Adam Gase – September 14, 2018
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Friday, September 14, 2018
Head Coach Adam Gase
(We found out the news on G Josh Sitton. How does that impact what you guys had planned?) – “We’ve had a decent idea all week that he wasn’t going to be ready for this game. Then after lots of discussions with him, with everybody in our organization, we realized that the best option was for him to have surgery and not try to risk anything to where it could prevent him from ever playing again.”
(C/G Ted Larsen has had kind of an interesting ride here. Things didn’t work out the way you wanted, with him getting injured coming into last season and then I think he said last year that he preferred to play on the right side versus the left or something like that. How has he handled all of the tumult throughout his year and a half here?) – “Ted doesn’t say much. He handles everything like a pro. I had a good conversation with him before we started the spring as far as how I saw his role and why we were giving Jesse (Davis) the right guard job, without him being able to compete for it. He’s a competitor. He wanted to compete for the spot and that’s fair. I understand that, especially going into your ninth season. He did a great job of stepping in with that second group, playing multiple positions, both sides and center. Now, it’s kind of come about to where he has to step in and be a starter for us. It feels good to be able to at least have a guy that’s started 76 games including the playoffs over his career. That’s a positive for us.”
(So you sat him down and basically told him that you were giving this job to G/T Jesse Davis, a much younger guy. And he was good with it?) – “He wanted to compete for it. But Ted’s is a pro. Not everybody is going to throw a temper tantrum. A lot of guys understand what this business is and if they go about it right, things work out.”
(C Travis Swanson has played guard before in Detroit. What’s your comfort level with him at guard if he has to play guard at some point?) – “I’m going to trust (Offensive Line Coach) Jeremiah (Washburn) on anything that has to do with moving the line around. That’s where he’s the expert at. I don’t try to act like I know more than I do. He has a good plan going into this game and we’ve had all week to prepare for it.”
(Do you feel good about C/G Ted Larsen playing left guard for the long haul, or do you anticipate looking outside?) – “No, we’re not going to be looking anywhere. I like our group.”
(Is QB Brock Osweiler going to be the backup quarterback again this week?) – “I don’t know. We’ll find out.”
(G Josh Sitton, I know that he had developed a good relationship with T Laremy Tunsil. What happens with Laremy as far as … do you break in a new guard? I know he played with C/G Ted Larsen a little bit.) – “That’s kind of the benefit of Ted’s been here. Those guys have played next to each other and they’ve practiced together. I think Josh was a very positive influence on Laremy. Those two guys worked well together and I think this will be a good transition for us, a smooth transition, because Ted is a good communicator. He can pick up kind of where Josh left off. Josh is going to be around. He’s going try to help our guys as much as possible when he’s available to do so. I know he’s going to have a procedure at some point, so we’ll probably lose him for a few days; but he’s not going to go far. We still have him under contract for another year and we anticipate him coming back next year, so we like the fact that he’s going to be around.”
(It’s obviously tough to lose any player. Is it especially tough to lose G Josh Sitton? There were such great plans for him and he was such a key part of what you were doing.) – “I think any time you lose a guy that’s been all-in, it’s tough for not only the coaching staff, but players and everybody involved in the organization. Really, at the end of the day, you look at it for that guy. All of us might be doing our jobs for a long time until we’re 50, 60, 70 years old, where these guys have a very short window. When they lose a season, that’s a lot of years for a normal job. He’s put so much into this year and he’s put so much into what we’re doing as a team that I probably feel worse for him than I do for us.”
(Has G Josh Sitton made a contribution already? Do you feel like you’ve seen what you’ve added as far as the benefit maybe to T Laremy Tunsil?) – “Yes. I see just his attitude and the way that his presence kind of helps that o-line room. I think him and (Daniel) Kilgore have done a great job of coming in there and being two new faces and becoming leaders. Josh is a leader in his own way. He’s not much of a talker but when he speaks, guys listen. I think he and Laremy have developed a really good relationship. I think he’s a positive influence on him and I think he will be moving forward. There’s something about him. You’re around him long enough where you notice he has a little quiet swagger about him.”
(How did WR DeVante Parker get through the week in practice and is he still on track to play Sunday?) – “I thought he did a good job with what we asked him to do. He got in some live team reps. He’s running well, he’s catching the ball well. It seems like he’s not having any issues catching the ball, so we’ll have our discussions here in the next two days and figure out how we really go about it from here.”
(You were kind enough to tell us last week that it was Director of Football and Player Development Clyde Christensen who came up with the idea of moving WR Jakeem Grant outside. The decision to have RB Kenyan Drake and RB Frank Gore open Sunday, was that your idea, something you had planned? Or how did that come about?) – “I think that was one of those things we’d really been planning for since we signed Frank. That’s nothing revolutionary. It’s just getting good players on the field. That’s all we’re trying to do.”
