Adam Gase – October 29, 2018
Download PDF version
Monday, October 29, 2018
Head Coach Adam Gase
(Are you upbeat after this weekend? Are you encouraged about things going forward?) – “We have some things to fix, obviously. The last two weeks haven’t really gone as we thought. We need to make sure that we get a lot of things corrected and make some adjustments and make sure we have the right guys on the field. It’ll be nice if we get some of these guys back that have been banged up. A few days off wouldn’t hurt us, kind of getting a little bit of those two days, this weekend and then today and tomorrow we’re not practicing. We should be pretty good on Wednesday.”
(What did you figure out or decide over this weekend after kind of evaluating everything?) – “I think on both sides of the ball, we have plenty of room for improvement. Defensively, we just have to do a better job of all three levels really playing together. We can’t have two guys here off track and two different guys in the next play. We have to do a better job of playing as a group. Offensively, we need to keep making strides where the offensive line and the running backs are on the same page of the run game, and then getting the ball out on time and making sure we’re in the right spots as receivers.”
(I’m going to get to your favorite topic: do you have anything for us on QB Ryan Tannehill?) – “No.”
(No update from the last time you talked to us?) – “No.”
(Are you expecting that QB Ryan Tannehill is going to practice Wednesday?) – “He’ll be out there no matter what. I don’t know what we’re going to do throwing-wise. I’ll have a better idea probably Tuesday, where really they’ll give me an answer one way or the other.”
(I think the reason we’re asking now is because the last couple of weeks, you’ve said early. Are you going to go into Wednesday with a starter or are you going to play it out all the way until Sunday?) – “I’d like to be able to say ‘this is what we’re doing’ Wednesday, or at least for me to know. I might not tell you guys.”
(We’d appreciate it.) – “(laughter) I really don’t care. We’ll see. I don’t know right now.”
(QB Ryan Tannehill was throwing a tennis ball last week?) – “Yep. We’re slowly progressing. He’s making steps where he’s in a position to where he can throw a football. We’re gaining strength in that area. We’ll see more in the next two days of how he feels the next day after when he does have a chance to throw, how sore he is the next day or how much power he feels like he has. We talked about it the other day. It’s just kind of an unusual injury and there’s a lot of gray where we’ve asked for information and you get a lot of gray back, so that makes it tough.”
(You said QB Ryan Tannehill is throwing a football now?) – “Yes. He can throw a football.”
(QB Ryan Tannehill is doing it?) – “Yeah. It’s just whether or not how much power can he put behind the ball. Even that week when he tried to throw, he’s throwing it and everything looks normal but for him, it’s like ‘I’m not getting that stroke that I want, I’m not getting that power behind it and being able to throw with the velocity I want.’ That’s really what it’s going to come down to is when he does throw, the next day, how does he feel? Then can he repeat what he did the day before? We have to be careful here. When you’re a starting quarterback, you’re out there and you throw 100-plus balls – the next day, you’re coming off an injury like that and you haven’t thrown in a while. You just have to be careful of that.”
(I think everyone around here admires QB Ryan Tannehill pain tolerance and toughness. How do you interpret what he says? Is he going to be honest with you?) – “My thoughts go the same direction. If he says something bothers him, then I’m assuming it really is bad because he normally doesn’t say anything.”
(QB Ryan Tannehill might say he’s fine…) – “Right. I told him ‘I have to trust you. You have to be honest with me. You can’t not be okay and then tell me you’re great.’”
(If QB Ryan Tannehill is not okay, does he know that could exacerbate the problem if he’s not …) – “He understands that. He understands that if he gives me wrong information, that could make it worse. I feel like he’s in a good place. I know it’s killing him because he wants to do anything he can to help us. But at the same time, we have to be smart because I don’t want this to turn into (something where) we try one week and then there’s a huge setback and now it’s worse than what it was before.”
