Adam Gase – September 5, 2017
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Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase
(What, if anything, can you tell us about this weekend?) – “Nothing. I don’t have an update. I don’t know.”
(There was a report there was a conference call this morning and there’s no…) – “I was in meetings, so I wasn’t involved in it.”
(How are you handling practice? Is there any change based on certain things that could happen?) – “No.”
(At this point you have no idea if you’re having a game on Sunday or not? Is that what you’re telling us?) – “I mean as far as I know, we’re practicing like we’re playing a game somewhere, sometime this week.”
(So it’s your expectation you will play somewhere this week then?) – “I don’t know. I mean, sure.”
(Have you guys ruled out playing it here this weekend?) – “Nobody’s told me that.”
(Is there anything that has been ruled out definitively?) – “No. I’m not asking those questions. Once somebody tells me something, I’m not going to waste my time speculating on anything. We’re going to keep preparing like we’re playing Sunday. Where and when, we really don’t care.”
(Who would make that decision? The NFL or the team or what?) – “I think it’s conversations between us, Tampa and the NFL.”
(Are the players just as concerned? I mean they have families.) – “No, I mean they would just want to figure out what’s going on, so then they can make plans.”
(You have a football family and then you have a family at home. I know my wife is a little worried right now. Can you tell us about your family?) – “She’s handling … She deals with it on her own. She doesn’t … She isn’t waiting for me to tell her anything. She’ll tell me what she’s doing.”
(Any talk from the players at all about being nervous or thinking about it or anything like that?) – “Nobody said anything to me. They just said when you know something, let us know.”
(Do you have a preference regarding finding a way to play this week versus playing 16 in a row and giving up the bye week?) – “Whatever they tell us to do, we’ll do.”
(If it turns out that you have to move the game, how do you prepare, especially with potentially at least tropical storm force winds potentially being here on Friday?) – “Prepare for…?”
(Do you just prepare like you would normally, like assume you’re going to have a game on Sunday?) – “Yes, I mean we’re going to keep practicing and getting ready for the game until somebody tells us different.”
(Did the threat of Hurricane Matthew before the Tennessee game last year prepare you in any way for the threat of this game possibly being moved, a change of practice schedule?) – “I mean, this was kind of our … I don’t know, this might be the last time we do the whole Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday thing. We’ve done it twice and both times, you get the same result.”
(Have you been briefed fully by like your operations side as to what’s going on, like everything that’s going down?) – “They’re doing what they’re supposed to do and that’s make preparations for every scenario they can think of. I really would rather not hear about it. They know what to do. That’s what they get paid to do.”
(Have you ever been part of a game that’s been shifted?) – “No, I haven’t.”
(Have you guys explored how this might affect your upcoming week where you’re supposed to travel to the West Coast?) – “No. I’m not worried about that. Once whenever this week ends, then we’ll move on to the next week.”
(Obviously you’re here for football questions as well, just on a couple of your rookies. CB Cordrea Tankersley, did he show you during training camp that we was maybe advanced beyond the point at which you all might have thought? He made a lot of plays on the ball.) – “That’s what we were expecting when we drafted him. I think when you play that position sometimes, that learning curve … You’re always hoping for acceleration and understanding that every guy you go against is really … They’re all fast. They’re all physical. They’re all quick, and that can be a little change of pace for you when you’re coming out of college where you may see some guys on some teams that aren’t upper-tiered type players at that level, where in this league, it’s really kind of no matter who you go against, it’s not an easy matchup. They’re always tough matchups and you’ve got to bring you A-game every day. With (Tankersley), his big thing is size and speed and being physical at the line of scrimmage. It’s always going to be when you get those smaller, quicker guys out on him, his game plan going into it, how are you going to handle that? What are the little things you’re going to work on to make sure that you take that advantage back by using that? I think it’s been a good learning process for him because he’s had to go through and go against so many different body types. When you’ve got a guy like, one day you go against DeVante (Parker), then you go against Jakeem (Grant) and then (Leonte) Carroo and then Kenny (Stills), I mean it’s just every day is a different battle for him.”
