Brian Flores – August 11, 2021
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Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Head Coach Brian Flores
(Can you provide any information on the status of TE Hunter Long?) – “Hunter is day-to-day. He’s working hard to get back as soon as he can. He made the trip with us. But yeah, (he is) day-to-day.”
(Can you tell us which players did not make the trip?) – “Everyone made the trip.”
(Do you feel a little extra juice when you’re going into another person’s facility and do you get the sense that this is going to ramp up a little bit more?) – “Yeah, I mean we’re on the road. We’re in a different environment against another team. Different colored jerseys. Yeah, there’s definitely some energy, some excitement, to go out here and practice against the Bears. Coach (Mark) Nagy and their support staff, they’ve been very accommodating to us. Our support staff has done a great job. It’s not easy to bring a team, 90 players, coaches and support staff from South Florida out here to Chicago and get ready; so kudos to our support staff for making this happen.”
(There have been times where QB Tua Tagovailoa has talked about “Hey, I want to use this period of practice to work on certain throws and try things out.” Is this environment less a “try things out” and more simulating a game-day experience?) – “I think it’s a good opportunity, like always, for Tua and really all of our players to focus on their alignment, their assignment, their communication, their fundamentals, their techniques. And then obviously we want good execution. If you do those things, we expect to have good execution.”
(When you create these joint practices, do you set up rules for blitz packages and things you guys want to see against each other from a coach setting?) – “Yeah, there are rules of engagement. Obviously no fighting. No cut blocks. Things of that nature. We’ve gone through them as staffs. I’ve relayed that to our players. He’s relayed that to his players. Yeah, there are rules of engagement. We want to get good work, we want good competition; but at the same time, we want to keep everyone safe, healthy and able to go tomorrow and really throughout the entire year.”
(How advantageous is this setting for you and the other coaches coming from an evaluation perspective…) – “Yeah, this is a great opportunity for us to see our players against different players, different skillsets, different schemes and concepts. I think 10 practices in, offensively our guys know what our defense is going to do. Defensively, we have a pretty good feel for what our offense is going to do. It’s good to see a new team, like we will every week during the regular season, with guys with different skillsets, different concepts on all three sides of the ball, and evaluate how guys adjust and can execute in that situation.”
(The Bears seem to have a lot of talented pass rushers in the front seven – guys like DT Akiem Hicks and LB Khalil Mack. What kind of a challenge do you think that poses to your offensive line?) – “Yeah, they’ve got good players on all three sides of the ball. It’s a good team. They’re well coached. It’s a great opportunity for us to practice our fundamentals, our technique and our communication against good players. That’s what you see every week in this league. This will be a great test for us. We’re excited to go out there and compete.”
(Do rookies like T Liam Eichenberg, S Jevon Holland, WR Jaylen Waddle – I assume LB Jaelan Phillips is not participating but the guys who are going to participate – being in this environment, what would be a good coaching message for them?) – “Alignment, assignment, communication, fundamentals, technique. If you focus on that, the rest of it normally takes care of itself.”
(So nothing different? You want to keep it the same approach here as in Miami Gardens?) – “That’s the approach.”
(With WR DeVante Parker and WR Will Fuller, if they’re here, how much will they work, if at all?) – “DeVante won’t be practicing. Will Fuller will not be practicing.”
(What about WR Albert Wilson?) – “Albert won’t be practicing either.”
(Anybody else not practicing?) – “I don’t have the list in front of me. Hunter Long won’t be practicing. I don’t have the list in front of me.”
(Have you made the determination of how much you want your starters to play on Saturday?) – “Guys will play. I think right now, with two days of practice against Chicago, we haven’t finalized exactly ‘hey, you’re going to play this much or that much.’ But yeah, we expect Tua (Tagovailoa) to play. Really, we want everybody to get some snaps in the game; but as far as how much, right now we’re kind of focused on today and today’s practice. We’ll kind of talk more about that as a staff tonight and tomorrow. Probably more likely tomorrow night.”
(Where is CB Xavien Howard relative to practicing today, tomorrow or playing on Saturday?) – “Yeah, he’ll be at practice. He’ll be at practice. Again, like we’ve said the last couple of weeks, we’re going to – I don’t want to call it modified but we’ll have a schedule and a process to get him ready to go, and that will include him taking more and more reps on a daily basis. We’re going to stay with that schedule.”
(With TE Hunter Long, was there relief that it wasn’t something more serious?) – “He’s day-to-day. He’s working to get back as quickly as he can. Again, we’re not going to get into specifics of what it was, but he’s working to get back as quickly as he can.”
(Will LB Jaelan Phillips be working?) – “Yeah, Phillips will be working today.”
(I shouldn’t have assumed. I should have asked.) – “You know what they say about assumptions. (laughter)”
(How much do you still emphasize the individual drills that really focus on those fundamentals during this period? Is it more about taking advantage of the Bears over there or are you still going to go through all of those fundamental type drills you go through?) – “Alignment, assignment, technique, fundamentals, communication. Once you get away from that, you’re getting away from how to have a good play. So yeah, that’s my message to the players on a daily basis. I believe that – I strongly believe in that. Again, once you get away from that, you start saying ‘hey, I’ve got an opponent in front of me and I just want to beat that guy’ – there’s a process to that. Alignment, assignment, technique, fundamentals, communication – that’s the process. We try to stick to that. When you go away from it, my experience has been you don’t have as good a play or don’t put yourself in as good a position to have a good play.”
