Brian Flores – December 15, 2021
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Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Head Coach Brian Flores
(With positive COVID tests pretty rampant now around the league, have you considered telling your players or strongly encouraging your players to stay home when they’re not at the facility or when they’re not at games or do you feel like that’s not the place of a coach in sports to tell their players to stay home?) – “We tell them to be smart, be safe, understand that we are all living in a pandemic. There’s a lot of things about COVID that are, a lot of it is our of our control. It’s airborne. Really every decision they make or every place they go, we really all should walk into wherever that is, a supermarket or store, understanding that it’s out there and we have to take the correct precautions.”
(RB Malcolm Brown, is he trending in the right direction early this week?) – “Yeah, he’ll be out at practice today.”
(What’s your level of concern given what we are seeing this week regarding the test results around the league?) – “You never want to see people test positive. Obviously this is a serious situation as far as COVID and the amount of hospitalizations and deaths that have occurred because of the virus. I guess that’s where my initial thoughts are, just people’s overall health. Nothing is more important to me than the health of our team and that extends out to their families as well. We take it seriously. I take it seriously. I think the entire league takes it seriously and I think the entire country is taking it seriously. If the question is about football, yeah that’s one part of it but I think the overall health of the team and the people around the league is my initial concern or my No. 1 concern. I think we have to try to take as many precautions as possible so that it doesn’t spread throughout teams, the league, the community and etc.”
(With S Jevon Holland’s status uncertain for Sunday, do you feel good about S Brandon Jones in terms of the elbow healing enough for him to be able to return to play?) – “We’ll see Brandon at practice today. We’ll take this day-to-day and if he’s available, then he’ll be out there. If he’s not, then we’ll have the next guy step in and play. Brandon is eager to get out there and play. He’s doing everything he can from a rehab and training standpoint. We’ll see how this week goes.”
(Do you have any update on the four guys currently on the Reserve/COVID-19 list? Have any of them started the process of returning negative tests and are any on track to potentially return ahead of Sunday’s game?)- “There’s a protocol and a process. Again, I don’t get into people’s medical situations so I’m not going to sit here and say somebody is negative and somebody is positive. I don’t believe that’s the right way to approach someone else’s personal situation, I think that’s just common courtesy. We’ll just take it day-to-day.”
(On S Jevon Holland, how different is it replacing him and the safety he is as opposed to replacing S Brandon Jones the past couple games?) – “I think this is why we practice guys in multiple positions. If this situation occurs, the next guy will step in and play. That may be a variety of players but I know we feel good about the guys in that room. But it’s about preparation. It’s about how we practice. That starts today and obviously we’re gearing up to play a division rival, a team that played us well the last time we saw them a few weeks ago and it’s going to be a big challenge for us.”
(Do you get the sense that, a year ago at this time, the vaccine was an idea. It hadn’t been in a whole lot of arms at that point. Now we’ve got 200 million people in this country fully vaccinated, a lot of them boosted. A lot of people testing positive but they’re still asymptomatic. Do you get any sense that there is a frustration level that if a player is fine, if he’s vaccinated, if he’s boosted and he’s done all the right things and yet he still has to sit out, is there a frustration in those situations?) – “I think that’s a question for people individually. I think our focus right now is obviously on the health of the team but then on the Jets. Any frustration that there may or not be, I think ultimately you’ve got to compartmentalize that and deal with that somewhere else. When we’re in here, we’re focused on getting better, improving and trying to prepare ourselves the best way to play against a Jets team that has played well, I would say, in spurts. I think they’ve played some good defense. I think they’ve played well offensively. I think they do a good job in the kicking game and it’s going to be a big challenge for us. Our players know that. We’ve got to prepare the right way to try to go out here and have a solid performance.”
(You tell us all the time that you are very much a one day at a time, what’s in front of me today, practice today, the Jets this week. We all understand that perspective of course. To that end, when a team has a chance to get to .500, this magical number that so much gets made about, does some of the focus just naturally go there? It’s not a goal to be .500 but it is a benchmark, it’s the best you can do this week. Is there something that is a little extra when you have a chance to get back to that plateau?) – “No. I think we’re playing the Jets and we’re trying to just win one game. That’s it. We’re not worried about what’s happened in the past, we’re not worried about the future. We’re just trying to win one game and that starts with today, obviously.”
(Can QB Tua Tagovailoa and the short passing game help counteract some potential losses on the ground?) – “I’m not sure if those go together as far as losses in the backfield. We’ll have a running back or running backs, so we’ll have an opportunity to run the football. I think we’ve got to execute and when we do do that. I think we’ve got to execute our short pass game. I think we have to execute our intermediate pass game. I think we have to execute our deep passing game as well as our play-actions and screens and RPOs and run game as well. At the end of the day, it’s all about execution. Tua is at the forefront of that because he touches the ball on every snap. I don’t really see much changing. I think the Jets have a really good front. I think they do a really good job whether it’s Quinnen Williams, whether it’s (Folorunso) Fatukasi, whether it’s Sheldon Rankins, whether it’s (John) Franklin-Myers, Shaq (Lawson), C.J. Mosley. They’ve got a good front. They’ve got good DBs as well and this is going to be a big challenge for us so we’ve got to get execution across the board.”
