Brian Flores – November 30, 2020
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Monday, November 30, 2020
Head Coach Brian Flores
(We saw on the league wire on Saturday that QB Jake Rudock came in, obviously a quarterback you’ve been familiar with. In light of what happened with the Broncos this weekend, are you and General Manager Chris Grier considering having Rudock or QB Reid Sinnett – or I guess signing Rudock and then having him or Sinnett go into quarantine basically just in case there’s an emergency? I know we asked you about this in August or September and you said it was a consideration at that point. Is it more of one now?) – “Yeah, Chris and I have talked about that. We try to distance the quarterbacks as much as possible, the ones that are on our roster right now. I think the intensive protocol helps that a great deal. The only time they are here together is when they are on the field, so it kind of takes care of itself from that standpoint. As far as having someone who is on the roster but you don’t see them at all, we have those discussions. Given the way things are setup right now, I don’t foresee something like that, but we’ll always try to stay ahead of things. Obviously if we want to bring someone in, there is a whole COVID protocol that we don’t necessarily visit with the guy. Once he takes a test, it’s a visit, then there are five or six tests after that. Chris, myself, (Vice President of Football Administration) Brandon (Shore), our coaching staff, we go through every scenario and we’ll always try to do what’s best for the team.”
(When we’re headed into December, a lot of these games become a little bit more amplified for a lot of reasons. I know you’re a one day at a time guy; but if there is anything that you want to see from your team in December, is there anything in particular that you want them to show you as things hit this stretch run before the year is up?) – “I think over the course of a season, the hope is that the team is building. I think execution is probably the thing that you need at this time of year. Again, everyone has 11 games – 11 or more, so you have a pretty good feel for what teams do well, for what they don’t do well. Its about execution. It’s about the fundamentals and techniques. It’s what we talked about in training camp, and we continue to talk about it over the course of the season. It’s staying on top of those then building on the schemes that we’ve run offensively, defensively and in the kicking game and really executing them at a high level when there is a pretty good chance that our opponent has a pretty good idea of what we are going to do. So executing has to be at a high level this time of year. Every team, not just us.”
(I know everything is virtual today, but I was wondering if you anticipate, or have any update on RB Myles Gaskin possibly returning; and if he does or whenever he does, how do you think that will benefit having him back with the offense?) – “Obviously it will benefit us. Myles is a productive player for us running the ball, in the pass game, protection. He plays a little bit in the kicking game as well. He’s productive. He helps us. He’s doing everything he can to get back as soon as he can. He was at practice last week, so that’s a step in the right direction. We’ll just take it one day at a time and see how he feels throughout the course of the week. We’ve got to see it in practice. He’s doing everything he can to get up.”
(I wanted to ask about the offensive line with G/T Jesse Davis at right guard and G/T Robert Hunt at right tackle. How much did they contribute to the success you had running the ball at the end of the game, if at all any?) – “It’s a team game, so they certainly contributed as did really everyone on the offense at the end – the line, the running backs, the tight ends, the receivers, even ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) had a run there at the end. Everyone contributed. I think across the offensive line – offensively, defensively, and in the kicking game – there are some things that we could’ve done better. We’ll get those corrected. Jesse is a captain on our team. He’s played a lot of different positions. He’s played well. You mentioned Robert Hunt, he’s a young guy who’s gone in there and played well. It hasn’t been perfect, but two hard-working guys who when they do make mistakes, they try to get them corrected quickly, like a lot of guys on this team. We’ll help them do that and hopefully get better in a lot of areas.”
(I had a question again about the COVID situation. There’s a chance the Ravens might have to play tomorrow without practicing for 10 straight days. Is that something that you ever envisioned when this whole thing came up and do you think maybe the league maybe needs to re-evaluate how it might put teams at risk for having to play without even seeing each other for a week and a half?) – “I think these are very different times than any of us have ever been through. The league has really done a good job, honestly, with the teams and trying to get games played. Again, we all have to be flexible. We all have to be able to adjust; but at the same time, we want to keep the players safe and keep the coaches safe. We want to keep everyone in the building in each facility safe. Playing without practice, I would say that would be tough. There’s no doubt about that. But at the same time, every team’s got kind of core concepts – core defenses, core offenses, core kicking game – core things that they do that I think they’d be able to execute. I’d like to think our team would be able to. So if those were the circumstances, then we would have to deal with them and at the end of the day, we can only control the things that we have control over and if put in that situation, we would do our best. That’s all you can do.”