(When you see a young guy like that be able to drive on a slant and pick the ball off, what type of instincts and footwork does it take to be able to do that?) – “It’s that ability to stick your foot in the ground and accelerate and be right on it. It’s all good until that guy runs a double move and you’re nowhere to be found. That’s part of the learning process. That’s why when you see the really, really good ones, they seem to not get beat on those type of plays. They kind of feel what the receiver is doing. They can tell whether it be by body language, the way he comes off the ball, if something is different like that. That’s why when you find those special corners, it’s hard to … You want to get as many as you can. There’s just not a lot of guys like that.”
(I know you talked about starting fast a couple times this summer. You’ve been on both sides – fast starting teams and slow starting teams. What is the difference in those?) – “It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly why some teams I’ve been on have started fast and some have started slow. Sometimes you have those games where one or two things don’t go quite your way or you don’t do things exactly the way you need to do them early and it kind of snowballs on you, where it’s the opposite – a couple of things do go your way and then it starts going really right for you. It’s amazing how one or two plays can affect one game that can lead to four or five games – confidence when you win one of you kind of get it rolling.”
(You mentioned the possibility of a corner – CB Xavien Howard or whoever – being able to have the flexibility to follow one receiver. What goes, in general, into the thought process about whether or not to do that or not, to stick with just the left and right?) – “You really have to feel comfortable that you match up well by doing that and you don’t want to do it to where, okay, one guy is good, but now you’re having problems somewhere else. It really needs to be the right combination of what the other team has and what you feel like we can do defensively. You would think it’d be really easy, but there are a lot of factors you’ve got to think about.”
(What lessons from last year’s start did you take away that you can apply to going into this season?) – “The beginning of the year last year … What really put us in a hole a little bit was we mis-executed a few things early that were critical plays in the game in some of the games that we lost. We did not play well in the New England game at all. The Seattle game, I thought the effort, the energy (was good) – we hadn’t done it enough together. There are little, tiny details that I feel confident about this year that we would do. At least that puts us in a position to make plays. Last year we kind of took away from that. A couple of those games, we just didn’t play very good. We didn’t coach good enough. We didn’t play well enough. That’s probably the reason for a few of those games early. The longer we were together and we all started to get a feel for each other, I felt we started clicking there. We had a really good feel of how we did it. As the coaching staff, the players, we got a good feel of how they wanted to … What we could do to use their strengths and then they really took to it and took off with it. That’s really what you’re looking for. Coming out of training camp, our confidence level should be higher than it was last year, because we’ve done it together for a longer period of time. There are a lot of familiar faces in that room. You look up and the only two new guys you really see outside of the rookies are Anthony (Fasano) and Julius (Thomas). One of them has already been in the offense. You feel you’re ready to play a game.”
(You got two premier defensive tackles in DT Ndamukong Suh and Buccaneers DT Gerald McCoy. When you have one of those guys, how do you take advantage of him to maximize his effectiveness when you go against him? What are you options to limit his effectiveness?) – “You try to do everything you can to get one-on-one matchups. It’s hard, because the other team is thinking the same thing you are: don’t let them get one-on-one matchups. When you’re going against a guy like that, it can cause problems. It can take away a lot of the things that you’d like to do. He can make you one dimensional. There’s only probably three or four of them in this league that are like these two guys. There might be one other guy. These guys, they’re so disruptive and it’s a constant. It just seems like these guys – the special ones – for some reason they seem to be able to play 70 plays a game at a high level the whole game, where a lot of guys at that position, you hear, ‘He played 30 plays. He played 35 plays.’ These guys are (different). They’ve got a different motor. They’ve got a different mindset. They’re tough to play against.”
