Adam Gase – October 5, 2017
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Thursday, October 5, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase
(Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen basically just said he’s not doing a good enough job helping you out in terms of helping the offense and giving you ideas, and insinuated that the offense might be tightening up, feeling the pressure of what’s been going on. Your response to that is what?) – “Clyde is just probably being a little hard on himself. I think what everybody is trying to do right now is do more – find ways to help the offense, find ways to see if we can get some consistency going, finishing drives, converting third downs. As far as guys tightening up, this is the NFL, so we’ve got to toughen up a little bit.”
(Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen indicated that things haven’t only not been manageable on the field, but also off the field – all the travel, everything that’s included – there’s no continuity, really. Can you kind of comment to that?) – “The schedule is what it is. We’re going to line up somewhere Sunday. You roll with the punches and you get prepared for the game and just be ready to go.”
(Was CB Xavien Howard even close to being able to work yesterday?) – “We were going to hold him out regardless. He’s just still day-to-day.”
(How long does it take for a guy to get in shape? LB Rey Maualgua has been around for a while. Is he still not in shape?) – “He looks alright to me. We’ll see what we do Sunday.”
(Do you want LB Rey Maualuga to play if he’s healthy and in shape?) – “Of course I do. That’s why we brought him here.”
(Do you ever talk to your guys about outside noise or do you leave them on their own to manage it?) – “I just tell them don’t listen to anything. Why? If anyone was held accountable for what they said, there’d be a lot of people out of jobs.”
(Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen was in here a little bit ago and he talked about doing what you do, but continuing to do it and just do it better. Is that your philosophy as well as far as the run game is concerned, just do what you’ve been doing?) – “With what we’ve been doing we absolutely … That’s really the No. 1 key for us is just do your job. If we do that consistently, we’ll be fine.”
(With third downs, it has been an issue for the past two seasons, carrying over to this year. Is there any rhyme or reason to why the team continues to struggle on that down?) – “I looked at that after the season, trying to pinpoint one or two things. Some of it came from … It stemmed from first and second down to where negative plays … Last year, it was more we were having minus 5- to 8-yard plays sometimes in the run game. That hurt us. We’d drop a ball here or we’d have a misread or a missed cut – things like that. That kind of will throw you off. If you have a negative play on first or second down, it makes it tough on third down. When you start heading in that third-and-8 plus, third-and-7 plus area, it’s tough to convert in this league, because they know what you’re going to do. They know you’re throwing it and there’s a lot of good pass rushers in this league, and it makes it very difficult to protect the quarterback.”
(We saw WR Jakeem Grant early at receiver in the first series for I think a couple of plays. Was that something that you had planned to do early and not do a lot of later, because obviously you have three, veteran, talented receivers?) – “If we keep the game fairly manageable or get a lead one of these days, I’d like to keep rolling all of those guys in there. We’ve got a talented bunch of guys between the backs and tight ends and wide receivers. (I want to) try to play guys, keep them fresh, get some different guys the ball, see if somebody can pop one out and make a big play. When it kind of gets in a position to where I feel like those three guys need to stay on the field, because they have a greater grasp of the variety of routes that we can run and moving them around. With Jakeem, I don’t want to throw him outside the box we kind of have him in right now, because he’s really starting to make a lot of progress. If we ever got to the situation where he had to play more, we’re going to have to do that; but we’re trying to keep bringing him along. This is his first year playing that spot. I like the direction he’s heading. I want him to keep improving.”
(How tough has it been a decision for you in your first year and a half of being a head coach of how often to ream your team, how often to be really angry with them as opposed to being calm when things are not going well?) – “I just go by feel. I feel like you need to say the right things at the right time. Every week is different.”
(Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen said that C/G Ted Larsen is getting closer. How close is he right now?) – “I don’t know. He knows more than I do, I guess.”
(That’s not anytime soon?) – “I don’t know. I’m worried about this game. He’s not playing this week.”
(Mike Gundy … This is totally random, so I apologize, if this is stupid: I was talking to Gundy about play calling once – Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Gundy – and he told me that if things weren’t going right, sometimes he would literally randomly call a play off his sheet. Have you ever done anything like that?) – “I joke about … It’s like playing Battleship. You really have no clue what the other guy is doing anyways. You try to organize it the best you can and go off of tendencies. All it takes is one game and all of a sudden the defensive coordinator flips all his tendencies. That’s done a lot. You try to give the quarterback and the players as many answers as possible. Teams usually lean on certain coverages, and they’ll throw some curveballs in there every once in a while. But for the most part, you have an idea of what it could be. When you give them a play and there’s just nothing, no answers whatsoever, that’s really where you get yourself in trouble.”
