Anthony Weaver – November 14, 2024
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Thursday, November 14, 2024
Defensive Coordinator Anthony Weaver
(I’m sure we’ll have a lot of questions about the great job you and the group did on Monday, but just to get one housekeeping thing out of the way, did David Long Jr. ask for his release or did he express to you, Head Coach Mike McDaniel and General Manager Chris Grier that he would prefer to be in a place where he could play?) – “I think that was just a team decision. Obviously we have a tremendous amount of love and respect for ‘Dave’ (David Long Jr.). He is a starting-caliber NFL backer and at this particular time we know we chose to go with ‘Walk’ (Anthony Walker Jr.) so it was probably the best move for just all parties involved. It gives him a chance to continue his NFL career and go flourish elsewhere but incredibly grateful for his time here for sure.”
(Did he ask for his release?) – “That I don’t know. You’d have to talk to – that’s above my paygrade.”
(With LB Tyrel Dodson what do you think that he can add to this defense?) – “I think the first thing is that he has scheme familiarity coming from Seattle, right, with the defense that Mike (Macdonald) installed and he’s a playmaker, right? You’ve seen it on tape. He flies around, he hunts the football, and he can contribute on special teams, too. So he introduced himself to the defense and you could feel his energy and his passion, and any time you’ve got guys that have that on defense, those are the type of guys you’re looking for.”
(What kind of chip on your shoulder do you get when you’re waived as the leading tackler from another team?) – “I couldn’t tell you. It’s never happened to me, but any time you get fired or released or cut from a job, I imagine you have a chip, right, that I don’t care what profession you’re in. I imagine he wished Seattle was still on our schedule and we hadn’t played them already and that’s usually when those things become most apparent.”
(Obviously going without CB Kendall Fuller now Sunday and perhaps beyond, has CB Cam Smith done enough – this is kind of like what I asked you last week – but has Cam done enough where you say, going into this game, “he is our third corner with CB Kader Kohou and with CB Jalen Ramsey” or have the struggles been such that you open up the competition and say “we need a fresh look in CB Storm Duck, CB Ethan Bonner and CB Siran Neal”?) – “I don’t necessarily think it’s a struggle for Cam. I just think you’re just going through some growing pains from a younger player. Who plays in place of Kendall (Fuller), I think it’s very much a competition. Prior too, guys like Storm (Duck) were hurt. Storm Duck was hurt, Kader Kohou was hurt. So Cam went out there and did a an admirable job, right, especially just considering how much practice time he had missed, so that competition in that position will certainly be up for grabs this week. We’ll look how the guys compete throughout the week and I expect him to be near the top because that’s the type of guy that he is. He’s going to go out there and give everything he has to earn that starting spot.”
(I have a question about Tampa 2 coverage. It seems like it’s more prominent now than it has been in recent years after it was really popular in the early 2000s. Is that accurate and why do you think it’s more popular now?) – “I don’t know from a numbers standpoint where it is in the league. All you’re ever trying to do is try to figure out conceptually what you’re getting from a route standpoint and put as many bodies in those windows to try to dissuade those routes. I think it’s one of those coverages where you can get to it from a variety of different ways and sometimes when you’re maneuvering the safeties and showing the middle close and then all of a sudden it’s open, showing (Cover) 0 and then all of a sudden it’s Tampa 2, there’s a bunch of things you can do to essentially slow the quarterback’s decision-making down a little bit when you can play Tampa variations and then mix it with some middle close zones and fire zones and things of that nature.”
(So CB Storm Duck was cleared, good to go at the point to the injury report but then he was still inactive. Was that still maybe dealing with some remnants of the ankle issue?) – “Yeah, I think it’s one of those things where he’s still very much trying to get confidence back in that ankle. But we see from a competition standpoint, we see the same guy he’s always been. He’s going out there, he’s working, trying to work through it. At that particular time we just felt like with Cam (Smith), he’s got a number of reps. He went out there and did, again, a very serviceable job versus Buffalo so we felt confident with him going in that last game.”
(What pleased you most when you studied the film in a game in which you held the Rams without a touchdown?) – “I was just most pleased with just the collective effort of the group, particularly the situation where we were at. You’re sitting at 2-6. You had every opportunity to go across the country and feel bad for yourself, but our guys didn’t do that. They answered the call. They stuck together, they endured and I think we went out there and had our best performance to date so I applaud those guys. We have a bunch of grown men who are willing to look adversity straight in the face and throw their best punch.”
