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Calais Campbell – September 5, 2024 Download PDF version

Thursday, September 5, 2024

DT Calais Campbell

(What makes you confident that Defensive Coordinator Anthony Weaver will be a good coach?) – “Well, I think the first thing is that he loves ball. People who love ball, it’s not really work for them. He puts a lot of hours into watching tape and trying to figure out how to put us in a position to win, what the best matchup and opportunities for us are. And really doing that work, sometimes it can feel like a grind, because it is a lot of hours dedicated to ball. But when you love it like he loves it, it allows you to work efficiently and enjoy the process, and I think it allows you to work even harder. So my experience with him before, we had a lot of conversations about just ball, the history of the game and the way the game is played today and all the different teams. You just know he loves ball the same way I do and that’s a big start. But then, I think he has a good understanding of the competitive side of things, the challenging part of things. When we talked a lot back in the day, it was more the run stuff because that’s what mattered to me. The coverage and all that stuff, I know enough but I give enough to know when I can be more aggressive and when I got to be more disciplined in my pass rush lanes. I pay attention on the football field, but I don’t know as much as – when it comes to game planning, it didn’t matter as much to me. Now that’s the part that will be determined, we’ll see. But I know the way he prepares and the way he loves the game, he’s going to do it with pride. And this will be a learning process. He’s been a play caller before but it wasn’t very long, so he has an opportunity here. I believe – the first thing I’m going to tell him, ‘We’ve got your back. Be confident. Whatever you’re feeling, trust it. Even if it goes wrong, we’ll go. We’re good. We’ll lineup and keep playing ball.’ Like anything else, it’s a learning process but I just know that the way he loves the game, the way he prepares, he’s going to have a shot to be really good.”

(What do you think of your Canes’ right now?) – “Whooo! I like what I saw. I don’t know if we’re really good or if Florida is bad, we will see. I don’t try to get really excited because I’ve seen big wins and the rest of the season wasn’t the same. I hope we continue to play at that level, but what I did like is the way the offensive line and defensive line dominated. That was really good trench work. I texted Coach Cristobal and I told him, ‘That right there gets me excited. What the offensive line did, what the defensive line did, that gets me excited.’ We keep that going, we’re going to have a shot to win a lot of ball games.”

(You mentioned being surprised that you were named a captain. Why is that? You have the resume.) – “I haven’t really been here that long. I didn’t go to OTAs, so it’s just hard for someone that hasn’t been here a long time to be voted captain. I try to be very vocal and try to say the things I think were necessary for us to be able to be a good team, and that goes to show me that my team is very receptive and like what I’m saying which is really good. I was very shocked, but very honored. I’m going to go out there and do the best I can and go help the team.”

(We were talking to Defensive Coordinator Anthony Weaver earlier and he mentioned something I found interesting. He said that the 2000 Ravens team that won the Super Bowl, that tradition has carried over, that feeling has carried over in that building, even through today. Did you sense that when you were there?) – “Yeah, I think that culture matters. What you’re talking about it culture, and they established – in ’96, the team gets there. Bad for a couple years, they get over the hump and they establish a culture, a winning culture, and they were able to keep that going, passed down through having people there and longevity and teaching the young guys to come around and come in the ‘Ravens way.’ They talk about it all the time. So it is special and essentially what Coach McDaniel is trying to do here and what this team here is trying to do is build a culture, a winning culture that can last for a long time. It takes the proper people in the building and the proper process of teaching the young guys that come in and come into this world, there’s a culture that you have to believe in, that you have to abide by to be here that allows for you to go out and be successful. Obviously, the Ravens aren’t guaranteed Super Bowl success, but they always have a shot. They’re always in the mix.”

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