Chan Gailey – August 20, 2020
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Thursday, August 20, 2020
Offensive Coordinator Chan Gailey
(I’m wondering, does your plan with the quarterbacks include maybe mixing and matching them with different units? In other words, one quarterback that maybe is third-team right now playing first, the first-team guy playing second, stuff like that?) – “We try to get different guys – we have a quarterback rotation – and we try to put different people in with those quarterbacks rather than saying first group, second group, third group. We just have a quarterback rotation and we mix a lot of different people in when the quarterback rotation is, so that we know how many plays we’re getting with everybody.”
(I wanted to ask you when this whole process was underway for you to come back to the Dolphins, was it Head Coach Brian Flores that reached out to you or did you reach out to him?) – “We talked at the end of the year there, and they called me and wanted to know if I was interested.”
(I wanted to ask you about the communication factor here of the first week of padded practices. How would you evaluate the way calls are getting in and out of the huddle and communicated to the rest of the offense here in the first week?) – “It’s been good. It hasn’t been perfect. We still have some people not used to hearing the play call the way we do it. You have to listen in sequence. Linemen hear one thing, the next call in the huddle means something to somebody else, the next call means something to somebody else; so you have to listen to sequence and make sure you’re listening to your thing that you need to pay attention to. We’ve had more mistakes than we would have liked, but they’re getting the hang of it.”
(I read that the NFL is considering allowing teams to pump artificial crowd noise into their stadiums. I’m wondering what you think of that and how that might impact your offensive planning and also what happens for the offense on game day?) – “I haven’t heard any official word on that. I keep asking the same question, though. Is that what’s going to happen and then who controls the volume on that? If you get a homer that slips that volume a little bit louder on third down, I’m not sure I’m for that a lot. (laughter) You have to have that silent count ready to go if they start doing that, so we’ll get that going to make sure we cover all our bases before it’s over with. Who’s going to control that? That’s the key to me.”
(You expressed concern about communication from the offense. Is that just something that having no OTAs is creating an issue with and how long do you think it will take them to grasp this considering the season opener is 20-something days away?) – “I said we’ve had a couple of issues. If that was our biggest problem, I would be feeling really, really good right now. That’ll be one of the easier things to solve between now and game day than some of the other things that are going on and your next question will be, ‘well, what are those issues?’ And I’m not going to answer that, okay? (laughter)”
(It makes sense, it’s logical, that QB Ryan Fitzpatrick should be ahead of everybody else because he’s got a familiarity with the offense for a long time and he’s more experienced than everybody else. Is there any way that that advantage can be bridged between now and the opener?) – “By whom?”
(By anybody. You’ve only got two other candidates.) – “He (Ryan Fitzpatrick) does have more knowledge. As (Head) Coach (Brian) Flores says all the time, every position – we’re out there competing. Every position is being competed for and I think every one of them know that; but does he have more knowledge? Is he able to help explain things a lot better to some of the others player – some of the nuances of what we’re trying to get done? Yes, he has that ability and he has that knowledge and it does help him. Can it be overcome? Hey, anything can happen in our game and you know it. You’ve seen it happen. Anything can happen any year, so you never say never in the NFL.”
(You’ve got a guy in that room in QB Josh Rosen who’s had three or four offensive coordinators in the last three or four years. How do you teach a guy who probably has so much information coming in from different directions on how to play quarterback in the NFL?) – “There’s really only X-amount of plays in football, so what you’re trying to do is teach him a new language. How can quickly can he learn a new language and get to where he can speak it fluently rather than he’s memorizing what something means. So the biggest thing is to try to get him to put things in the past – terminology in the past – put it away, put it over to the side and grasp the new terminology. It’s okay in your brain to say, ‘that used to be called this, but now it’s called this,’ and use that as a reference. That’s a good thing; but not to get it where it’s clogging up – learning what new is going on – and that’s true with – Tua’s (Tagovailoa) got the same issue. He had three coordinators his three years in college. He’s got the same issue and the great thing about ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) is ‘Fitz’ has put different offenses out of his mind so many times in his career, that he’s kind of used to it. It takes a while to learn to do that – put it all away and start something new.”
(I was kind of bored last night so I took out a calculator and I had your depth chart and I added up three of the new linemen – G Solomon Kindley, G Ereck Flowers, T Robert Hunt – it adds up to 1,005 lbs. which I thought was pretty good. I’m wondering how does that kind of size potentially impact the game?) – “There are a bunch of 400-lb. people around out there that can’t play football; so size is not the only factor. It’s like people used to tell me, ‘hey, you’ve got some great speed at receiver.’ Well, if speed was the only factor, we’d go sign the Olympic team to come play football; so size is not the only factor in offensive line; but the key is to get those guys using that strength and that weight going in the right direction, doing the right things, and that’s the challenge for us. Bigger is better, only if it’s better.”
(I know it’s still early but what have you seen from RB Malcolm Perry to make you think maybe it could work as a slot receiver for him and has any of your other really young skill guys impress you so far?) – “Malcolm is an interesting guy, having played quarterback in the option and he’s got some good quickness. He’s got a feel for the game. He’s played tag growing up. He knows how to make people miss and make them get out of the way. He learned early on how to do that – how to look at a guy and know when he’s off-balance or he’s got his foot in the wrong place and he can make a move the other way; so he’s got a little unique talent there and that’s one thing that gives me hope that he can play receiver for us because he does have a feel for getting people off-balance, finding holes, he understands the game pretty well. Probably playing quarterback helped him understand the game fairly well, so he’s an interesting guy to work with and the other guys are working. We haven’t had but, what, three or four padded (practices) – I don’t even know, they run into each other now – three padded practices. We’ve got a lot of work to do and a short time to do it in.”
(We’ve seen WR DeVante Parker for the last few years but this year he looks like he’s getting going early. I wanted to ask you, does his skillset remind you of anyone that you’ve coached in your past?) – “Gosh, I hadn’t had that one before and hadn’t had to even think about that before. No, but I think he has great potential, and it’s hard for me to think about other people I’ve had; but he’s got excellent hand-eye coordination. He’s got route-running skills. He’s got the speed and the size to make a difference on the football field, especially when he’s one-on-one. He can be physical with guys. I’m really looking forward to working with him and seeing what he develops into, and hopefully we can build on how he finished the year last year. Hopefully we can build on that.”
(You expressed concern earlier about, I guess, the offense. I know you’re not going to tell us what it is, but do you feel comfortable with the personnel that you have?) – “As a coordinator, you get excited about what guys can do. You don’t fret about what they can’t do; so you take the guys and you take their skillset and the things that you’re excited about, and you try to put them in position to be successful. I think we have a set of guys on our football team that give me some excitement about what we might be able to do with this group.”