(And then one other thing on that general topic. The decision you made in mid-August to move CB Bobby McCain outside. It was obviously something that had been done before – it was done in the spring, it was done last year – was that something Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke suggested? Do you recall?) – “I didn’t really have anything to do with that. Those guys, I don’t mess with them too much on what they want to do as far as personnel goes, who’s playing where. If I have a suggestion, I’ll make it; but I rarely say anything, because I trust those guys. That’s why they’re there. Those guys came up with the idea that this might be the best for us right now, and moving forward maybe it changes, we don’t know; but I was comfortable with it. Since it was Bobby, I was comfortable with it, because I trust him with wherever we put him.”
(Listening to some of your comments earlier this week about using a rotation of tight ends, it seems like you haven’t really done that much in your past. What’s kind of new about that for you?) – “Because when you play on the ball and you’re rotating guys in and out, it makes it tough, because now they’re slowing you down. The officials stop it. We’ve got to let them sub and all of that stuff. Even if it’s just one-for-one, it doesn’t matter. The officials aren’t going to look and be like, ‘It was tight end for tight end. You guys are good.’ It’s easier when one guy just stays in, because now you keep a better rhythm. We’ll kind of have a good idea of what we want to do. I feel good about what we’ve got this week.”
(I was talking to your backup deep snapper, LS Lucas Gravelle, about last week and everything. It turns out he’s an interesting story, but he said at TCU, I think they only punted eight times and he had four solo tackles. Is there such a thing as an athletic deep snapper? What else do you do? How else do you make an impression aside from being accurate with your snaps?) – “It starts with that. After that, whatever … Really those guys, as long as they’re doing a good job of staying in their lane and they’re giving that effort, and they can be disruptive to the returner on any kind of return, that’s valuable. I think over my career, I don’t know how many guys I’ve actually been around that’ve been dynamic athletes or been involved in the tackle a whole bunch. I think it’s rare. I think the last guy I can think of was Brian Jennings may have been the one guy, in San Francisco, that I remember was an actual … He would play tight end and long snap. I’m sure there’s been other guys that I didn’t know about, but that’s the last one I remember.”
(Is there an optimum body type for that, because LS Lucas Gravelle doesn’t seem to fit it?) – “I think when you’re a long snapper, if you’re accurate and you have velocity and can get it back there quick and you’re good with the protections, I think most special teams coaches, that’s an ideal starting point for them.”
(Part of the progression for young players is playing through injuries, learning how to play when you’re not 100 percent. What do you feel like WR DeVante Parker is at?) – “That doesn’t bother me. This was not a pain … This was not his fault by any means.”
(Right, but WR DeVante Parker has to go out on the field and try to be himself as much as he can.) – “I’m not worried about it with this injury. I feel good with where he’s at right now. He’s got it strong and the way they have his hand kind of taped up, he’s able to have movement and he’s able to snag the ball. This is not a pain thing for him at this point. It was more of a stability thing for us. I think he’s in a good place. He proved to me two years ago when he played with his back kind of jacked up against Baltimore that he’s tough. He can handle the pain. It is hard sometimes when you’re not 100 percent, when you’re a big guy that goes to get the ball, like how physical can you play? That’s the toughest thing to try to figure out.”
(Having five receivers you trust, will this be the toughest decisions for you and Wide Receivers Coach Ben Johnson since you’ve been here as far as allocation of receiver snaps?) – “No, because if we play the right way and guys are exerting max effort, then when we have different guys in there, it’s not a big deal. When you keep a guy in too long and he starts slowing down and he’s not playing fast, that’s when you have issues.”
(Not trying to get you to look past this week, but you’re going to have Jets QB Sam Darnold two games this year, Bills QB Josh Allen two games this year, Texans QB Deshaun Watson and Bears QB Mitchell Trubisky later this year. Is there a challenge or an advantage to playing against guys in their first, second season?) – “You’re right, I’m not looking … I’m focused on this week. That’s a tough question to really answer. A couple of those guys, I haven’t seen play in our league yet. You might catch a game on TV or something, but that doesn’t mean anything. That’s why this week we’ll focus on the snaps we have of Darnold. Past that, we’ll worry about those other games when we get there.”
(What would keep WR DeVante Parker out Sunday?) – “I don’t know. We just have to go look at how we’re going to do the inactives and special teams and defense and offense, kind of how to put it all together. That’s the puzzle you’re always trying to figure out.”