(Have you been happy with QB Brock Osweiler?) – “Yeah, he’s done a great job. I think there’s a lot of things that he’s done that have been positive for us. The change out in wide receivers last week, I thought he handled that really well. It was unfortunate (on the interception). I thought he threw a really good ball and it ended up being intercepted, but there were some other factors that were involved in that. For the most part, he’s protected the ball and gotten us moving up and down the field. We have to clean up some of the red-area stuff, or the high red area, and give us a chance in the low (red area).”
(How important is it for QB Ryan Tannehill to return and what do you think he wants to prove by coming back this season?) – “I think he just wants to feel right. I think he just wants to get healthy. I think any time you can get your starting quarterback back, that’s probably a positive.”
(There was a lot of talk coming into the year about QB Ryan Tannehill’s improvement and what he could do this year. How has the injury sort of changed that view?) – “I don’t think it has for me. I think it’s a very unusual situation. He took a very odd hit and his body was in a weird position. That’s something that I wish I could say he could have controlled that, but we found ourselves in a little bit of a hole where we were trying to take a shot down the field and he held onto it and tried to give us the best chance possible, and he took a violent hit. It kind of really put him in a position where a guy got a good stroke on him and it affected him. I think mentally he’s in a great spot. I thought his body was in a decent spot everywhere else until that happened. We were headed in the right direction, we just had a little bit of that setback.”
(Like you said, it’s not out of QB Ryan Tannehill’s control but he’s had 20 games missed in the last two years.) – “Yeah, I mean before I got here it was ‘Hey, he’s played however many games (in a row).’ Everybody told me he never got hurt. The narrative swings so fast. I think that was a … The ACL was a weird deal. He got hit in a very poor throwing position. All of his weight was on that leg and he took a weird hit. It happens to a lot of guys. This one, it was the same thing. He was kind of in a bad position and it was just an unlucky event.”
(Sometimes it’s pretty clear if a team is a buyer or a seller at the trade deadline. At 4-4, do you see this as an opportunity to get your team better now? Is that something you’re even considering?) – “I haven’t even really thought about it. I like where we’re at right now. I like this group. I’d like to stay healthy from here on out. I don’t think we have much more room for losing guys for the year. I think we’ve maxed out on that. For the most part, I feel like we have the right guys. We just have to clean up … Especially on defense, we have to clean up a couple of things that could help us prevent these explosive plays because that’s hurting us more than anything.”
(Do you think you could go to Executive Vice President of Football Operation Mike Tannenbaum and say, ‘Hey, there’s this guy that’s available. He could be really …) – “Yeah, I mean, I’m not going to do that because they’re probably going to come to me before I go to them. That’s what these guys do all day long, every day, all year long. So I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about coaching the guys that are on our team.”
(You talked defensively about execution just now and a couple of guys here and there that maybe aren’t doing their job. How about schematically? Are you okay schematically?) – “We’re all right. There needs to be some things that we clean up that we kind of need to address and adjust. That’s part of football and that happens every year a lot of times that people don’t know about. We’re not going to sit there and do the same exact thing over and over again and think it’s going to fix itself. We’ll do what’s best for this game and then when we hit the next game, we’ll do what’s best for that game. That needs to be our mind-set in all three phases and that’s what it is going to be. We’ll make sure that we do a good job. If we prevent the explosive plays, we’ll be in a better position.”
(Going back to the question about the trade deadline tomorrow, how do you balance that innate competitiveness – you’ve obviously trying to 12-4 the rest of the year – versus weighing the long-term interests of the franchise?) – “I get what you’re saying, but with (General Manager) Chris (Grier) and Mike (Tannenbaum) doing what they do, they have a great way, like when we have to get together and some kind of decision is made, they lay everything out so black and white for me that it makes decisions really easy for my part of the vote. Those guys do a great job of laying things out the right way. They have a vision of how this thing should be and if something came up to where they thought that was best for us, it’s not too hard to convince me. Like, if they bring something to me, they’re really good at making sure that I see what they’re seeing.”
