Chan Gailey – October 6, 2020
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Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Offensive Coordinator Chan Gailey
(Of the two players who have been the team’s biggest playmakers since midway through last year, predating your arrival, WR DeVante Parker has been very involved over the last couple of games, very productive. TE Mike Gesicki has two catches over the last two games. Are teams defending Gesicki more closely and do you ever believe you should force the ball into a playmaker’s hands, even if he’s being closely defended or is that not sensible?) – “The answer to your first question is they have covered him a lot tighter and have been a lot more – I mean, wouldn’t you after he had 130 yards or whatever it was? That’s what they are doing. The question about forcing the ball – if it’s double-covered, you don’t want to force it. If it’s single coverage and he’s one-on-one but it’s tight coverage, you can afford to throw a ball in there at times and give the guy a chance to make a play. We’ve been – a few times it’s looked like they were double-covering him and they ended up single-covering him; but to the quarterback on his first look, it looked double covered, so ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) got off of him. We just have to pay closer attention to how they are actually playing him during the course of the game. I think hopefully now that we’ve put the ball in other places, things will start to come back his way.”
(I wanted to ask you about your left guard, Ereck Flowers. How does his presence open things up for you both in the run game, the pass game, the play-action game? To the untrained eye, it looks like he’s having a pretty good start to the season so far.) – “He’s having a very good start to the season. He is a calming influence on the line for us. He’s very competitive on gameday but very quiet during the week. He’s very calm and really very professional about the way he goes about his business. I’ve been very happy with what he has brought to us, not only on the field playing, but blocking, run game, pass game, (and) what he brings as a leader to our offensive line.”
(Regarding WR Preston Williams, what are you seeing out of him? He only has six catches out of 17 targets. I know you weren’t here last year, but based on whatever film you saw of him last year, is he still battling for those contested catches like he was pre-injury? How do you get him more active in the offense?) – “We’re trying to use all of our weapons. The good thing is we think we have several weapons. The bad thing is there is only one football. If it’s not a clean look, he’s not getting the throws right now. We’re hoping to continue to work with him and put him in positions to get some catches. We know he can be a weapon, we know he should be a weapon. We’ve got to continue to work with him on what suits him best and get him in a position to be successful. We need him to – the more weapons we have on the field the better off we are as far as creating problems for the defense.”
(I’m sure you’re aware that it’s been officially confirmed and announced that QB Ryan Fitzpatrick will be the starting quarterback on Sunday, so there’s no breaking news there. What are some of the things that gives you cause for optimism or hope that this will be the right decision?) – “I’ve been around ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) for a long time and I’ve seen him play very, very well. I’m a ‘glass is half full’ kind of guy. I see great things coming in the future and that’s how I see it. It’s easy to point fingers. That’s the easiest thing in the world is to point fingers. If you want to point fingers, you ought to point them at me, because I could have helped us a lot better in the red zone and done a better job of red zone coaching this past week and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I think he is capable of being very good for us.”
(I know we don’t know the status of T Austin Jackson heading into this week. How do you feel T Julién Davenport performed and what goes into your decision of playing the best left tackle?) – “You’re always trying to identify what guys do well and how they play. Then you look at the amount of experience that somebody has and then you look at the amount of potential that somebody has. You’re trying to weigh at all of those things when you’re making decisions about who is going to play in a ballgame – who has shown what in practice. As we look at Julién, he was really in there at the end of the game and it was almost all pass sets. That’s something that he does very well. He did pretty good as far as that goes. We’ll evaluate all of the guys that we have and make a decision sometime this week about the direction that we’ll go.”
(I know we talked about it earlier that QB Ryan Fitzpatrick is the guy this week; but with QB Tua Tagovailoa one snap away, I wanted to ask what do you think his football readiness is to be able to play at a high level if he becomes the guy at some point?) – “We get him ready every week, and we have what he feels comfortable with. That’s not something that I – I do that with ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) too. I say what are you most comfortable with? We ask Tua what are you most comfortable with? So if he has to go into the game – like you said, he’s one play away from having to play. I feel like he’ll go in and play well. He’s a rookie and hasn’t played in a preseason game. He hadn’t been in a game at all so it’ll be a new experience for him. He’ll have to go in there with eyes wide open; but I think knowing the person that he is and knowing the type of preparation that he puts in, I think he’s going to be ready when his time is called.”
(You say that QB Ryan Fitzpatrick is capable of being very good and we’ve all seen how well he can play; but he has described his career himself as a rollercoaster. This year it has been the same thing, two games he’s had four touchdown passes no interceptions. The other two games, no touchdown passes, five interceptions. What do you see with the inconsistency that it seems like has always been there for him?) – “The biggest problem for ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) is when defenses don’t do what they are supposed to do. When a guy gets out of position and they are not where they are supposed to be, because he’s studied and he knows where they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to do, and that’s the biggest problem. Interceptions are going to happen. We all want to go back to statistics because that is one think you can put your finger on is a statistic. But there is a lot more to the game than statistics. He does a lot for this football team that statistics don’t show.”
(Noticing on the Seattle film, I noticed QB Ryan Fitzpatrick was doing a gesture with his hands towards the sidelines. Maybe he looked a little visibly frustrated – I don’t know if it was maybe the play calls or how things were going on the field during that game, particularly when you guys were in the red zone. Did you have that sense and what were those conversations like about those instances after the game?) – “No. He couldn’t hear the call, so he was telling us to call it again. That’s the call to give him the call again. That’s what that was. He has said I’m crazy but that was not the signal for that.”