(What have you guys seen from RB Duke Johnson?) – “Duke played in the one game against the Jets. He’s done a good job in practice over the last – I don’t know exactly how many weeks it’s been but let’s call it six or seven weeks. He’s a professional. He’s had a lot of production in this league. He’s preparing and he always prepares as if he’s going to play. If he gets an opportunity, hopefully he’s put himself in position to take advantage of it but that happens over the course of the week.”
(With the running backs, obviously RB Duke Johnson has been here and RB Gerrid Doaks has been here. Those guys are probably going to get some more reps than they usually get in a game week in preparation. What are some things that you are looking for, whether it’s pass protection or the communication with the quarterback?) – “Good communication. Good fundamentals and technique. Ball security. Give us that and I think – just your fundamentals and techniques and whatever it is, pass protection, route technique. As a running back, there’s seeing the front, seeing the linebackers, understanding where the lanes should open up, things like that. I think it’s just, that’s what I’m looking for.”
(How is it preparing for the Jets and QB Zach Wilson after seeing QB Joe Flacco last time?) – “I think Zach Wilson is a very talented young player in this league. A big arm. Mobile. I think he’s getting better every week. I think this is a player who is ascending. Like any young player, there’s been some bumps. I know he was out for a little bit and came back. He’s played well. I think this will be a big challenge for us. That’s who we are preparing for and against.”
(After the byes, do you feel like today at practice you need to sort of ratchet it up? Like all right, back to business. Will it be that sort of mentality today?) – “Yeah, I’m expecting a good practice and good communication, high intensity, a high level of execution, that’s what I’m looking for. That’s what I look for every day. Whether it’s after a bye or after 12 games in a row, it’s the same to me.”
(You guys have been so efficient running play-action and running RPOs, particularly during the last five weeks, even without kind of a dominant run game. I’m curious, why is it that offenses are able to successfully run the play-action and successfully run RPOs even without that dominant run game?) – “I think it’s week-to-week. It’s case-by-case. It’s hard to say. I think at the end of the day, the only way to answer that is execution in whatever scheme or concept we’re trying to do offensively. That’s really the answer. It’s execution in whatever play-action or RPO versus not executing in something else.”
(Does the threat of a run suffice here? Even if you are not averaging five or six yards per carry, is the threat that they might run enough to open up those windows?) – “Again, it’s case-by-case. If I know what defense we’re talking about, then I could probably answer it more – or have a better answer for you. But based on what they’re doing, the threat of a run may not be enough. In some instances, a threat of a run might be enough. I think at the end of the day, we want to be able to – we need balance. So we want to be able to run it, we want to be able to throw it, we want to be able to play-action it. In some instances, the threat may open up more holes in the pass game. I think that’s probably what you’re alluding to. But the same thing is running it opens up some lanes in the passing game as well. That’s something that we’re constantly having conversations about. I think to get the efficiency that we’re really looking for, you need to kind of put all of those things together. And we’re still working towards that.”
(When you play a team at this time of year that is out of the race, do you find that there’s an unpredictability? Have you found in past situations that there’s an unpredictability to that team because they can maybe be a little more looser? They’re playing for or evaluating guys in different ways. They’re looking towards the future. Have you found that teams change a whole lot when they’re in that situation?) – “I think that Rob – Coach Salah – I think he’s going to have his guys ready to play. He’s intense. He’s a great motivator, a great teacher of fundamentals and techniques. I think he’s going to have his team ready to go. In this league, every week, everyone – every team has good players. When they step in between those white lines, everyone is competing. I don’t really take the approach that they’re out of it. It’s more – there’s a lot of competitive people in this league. Players, coaches, executives, medical staffs, the whole bit. They’ll be ready to play. That’s the case in really every game in this league and that’s really what I’m expecting from this group.”
(When a team is officially out of contention, I was wondering if you notice they tend to change what they do maybe more on a week-to-week basis than you would ordinarily see.) – “No. I think they’re trying to get a win. Whether it’s trick plays or onside kicks or things of that nature, I think they’re trying to get a win. Whether it’s looser – I guess you could call it that. Maybe they’re more apt to call a trick play or do something in the kicking game. Those are things that we’re always alert for. But they may be more likely to do something along those lines. To me, that could show up at any point. We got hit with a fake punt a couple of weeks ago with a team that was in it. I think we’ve got to be ready for all of those things. We’ve got to be alert for all of those things. We’re certainly going to coach the guys to be alert for those things. But we know this is going to be a tough, competitive game.”
