Calais Campbell – September 19, 2024
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Thursday, September 19, 2024
DT Calais Campbell
(Defensive Coordinator Anthony Weaver was telling us how huge it’s been having your veteran presence here in the locker room and how you, particularly, are not going to let this team get past that loss with another one. So how do you get everybody in that mindset that says, “You know what? That’s it. We’re going to get back in that win column?”) – “Well, it just comes down to execution and getting back to the fundamentals. Good teams don’t lose two in a row. Everything is circumstantial or whatever, but in this business, you got to find ways to win. When you’re on the road, you got to bring your special teams and your defense. So the message is really just lock in on the small details, try to make sure we’re executing on a high level with great enthusiasm and effort and just play football.”
(How do you avoid that pressure?) – “I don’t really believe that there’s any pressure, right? It’s football, we’re just playing football. The game has never changed – a little more passes than runs than there used to be when I first got in the league and a little more outside run than inside run when you do run the ball. You’ve got a little more quick throws and screens and stuff, but the game is the game, right? I tell rookies when they come all the time ‘It’s the same thing you were playing since you were in little league football. See ball, get ball. And when you get the ball in your hands, you get yards before you get tackled.’ If we can move the ball, keep the chains moving, get new sets of downs and put ourselves in positions to score points – and on defense we got to get off the field every time we get a shot, we get off the field with no big plays – that’s the only formula, it works. Everybody is saying the same thing: great execution. We’ve been really good on third downs on defense, but we got to be better with explosives. Our explosives have really hurt us but at the end of the day, it’s just football. So getting us back to the small things. We had a Thursday night game, you get a lot of extra days off so yesterday was the first time you get back in the football mentality, it can be a little sloppy, so today was a little bit better, a lot better actually. I’m going to expect tomorrow to be better. We’ve got a tough opponent – even though it’s different conferences and you don’t really have a lot of familiarity with them, we kind of do because we run the same defense. So both offenses have been practicing against the same defenses all through camp, so it really comes down to execution.”
(Spending a lot of time in Arizona early in your career, you played in that stadium in Seattle a lot in the division. Can you put into words how loud that place gets?) – “It’s one of the loudest stadiums in football – it might be the loudest stadium, but it’s football. The best way to quiet it down is make plays. It’s an emotional game. If they start making plays, the crowd gets more into it. When we start making plays, they get out of it. So we got to make some plays and quiet the crowd early. But it’s a very loud stadium and I’ve played there quite a bit – I always loved playing there. For some reason, I’ve always had really good games there. And for the most part, I’ve had some really good games there over the years and I think part of that is because they have such a good home field advantage and such a good crowd, you kind of want to make plays to try to quiet them up a little bit. But they are playing really good ball right now, finding ways to win tough ball games. The crowd is going to be into it in the home game, so it’s going to be a challenge for sure. We’re going to have to bring our A game.”
(Speaking of making plays, Defensive Coordinator Anthony Weaver said LB Chop Robinson is almost there. How important is it for a young guy to get there? He says he doesn’t care about numbers but to get that first one, you know?) – “I don’t think that Chop (Robinson) is lacking confidence. I think a lot of times, getting that first one is really good for the confidence. When you get that first one, you’re like, ‘OK, I belong,’ but he has a lot of what you need. A lot of good juice, he’s just got to keep getting his opportunities. Keep fighting for opportunities and you do that by great execution, doing the small things right. He’s going to get some opportunities this week for sure, and he’s close. He is close. He’s been playing some good football and Coach has been trying to find creative ways to get him on the field more because he’s been playing some good football. But you know, in this business I try to tell all the young guys, ‘Don’t worry about the stats. Just finish with wins. You finish with a win every time, the stats will come. They’ll take care of themselves. Play good football, the stats take care of themselves.’”