(What did you see from a communication standpoint?) – “Yeah, again, I think on all levels it was our best game to date. It obviously helps, you have some connectivity there with guys that have played a bunch of ball – with Kader Kohou coming back, Jevón Holland, Zach Sieler. Outside of the players that they are, there’s just so many cumulative reps that they’ve all played in meaningful games. So when you get those guys back and it’s a guy on every level, obviously that’s going to help step up your communication, too, so I think it was certainly our best game to date. We had very minimal errors and the ones we did have really didn’t hurt us.”
(What do you think when you look at Raiders TE Brock Bowers for them and maybe ways to defend that tight end?) – “Oh man, that guy, I’ll tell you what. I don’t want to slap ‘Rookie of the Year’ on him yet, but he is an absolute force. He as a tight end – shoot, you could probably put him a tailback, you can play him anywhere you want. So we’ve certainly got to account for him the entire day, particularly in critical situations. You have to think that (he is) a guy that he’s going to target, but what an incredible player. I look forward to just seeing the trajectory of career and where he goes.”
(Back to CB Kader Kohou for a second, I noticed some reps where he was peeling off into the deep path on some of your two-high looks and I was wondering what is the process for trying to decipher how much a player can put on their plate? Because he’s played inside, he’s played outside, he’s getting back at some depth now. Like what goes into that process of deciding if guys can do that?) – “That’s certainly something you’re trying to figure out all throughout the offseason. We tried very much to – when we’re installing to our players – we try to teach part to whole, so we don’t just try to pigeonhole and say like, ‘you’re just a nickel.’ We try to learn like, ‘here’s a curl flat technique, here’s a seam-and-a-half technique, here’s a three-hole technique.’ And we teach everybody the jobs. And then whoever can learn the bulk of those jobs and as many of them as they can retain, we’re like, ‘All right, this guy we can do a bunch with. Like he can play all these techniques fairly well.’ So the more our guys understand the big picture of what we’re trying to do conceptually, the more problems we can present to an offense because we’re able to morph and they can’t just say like, ‘That’s the nickel. He always does this.’ ‘Jalen Ramsey, he’s a corner, he always does this.’ You have no idea where our guys are going to be which I think is what makes it hard to play offense against us.”
(Would it be fair to say that this team is kind of sort of morphing into a defensive team?) – “No, no, I’m not saying that. We have a tremendous amount of pride on our side of ball obviously and every time we go out there, we have a standard that we expect to live up to. We don’t want people to score. But with the talent we have on the other side of the ball, we are very much a team. So to say that we’re an offensive or defensive team, I don’t think that’s fair at all. We’re just trying to make sure we hold up our end of the bargain come game day.”
(How do you guys carry over the momentum from Monday to next week?) – “This league is about enduring and getting better. I talked to the guys about just having faith in the middle of the season. It’s so long and it’s so grueling that it exposes the frauds and if you’re not willing to push yourself and constantly get better throughout, then you’ll have a failing season in the end. So while our record certainly isn’t what we want, I told the guys like, ‘if you thought we were a playoff team coming into the year, then raise your hand.’ I was like, ‘well, the playoffs just started a little bit sooner for us.’ So we got some pieces back, we got our quarterback out there and let’s go on a run. So we’re not overlooking the Raiders by any means and right now, we have a very magnified focus on our opponent ahead.”
(DeShon Elliott said that this team was soft last year. I know you weren’t here. Has that come up in meetings? Do you want your team to take that to heart or just kind of disregard it?) – “I know DeShon. Obviously respect who he is as a player. I don’t think any man that walks on that field and plays this game is ‘soft.’ So I know the guys in that locker room. I know the passion and the physicality and the tenacity that they play with. So the fact that he feels that way, hey, God bless him, but we have an opportunity to go and get rid of that whatever, ‘softness’ phrase or whatever the heck he wants to say. We get an opportunity every Sunday to change that.”
