Adam Gase – September 27, 2017
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Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase
(You said last week that guys can be brought back into the fold if the right steps are taken. What right steps were taken by LB Lawrence Timmons?) – “I mean that’s just … that’s something I’m just keeping in-house right now. We just worked through a couple of things. ‘L.T.’ (Lawrence Timmons) handled the business he needed to handle and I’m glad he’s back.”
(Do you have any concern about how the locker room will accept LB Lawrence Timmons back?) – “No.”
(Is the trust restored between you and LB Lawrence Timmons or does that take time?) – “Yes.”
(Has LB Lawrence Timmons or will he talk to the team? Have you addressed that?) – “Anything like that will stay in-house as far as what goes (on) with our team. I don’t know. I’m sure you guys will talk to him at some point.”
(What assurances, if any, did LB Lawrence Timmons give you that this will not happen again?) – “Once again, I’m just going to keep our conversations … I’m going to keep those private.”
(Do you see LB Lawrence Timmons playing on Sunday?) – “(It’s a) possibility.”
(Was it a tough decision to reinstate LB Lawrence Timmons right now?) – “No.”
(Why not?) – “I felt good about where we were at with him.”
(Did this decision have anything to do with wins and losses as far as …?) – “No.”
(Do you think this might be the week that LB Rey Maualuga gets out there?) – “We’ve got him practicing this week, so that’s a positive step and we’ll just kind of see how that goes. I’m trying to make sure … If it was up to him, he’d be like ‘throw me in there and let’s go,’ but I just don’t want to have a setback. We’ve come a long way in a short period of time and I just want to make sure he’s healthy, ready to go and can help us.”
(S Nate Allen left the game on Sunday. Do you have any concerns with him?) – “We’re going to see how he feels today. I think he could have went back in the game if we needed him to. We’ll kind of go day-to-day right now.”
(Where do you stand with any possible changes in your starting lineup?) – “I’m not going to sit here and give any kind of game plan away. We’re going to go through a week of practice and see how it goes and just kind of see what the best fit for us is this week.”
(Without giving anything with the game plan away, did you, after thinking about things the last 48 hours, do you feel just minor tweaking is needed or do you feel like something more significant is needed?) – “I think we need to play better on offense. I know that. The defense did a great job. They kept us in the game as long as they could. The time of possession was way off base. We just can’t do that to those guys and we’re wasting snaps with our defense because they’re getting off the field. Their third down was good. For us to just keep throwing them back out there … it’s going to, like last year, it just eventually catches up to you. Then at the end of the year, we kind of started turning it on, on offense, and then all of a sudden our defense is exhausted because they were going 75, 80 plays a game. That’s why we need to be … If we can be balanced and stay on the field and figure out a way to convert some third downs, that’s going to give us our best chance because when our defense is fresh, they can do some damage.”
(Is time of possession the most important stat to you?) – “Well, when it gets to 37 minutes, 36 minutes, that’s just way off. I just know we’re better than that and we just haven’t done it yet.”
(With regard to LB Rey Maualuga, are you guys still working on conditioning issues with him or do you …?) – “No, it’s more of just his health. His conditioning has gotten better. He’s pretty used to down here now and we just have to … He hadn’t done anything in so long. We get him in here and we’re just trying to get him adapted to how you have to practice down here. He’s a big guy. He’s always been a big guy. You can say ‘Get down to this weight, get down to this weight,’ but that’s what makes him a little different than everybody else because that’s a big man in the middle that can move around pretty good and hit guys.”
(When you expressed your frustration with how the offense looked the other day, is part of it that you’d like to be a little more creative with it? Do you not see enough creativity in what you’ve been doing?) – “Sometimes you feel that way. Really, when we get into too many mental errors or it’s not being executed the way we think it should be, and we’re not in a good rhythm – whether it be a series of bad play calls or we screw some things up – just some kind of consistency, just overall, the whole big picture of everything. We just haven’t had that. The first week, I thought it was okay; but if we hit a couple deals in the red zone, maybe we feel better about it. Last game was just a disaster. It just wasn’t very good. We’re all taking part of the blame. None of us were good. We just have to be better.”
(Along those lines, how would you evaluate your play calling the first couple games?) – “The first game, I was mad that I couldn’t find that one or two things in the first half to really get us going. I was trying to get one with Jarvis (Landry) and felt good about it – we felt good about it all week – and we didn’t get it, get what we wanted. When you get the opportunities and you miss it, it’s hard to get the second one. It’s hard to come back the next play and be like, ‘Alright, now we’re going to score a touchdown,’ because you put yourself behind. All of a sudden now it’s second-and-10 and then you’re third-and-8. There’s not a lot of great play calls third-and-8 from the 15. The defense has a good advantage there. Last week it was third down was a disaster. That’s obvious. It’s embarrassing. It was always something, whether it was play call, execution, we don’t finish the play. Whatever it is, the whole thing was a mess.”
(Do you have a better feel now for how LB Stephone Anthony fits in and do you anticipate him getting some work this Sunday?) – “We’ll see how it plays out this week. We’ve got a better feel now. We’ll see kind of how it works out.”