(This is the first time you’ve been the head coach of a team in a playoff race in December. Will these games feel different for your team? Do you want them to?) – “No. I want them to feel – you need to take this one game at a time. I think this is a game that these guys have played since they were kids. We’ve coached it for a while also. So to make it into something that it’s not; it’s about fundamentals and technique and execution. That’s how we’ll approach it. That’s how we’ll prepare. We’re not going to change anything. We’ll just go out there and prepare the right way in practice, walkthrough and try to execute in the game.”
(I wanted to ask you about RB Salvon Ahmed. How close might he have been to being available yesterday and what’s the prognosis looking forward to the Cincinnati game for him?) – “He’s making progress. Again, another young player who’s doing everything he can to get out there from a treatment standpoint, from a rehab standpoint; so hopefully we get him out to practice this week and we’ll see how it goes throughout the week.”
(I know you guys haven’t practiced yet this week. Do you have any inclination on when you’ll have an ability to see if QB Tua Tagovailoa can go this week? If it’ll be closer to the end of the week or middle of the week, are you able to determine that at this point?) – “No. We’ll see how it goes. Obviously he was limited on Friday and he’s treating, he’s rehabbing. We’ll take it one day at a time. I don’t even want to get ahead into Wednesday’s practice. He has things he did today, he’ll have some things he’ll do tomorrow and just take that, try to improve on a daily basis and see how it goes today, tomorrow and the ensuing days.”
(I wanted to ask you about – I know it’s a one-day-at-a-time approach for you, but for every team it’s about making it to the playoffs, pushing for the AFC East division. Obviously the players know the stakes that they’re playing for. At any point, do you address that with them?) – “No. You can’t get to where you want to get without handling what’s right in front of you. I don’t know – maybe some other people can. That hasn’t been the case for me in my life. You don’t just jump to graduations and things of that – they don’t just happen. You have to deal with what’s in front of you. That’s just been my approach. I understand the question and I know you say that every other team’s thinking about it. Maybe you know more than I do from that standpoint. My dealings with coaches around this league and players around this league is that they try to deal with what’s in front of them. They don’t think about what’s four, five games down the road. That’s just my experience. That’s just me. And maybe you’ve had some situations where you’ve been able to kind of skip steps or I don’t know. I don’t go that – I haven’t been able to do that. So we’ve just got to focus on this next week. We’ve got a big game against the Cincinnati Bengals. It’s a one-game season. That’s the approach we’re going to take and if somebody else wants to approach it differently, by all means. But I just don’t see any reason why anyone would approach it any differently than a one-game season. Just my thoughts.”
(I wanted to ask you a bit about the offensive line. I’m curious, what do you kind of credit the pass-protection issues the last two weeks to? Are some of these rookies do you think starting to hit the wall? Is that something that happens or what happened the last couple of weeks?) – “I think we have to play better. I think as a whole, the communication up front has got to be better. I think the correct communication of what we’re seeing has got to be better. They understand that. We’ve talked about it. It isn’t just one group or one player. I think we need to do a lot better on all three sides of the ball. I think there’s a lot of things that we are doing well. I thought we finished the game well and fourth-quarter time of possession and first downs and the run game in the fourth quarter; in those critical moments, I think that’s something that was encouraging. Defensively, I think keeping them out of the end zone was encouraging. In the kicking game, I think the way Jason (Sanders) kicked it from a field-goal standpoint was encouraging. Some other things obviously that weren’t as encouraging; we’re going to try to get those fixed, those rectified. We have a hard-working group. They want to help each other have success and not only for them, but for their teammates. So there’s a lot of incentive to try to get it right and that’s what they’ve been doing and I’m sure they’ll continue to do that.”
