender?) – “No, it’s more just throwing. I just want to get all of the information from the doctors. It’s almost like uncharted waters. We don’t know how his body is going to respond every day. He’s just got to communicate with us honestly and we’ve just got to keep working with the doctors and the trainers and him kind of giving great feedback as far as how he feels. When it first happened, he kept telling us ‘I don’t have the juice I had two days before.’ Like, that’s the kind of feedback we need. We just need that open and honest feedback.”
(We saw TE Mike Gesicki try to hurdle defenders. What are your thoughts on that?) – “I’d like him not to do it to where he gets spun up in the air. I’d rather him catch the ball and get vertical and try to get some first downs instead of running sideways. I think Mike, he’s a young player that’s trying to figure out kind of the way that he needs to play. I know the week before, he tried to go low with a guy and that didn’t work out too well for him. We’ve got to figure out a way to keep him from leaping over everybody and at the same time we’ve got to try to keep him from trying to go low and doing some other kind of damage, whether it be to his shoulder or his head.”
(C/G Ted Larsen and DT Vincent Taylor both left the game with injuries; do you have any indication yet whether either of those could be serious or short term?) – “I’m going to have some more information hopefully here pretty soon. We had to bring in some …We had the doctors that came in, and then we have to send guys out for MRIs and stuff like that. I should be able to get information by it’s usually around 5 (p.m.) I get it. Right now, I don’t have any update on anybody.”
(Last year you guys went on a five-game losing skid that kind of derailed the season; how do you keep this from having a similar outcome?) – “Go back to work. Basically, we’ve got a chance to kind of regroup, refresh, get our minds right, fix the things that we need to fix as far as the coaching staff of putting time, looking at the film, going back through this first part of the season, figure out where our issues are, correct those, make adjustments that we need to make, and then when we hit Wednesday with our players, we have to have a good plan in. Our players have to come in, they’ve got to be hungry, they’ve got to be ready to go. We have to have great meetings; we have to have a great week of practice. And then when we get to Sunday, we’ve got to turn it loose and we have to execute what we’re asking them to do. It’s going to take the coaching staff and the players to basically just put their head down and grind through next week and get to Sunday and have to come out with some kind of edge on Sunday to say ‘What’s happened the last three of the last four weeks is not going to happen anymore. We need to find a way to win a game.’”