(But you could lose 10 more guys and keep trying. Would you be able to accept that at some point if it is the time to be a seller at the trade deadline?) –“I mean, how many days do we have left? There’s nothing that’s going to happen … Well, I shouldn’t say that because around here, who knows what’ll happen. (laughter)”
(Are you capable of that?) – “Probably not. That’s just … Unless they brought me something that they thought was a great idea, then I would do what’s best for the organization. But it’s highly unlikely that’s something like that would happen.”
(Do you still feel comfortable that WR DeVante Parker will be here past tomorrow?) – “Yeah. I do.”
(Do you know what the status of WR Kenny Stills is for this week?) – “I do not right now. He’s pushing. He wants it. He’s a guy that he doesn’t want to miss games. I know last week killed him. It was out of his control. I know he’s going to do everything he can to get back for this game. I just want to make sure that we’re not putting him out there too early to where he has a setback and now we lose him for a longer time.”
(We know it’s a week-to-week process, but with the way things have been going lately, do you still tell these guys we’re still conscientiously in the thick of the playoff race?) – “Yeah. I mean, what are we, one of eight teams that have (a .500 record or better), right? Now it’s who wins the second half of the season. We have to focus on this week and then once you handle this week, then you go to the next one. We’re so far … Last year we were in as deep of a hole as you can get in and we beat New England, we have to win one game and all of a sudden you’re playing the last game for the spot. You don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, it’s crazy. Everybody in this room probably watched games yesterday and there’s a lot of football where you’re going, ‘Well, are we better than this team? Are we better than this team?’ Everybody is just bunched up. There’s like two or three teams per side that have kind of separated themselves where you notice like, ‘Wow, that team is really good.’ When you watch Kansas City, you go, ‘Wow, they’re really good on offense.’ When you watch L.A., they’re really good. Past that, I feel like a whole bunch of people are clumped together. It’s just kind of week to week the way it’s going right now.”
(I want to understand what you said about the defense. It sounds like you like the players you have, you like the coaches you have, but the players are not adhering to what they’re being taught or something?) – “No, it’s not that. It’s just that we have to play better as a group. That’s what happens sometimes in football where either side of the ball, any of the three phases, to where d-line to linebackers and the safeties have to kind of play together in the run game and then everybody really has to work together in the passing game, and sometimes you can get off. The front could be kind of seeing it one way, where the linebackers see it a different way. Things like that happen. We need to do a better job of making sure all 11 guys are really working together because that gives us the best chance. When you play Houston, you have ‘99’ (J.J. Watt) and ‘90’ (Jadeveon Clowney) there, who are just wrecking the game nonstop. You could have errors and they kind of cover up for you. Right now, we’ve had guys in and out to where we need to play as a group. Like, some of our … I would say like losing William Hayes, he has been like our enforcer in the run game. He’s not there anymore. We have to figure out a different way to handle things because he would just be like, ‘Boom, set the edge,’ and that was it. It was done. It wasn’t anybody else. He did it that well. We could adjust to the other side to say, ‘All right, we can help here.’ Right now, we need all 11 guys to do a great job together because we don’t have one guy that could just handle one side or one linebacker that makes every play. We need to work as a group.”
(When you watch games, do you watch them as a fan or do you try to scout or look at scheme or those types of things?) – “I think I kind of just take it in as the game is going on. There’ll be situations that come up. For me, I always know when it must have been really good because (Associate Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren) Rizzi will start texting me, ‘Did you see this?’ It’s always a special teams play too. (laughter) Like the Carolina game yesterday when they take a delay of game and then they throw it to Greg Olsen and they get three points at the end of the half. Stuff like that. I guess most of us probably look at it situationally and there’ll be some times where you see a play and you’re like, ‘I wonder what that was?’ And write a note down to say, ‘Hey, watch the Rams-Green Bay game. I think I saw some stuff that Green Bay did defensively that I thought was interesting,’ as far as I might just write that down for when we play them of, ‘Hey, just a reminder to look at this.’ And then there’s a part of you that just watches it as … sometimes when you watch Kansas City, you just sit back and just watch because it just seems like they’re out there playing seven-on-seven. It’s impressive to watch.”