(There is a different brand of football in the AFC North. I think everybody understands that…) – “Yeah, because what is there to do in those towns? (laughter) Going to go eat crab cakes. Of course, you’re going to play football and go eat crab cakes. What else are you going to do? Of course it’s a different brand of football. I’m joking. I’m never going to be welcome back to Baltimore again. (laughter)”
(Why is it different football in that division?) – “I think it probably starts with just the majority of the teams in that division when you think about the Baltimore Ravens, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Cincinnati Bengals; for the most part, they’ve had consistency. Both from a head coaching standpoint and a front office standpoint, so how those teams have been built has been consistent for a number of decades now, right? The one exception in that division is the Browns, and they’ve had the issues they’ve had probably as a result. So I think that’s probably the biggest reason that their style of play has been consistent. Now, if you had turnover in the front office and people came in with different philosophies, then maybe it changes, but when you have Ozzie Newsome and I forget who the new guy in Pittsburgh is, and Mike Tomlin is still there, obviously, like they have very clear visions and philosophies of how they want their teams to be built. And I think that’s the type of brand of football they’re all looking to play.”
(When a player isn’t being exactly what you want from a scheme perspective, a technique perspective, an assignment perspective or maybe they’re on the verge of being benched or losing playing time, what approach do you take in the communication with guys who maybe aren’t doing their best?) – “I think you do everything within your power first to coach and to teach and try to find if one way is not working where you’re not getting through to them to get them to execute the job that you want them to do, you go through multiple facets to try to get that done. If you can’t, that’s when you start exploring other options to then make a change. The one thing we’re never going to do here is give up on a player. So we’ll do everything within our abilities to try to get them to go out there and communicate and execute at a high level.”
(LB Quinton Bell got an increase in defensive snaps, got the sack of course. It seems like those snaps came at the expense of LB Tyus Bowser’s a little bit. What led to the decisions on playing time on the edge?) – “I don’t know if it came really at the expense of anybody. The plan going in was to roll those guys a little bit more just because we all believe they had earned it. They go out there and they’d shown it throughout the week of practice, particularly ‘Q’ (Quinton Bell), Tyus (Bowser), (Emmanuel) Ogbah, Chop (Robinson) – all those guys – they push each other to get better and I think collectively that room is getting better as a result. So to have any of those guys just sitting on the bench I think does a disservice to the team, particularly when you get to this point of the season. You want to make sure everybody’s out there, rolling, getting reps so we can be fresh throughout this entire push.”
(Do you have to have a conversation with a conversation with the guy who plays opposite CB Jalen Ramsey that basically, “hey, you’re going to be attacked” because they’re going to generally try to avoid Jalen?) – “I don’t think that conversation needs to be had. The one thing that I know for sure is if you’re out there and you’re playing in this league, you are an incredibly confident human being. And if you’re not, that’s usually when you’re struggling and we’ve got to find a way to build that confidence back up, so I know every one of those guys that touch that field for us, they think that they’re Superman and they should because they are the elite of the elite and go out there and play with that same swag and confidence every day.”
(In terms of defensive backs who played the fifth and sixth-most on Sunday, just to go back to that, the one thing I hadn’t brought up was the scenario of S Jevón Holland in the slot and S Marcus Maye with S Jordan Poyer – is that something that you don’t want to do in huge volume because you like what Jevón gives you at safety and because CB Kader Kohou is so effective in the slot? Or is that a real consideration, those three for a ton of snaps together?) – “I think that’s more just a matter of matchup, right? When you’re trying to match up and potentially have a bigger body in the slot. The thing with us, we can put Jalen there, who is a big body and isn’t afraid to get his nose dirty in the run game. He’ll fill a B-gap. He can do all those jobs and we feel the same way about Jevón, so it’s really about just match ups and who can we put on the outside? Do we feel comfortable with the matchup there if we move Jalen inside and if we need Jalen on the outside, then it’s like, all right, well, if we want to get bigger, then we’re probably using the safety.”
(Could you put the role of CB Jalen Ramsey just into words? We see him moving all around. What is sort of the mission statement?) – “The mission statement going into every week when you’re thinking about your players and in particular your impact players – and we have a bunch of them – but with him, you’re always just trying to put him around where you think the football is going to be. So if you know they want to target a particular receiver, you try to put him there. If you know that they want to do something protection-wise and you think you can him a free run at the quarterback or in the backfield, you try to put him there just because you know the more he can get around the ball, the more opportunities he has to make plays for your defense.”