(It’s hard to evaluate guys after two games. Are you getting what you need from TE Julius Thomas?) – “We haven’t got the coverages that make him a difference maker. It might be part of the reasons why we’re not getting it. When you flex him out and you put a safety or linebacker on him, that’s an advantage for us. We really haven’t seen that. We’ve seen a lot of zone coverage. If we’re more efficient in the passing game, maybe we start seeing some things where it’s too high and now we can get Jay (Ajayi) going. It seems like a lot of times we’re still running against an eight-man box or seven-man box, depending on the personnel. We just have to do a great job. We’ve got to win our one-on-one matchups and find some ways to pop some guys free and try to find some consistency.”
(What do you need to do to have success against Saints QB Drew Brees?) – “If I had the answer to that, a lot of people would be coming to me for that one. You do the best you can. You want to keep everything in front of you. You want to make sure that you put as much pressure on them as you can and try to collapse the pocket, make it tough for him. Just watching that last game, (he) looks one way, resets and then throws just an absolute dime 48 yards down the field for a touchdown. His ability to throw the ball is still as good as it has ever been. You just really have to try to disrupt his timing and cover up those first progressions and give the d-line a chance to get there. He’s a tough matchup.”
(You mentioned all that zone you see. How do you break that?) – “You have to beat it. You have to be able to move the ball, whether it be in the run or the pass. When you do get your opportunities in man coverage, you’ve got to try to really have some good plays. Any time you get (the) middle of the field open and you’ve got two safeties back there and you run it, that’s where you’ve really got to have those 6-, 8-, 10-yard carries. You’ve got to get everybody covered up and take advantage of it.”
(When you hit a point at which you’re frustrated with how the offense is going, how much do you look for player input on that, like from QB Jay Cutler, or the receivers or anybody?) – “All the time. I’m trying to get their perspective too. Even during the last game, I grabbed all three receivers and said, ‘Give me what you like, so we can see if we can get something going.’ The good thing is, those guys can communicate well, and right away they’ll give you two or three things that they like for them, and we try to get to those. You might not always get exactly what you want from the defensive side, but at least it’s kind of them. They’re playing the game and they kind of have a better (feel for it). We’re watching, but they’re doing it. They have a little better feel of how guys are playing them, and for them to be able to give that kind of input helps a lot.”
(Is that typically your first instinct in that situation is the receivers, to find out from them what’s going on?) – “Yes, I do.”
(As opposed to anyone else because…?) – “Well the ball, if we’re throwing it, the majority of the time it’s going (to one of the receivers), especially when I know some of the coverages they’re running and it’s not really applying to the tight ends. When you talk to Jay Ajayi, he’s very good at saying, ‘I like this scheme over this one,’ and he can narrow it down for you to how he’s feeling (and how) things are fitting up for him. He’s always been really good about that with, in game, what he’s feeling and what he likes.”
(If you talk to them in-game, even though you’re right on the sideline, can they see subtle things that maybe you wouldn’t even pick up on that closely?) – “Yes, because they’re doing it. The thing that we try to tell our guys is, ‘Tell us the right stuff.’ To me, that’s an advantage when guys can. I’ve been around some guys, in the past, that were really good at relaying the information back. I’ve been around a few guys that tell you the wrong stuff and it kind of throws everything off, but I feel like our guys do a pretty good job. They’ve been right. When they’ve suggested things, when they’ve told us stuff, they’ve been right.”
(Some described QB Jay Cutler as looking rusty on Sunday against the Jets. He had such a long layoff this summer. Is he still behind?) – “I don’t think he’s behind. He got hit early a couple of times. I think he was trying to get out of the pocket a few times, maybe instead of pushing up, he started to escape. A couple balls didn’t come out as good as he wants. The first play of the game, that was really on me. I should have had him set up sooner and we would have been in good shape and he would have been able to throw a better ball. The guy was coming right at him and he kind of threw it off his back foot. Some of it is just timing. We’ve just got to keep getting better and keep working on stuff. I felt good going into the game with what we were doing passing game-wise and how we were throwing the ball around. Even though Jarvis (Landry) and DeVante (Parker) missed some time in practice, I still felt good about it; but we just weren’t crisp. We weren’t clicking.”
(There was a red zone play where WR Jarvis Landry was open in the middle and the ball kind of went to nobody. What happened on that play?) – “You want me to go over the progression of the route?”
(I’m just curious as to what happened.) – “(QB Jay Cutler) didn’t see him. It happens. I might have not have told him to look there. I don’t know.”
(When you first brought QB Jay Cutler aboard, you guys said that you had planned on keeping him as fresh as possible. Do you feel like you guys have done everything possible to adhere to that and how’s it going at this point?) – “Yes, there’s a lot of communication that goes on there. He’ll tell me if he feels like something’s up, where his arm’s fatiguing or anything (like that); but I’ve yet to have that day happen, so I don’t see any issues. Plus, the amount of throwing he actually does, it’s not a lot.”
(Did C Mike Pouncey come out of the game again good physically?) – “Yes. He played well. He might have been one of the few guys (that played well).”
(Are you almost at a point where C Mike Pouncey’s injury is not even an issue anymore?) – “We’re always going to be smart in practice and we’re always going to go day-to-day and see how he feels. Some days might be better than others; but the way he is, he’s such a competitor. He wants to be out there all the time. We probably look at it like we’re protecting him from himself.”
(Are you optimistic about DT Jordan Phillips’ availability for Sunday?) – “We’ll just see how this week progresses. Any time we can get a guy that was a starter for us to start the season back out there – and he was playing well – it’d be great. I just don’t know.”