(With CB Xavien Howard’s skillset, is it reasonable in Year 2 to expect high level cornerback play from him all year?) – “I think if you asked him, he would say yes. As coaches, you’re never going to get ahead of yourself. You want to put the guy in the best position possible. You want to try to help them develop. You don’t try to jump the gun and say ‘This is where he is compared to the rest of the guys.’ As a player, you want a guy that’s just confident and thinks he’s one of the top guys in the league. I like how he’s worked. I like how he’s developed. We just want to keep him healthy and keep him rolling.”
(CB Torry McTyer, a guy with his speed, how was he missed? What was it that enabled him to…) – “I can’t explain all of that. All of us have … I’ve had bad play calls. I’ve misevaluated guys before or misused guys before. In scouting sometimes, you think you see some … A guy is one way and then he comes in and he’s a different guy. He just shows something different or he’s a better fit than he was in college. You just never know. I went through it in Denver with Chris Harris. He came in and all of a sudden you kept hearing him talked about on special teams and the next thing you know, he’s starting for us. How can you explain that one?”
(What was it that enabled CB Torry McTyer to kind of be more of a fit here or to make this roster?) – “It seems like most of the guys that ended up being undrafted guys that make it are … They’re playing for their lives every day from the day they walk in. There’s a different mindset. They know nothing is given to them. They’re fighters. They wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t love it because no one else thought they were good. You like that. That’s why I like those guys that we’ve got. They’ve got a different mindset.”
(What went into the organizational decision to extend S T.J. McDonald?) – “Well, I think he came in and that was one of the discussions when we brought him on board was just do right and work hard and show that you’re a fit here. Anybody that watched him practice and play, I would say I don’t think there would be too many people arguing.”
(Buccaneers DE DeSean Jackson, what are the challenges when you’re playing a guy who is averaging 17 yards per reception in his career?) – “It’s tough. When you can stretch the field like he can, the way he runs routes, you always feel like he’s going vertical and then all of a sudden he hits the breaks and then there’s 7 yards of separation. When you have that kind of speed and quickness, it’s a tough matchup. You try to do the best you can, stay high on him and stay as tight as you can. The biggest thing is, when you’ve got a guy that is making plays down the field, you have to do everything you can up front to get to the quarterback fast, just so he can’t run 20 yards down the field and then break in or out. You’ve got to hold onto the ball for a second. You’ve got to create pressure on the quarterback and stay as tight as you can and just make the window as small as possible. It’s tough to stay extremely tight to a guy that has that kind of speed.”
(Have you or did you adjust your schedule at all – meetings, practices, anything – with the idea that maybe if the game is moved up, you’ve done work that you expected to do Thursday or Friday?) – “No. We had this … That’s what I’ve been saying is it’s strange that this is happening again because we were planning on going Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week. It’s just kind of weird how we’re practicing and now this is coming into range later in the week. It was just kind of coincidence.”
(Are you worried at all? Personally, are you worried? I would assume you have to be like everybody else is, a potential Category 5 hurricane coming in and the devastation that can cause. But have you given it much time to think about what the impacts of this could be if we get any kind of direct hit?) – “I’ve never really been through anything like that, so it’s hard. I don’t know what to expect. For me, the closest I came was last year in that Tennessee week, and I don’t think that was really … Most of the people around here said that was nothing; it was a strong breeze. I just want to make sure our players, players’ families … I just want our group of people just to feel like we know what we’re doing and everybody can handle the business they need to handle and let our organization do what they do and everybody do their job.”
(Any message to the fans who are wondering what do we do with our tickets or anything like that?) – “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
(Are there people facilitating players and maybe their families who maybe this is also their first time going through a hurricane?) – “Yes, that’s one of the things that (Director of Player Engagement) Kaleb Thornhill … That’s why we have him and (Player Engagement Coordinator) Yves (Batoba). Our player engagement guys, they do a great job and make sure they’re talking to our guys and making sure who knows what to … Who has people that are here that are not really sure what to do and how do we go about handling everything. We have a lot of communication going on down there with those guys. The biggest thing that they’re waiting for me is what’s the next step? They’ll just keep going about their business until somebody tells them different and that’s kind of how those guys have to go through this.”
