Brian Flores – September 8, 2020
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Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Head Coach Brian Flores
(We got a look at the depth chart last night. One place of interest for us was at the right guard/right tackle decision. What went into putting G Solomon Kindley with the ones?) – “Like I said yesterday, I wouldn’t put too much into the depth charts. We’ve got a really tough opponent. It’s going to be a competitive environment. Everyone’s got to be ready to play. That’s been my message to the team. That was my message this morning. That will continue to be my message. Again, like I said yesterday, I wouldn’t put too much into the depth chart. Everybody’s got to be ready to go.”
(My question is QB Ryan Fitzpatrick more secure in his starting spot this year than he was last year … ) – “’Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) has done a good job in training camp. Obviously he’s a veteran. He’s got leadership. He’s experienced. We feel good about where he is and really the offense, the defense, the special teams; so we’ll see how things go, but we feel good about where he is right now.”
(I wanted to ask you a little bit about the nickel position. That seems to be one of the hardest positions to play and you’re facing one of the teams that utilizes the position quite well. Do you want to go with experience there or is that something where you want to play the best player?) – “That’s always a combination of both. Talent, experience, ability to communicate – I think all of those things play a factor in who’s in at the nickel position or any of those sub kind of packages. We’ve had a lot of conversations about who’s going to be the nickel, who’s going to play the dime, who’s going to play defensive line in those situations. But like you said, Julian Edelman is a great player. He’s in the slot primarily, but he also plays outside. We’ve seen him in the backfield also, so they move him around quite a bit. We’ve got to be prepared for really all of it and that’s what this week of preparation is all about, so hopefully we go out there and have a good week of practice. They’re going to show us things that we haven’t seen. There’s been no preseason games; but if we can communicate, if we can play with good fundamentals and technique, I think we’ll be okay.”
(You just mentioned how there’s going to be some uncertainty going into Week 1. Is there uncertainty about your own team? What is your level of confidence that you know what you have and when you dial it up on Sunday, you…) – “We’ve had a month of practice – 14 padded practices and a little bit more whether it’s the OTA practices or the walkthroughs – so yeah, there’s uncertainty really across the board and with our opponent. Again, you never really know. We’ve talked about it, there’s a lot of young players playing. A lot of new faces on this team. So yeah, there’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unknown; you really don’t know until you step out on the field, but we’re going to practice and prepare and try to put our best foot forward and try to come out of there with a win. But it won’t be easy. We understand that. You can say ‘uncertainty,’ say this and that, but when you go up and play against a good football team, which one is it? Is it uncertainty or is it new competition? They make plays, we make plays, which one is it? So it’s kind of a tough question to answer.”
(I’m wondering whether there’s any significance in the fact that there are eight captains this year as opposed to four last year?) – “I would say there’s quite a bit of good leadership on the team. It could’ve been – there were four or five other guys who had votes as well, and that’s a good thing. There’s quite a few guys who received votes. There’s a good amount of leadership here and we need that. You need 53 leaders on your team and that’s what we’re looking for and that’s always something I try to talk about. You need as much leadership on a football team as you can get and just because you’re not a captain doesn’t mean that you don’t have a leadership role on the team. I’ve talked to the players about that. If you think something’s wrong or we’ve got to make a call on the field, it doesn’t just have to be the captain who makes that call. They were voted by their teammates, so you need 53 leaders on the team. I’m happy to have the eight guys we have. I would say there are four or five other guys honestly who also got votes. There’s some other guys who didn’t get votes who I see leadership in as well, so I’m happy with the eight guys that we’ve chosen and we’ll move forward with those guys.”
(I wanted to ask, I know you don’t take a lot of stock into last year but the last game we saw your team play was up in Foxborough against this team. Are you able to take any I guess confidence or I guess guidance in general from how you performed?) – “No. Last year was last year and this year is a totally different year. They’ve got different players. We have different players. We made changes to the coaching staff. They made a few changes to their coaching staff. So every year is different and our goal is to just prepare for this week. We’re not really thinking about what happened last year, and that last game was a totally different situation and two different teams. There were fans in the stadium. There’s so many differences from this year to last year on so many levels that – we weren’t taking COVID tests every day last year either, so there’s differences. The schedules are different. The way we travel is going to be different. So no.”
(You had mentioned a minute ago about the fact that there will be no fans. I’m wondering as the visiting team, how does that affect your preparation, if at all, because when you go into a really noisy situation, hand signals are involved and so forth. Does this affect your preparation very much this week?) – “There will be some noise. I’m not exactly sure – I mean we know what the decibel levels are supposed to be; but does it affect our preparation? We’ll go about it as if there is a situation where we may need to go to a silent count or hand signals. If we we need it, we’ll go to it. If we don’t need it, we won’t. But, yeah, the preparation is a little different in that in some cases, you know there is going to be crowd noise and you know it’s going to be loud. In this situation, I think we’re going into it with the assumption that it will be – whatever decibel levels it can get up to, it will be loud enough that we will have to make hand signals or silent count or things of that nature. That’s how we’ll prepare for it. It will be different; it will be unique. I don’t think any of us have been in a situation like this in an NFL game. There is going to be a little bit of a learning curve here as well.”
(I wanted to ask you about your slot receiver role. I know I’m in your nickel packages right now. WR Isaiah Ford is obviously a guy who played a lot last season. How much do you feel like he’s ready to become an NFL starter or do you feel like this is a situation where you’ve got enough receivers you can move around and WR Jakeem Grant can be in that unit?) – “I think we have a lot of good players in the receiver room, in the tight end room, in the running back room. Who aligns in the slot is really dependent on what formation we give them. You can see a running back in the slot, you can see a tight end in the slot, you can see a receiver in the slot. It depends on what formation we’re giving them, what matchup we’re looking for. The specifics to one player – if it’s Isaiah or Jakeem or (Matt) Breida or DeVante (Parker), they’ve all been in the slot. So specific to that area of the field, it could be a number of people. I think your question is about maybe a couple of players – Isaiah, Jakeem. I think Isaiah has had a good camp. He’s been dependable and productive in practice. He’s made a few plays in games, particularly at the end of last year. Jakeem obviously is explosive. He’s as explosive a player as there is in the league. I think we have a few options. Once we get to Sunday, we’ll see who is out there and who can help us try to win a football game.”