(What responsibility falls on the defense when a starting quarterback goes down? What does that change for you guys?) – “I feel like every defense should always have the mentality of being at our best and ensure that we give the offense every opportunity to score points, create turnovers, get off the field on those third-and-long situations, don’t let them drive and change the field position. When you got a quarterback that hasn’t had a lot of reps, you want to give them a small field. You just don’t want them to have to drive the whole field. Now it’s football, you know what I mean, things go the way it goes. But I think the biggest thing on defense though is trying to execute at a high level so that we don’t give them free yards – those 20, 30 yards, even though they didn’t score points, they just pinned us back deep, so now we got to go a lot further to try to score points. That’s going to be crucial in this ball game, the field position battle. I’ll also say that any time you can get turnovers and play with a lead, it gets your quarterback comfortable. When you have to play from behind, now you feel a little pressure on yourself, you got to do something. So we got to be really good at keeping them out of the end zone, and when they do move the ball, hold them to three. That’s going to be very crucial to us, but we’ve got to just be – this would be the game plan if it was Tua (Tagovailoa) in the game, too. It wouldn’t be any different, but I think naturally you have a little bit of, ‘All right, let me make sure we’re on point. Let me make sure we’re the best we can be,’ because it’s going to take a little bit more, in theory. But we’re always trying to be the best we can be, right? We always expect greatness. Nobody wants to be carried by somebody else. We like to say, ‘We want to be a defensive team. We want to be a defensive team that’s defensive led,’ this is a good opportunity for us.”
(I know it’s still early in the season but the reason you came here, you said you want to win a Super Bowl. Obviously, QB1 goes down for a couple of weeks. Is there still a chance? Fans start to panic about all of this with all of the teams and I know it’s so early still, but that’s how it is.) – “Nobody is winning the Super Bowl today, right? Everybody’s just getting in position, down the road and building the team, building their strength. Teams are 2-0, everyone goes, ‘Oh they’re the favorites.’ Teams are 0-2 and it’s like, ‘Oh, they suck.’ And it’s like no, not really. There are some really good teams that are 0-2 that are probably going to be in the mix when it’s all said it done. There are some teams that are 2-0 that are probably going to fizzle out – it’s just football. I wouldn’t get so caught up in the results of right now. I think it’s just playing good football. Playing good football and building – of course, at the beginning of the year you’re thinking about Super Bowl and all that stuff. Now, we’re not worried about the Super Bowl right now, we can’t. You can’t win it today. We’re just worried about beating Seattle. You know it’s going to be a tough ball game, so we’ve got to come with everything we got. But for us to go where we want to go, you can’t lose two games, you got to get those wins – stack wins. Stack wins and never stack losses, that’s the game.”
(Was there a point in your career where QB1 goes down and you guys respond – defense and then QB2 galvanizes you all and you were able to make a season out of it?) – “I’ve had QB1 go down a few times over the years. Been to the playoffs with QB3 before –”
(Could you remind me when that was?) – “2014 with Arizona, we played in a playoff game with our third string quarterback against Carolina – we didn’t win, but he played. Tyler Huntley led us to the playoffs in 2022 with the Ravens, we lost to Cincinnati. That was a great ball game, he played really good football. And I think he had started, I don’t know how many games, but he started quite a few. It was later in the season though, it wasn’t as early as this one is. But then there’s times where, even I think in 2015 when we went to the NFC Championship game, I believe Carson Palmer missed a few weeks earlier in the year and we were able to win enough, and he got healthy, came back and we were able to play some good ball. I’ve also played and had shots where the quarterback goes down early on and somebody else gets the opportunity, but it wasn’t like a premier, superstar quarterback. But yeah, it’s the NFL. It’s a 100 percent injury rate. Somebody always, and so it’s always next man up, and you just got to try to play football. You got to go galvanize the guys. At the end of the day, nobody’s going to feel sorry for us, nobody’s going to be like, ‘Oh, they’re a good team, they’re just without their quarterback.’ No, you’ve got to win ball games. Seattle is not going to take it easy on is because Tua (Tagovailoa) is not playing, so we got to go out there and beat them. I believe that everybody in here believes we can win ball games with Skylar (Thompson) or whoever else has to play quarterback – hopefully he doesn’t go down, but it’s just football, it is what it is.”
