Clayton Fejedelem – August 31, 2020
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Saturday, August 31, 2020
S Clayton Fejedelem
(We know the special teams value you’ve accomplished throughout the first few years of your career with the Bengals. Has it been important to you to get defensive snaps over the course of your career? Is that something that’s important to you now and do you feel you’ve made a case for that to Defensive Coordinator Josh Boyer and to Head Coach Brian Flores over the last few weeks?) – “Yeah, any way I can help out the team – if it’s on special teams, defense – wherever I can help get us in a position to win games, that’s where I want to be. So if I can help this team on defense and (special) teams – wherever I can fit in – is what I’m trying to do. Defensively, yeah, that’s a huge part of the game, so it’s important to me.”
(I think you had an interception in the last scrimmage, if I have that right. Can you tell me what you remember about the situation and the play?) – “Yeah, you’re right. I did have an interception in the scrimmage. I was post high safety there. I was just able to get a good read off of the quarterback, go up in the air, high-point the ball and defensively our job is to get the ball back for our offense or score in our case; so that was a big play. It got us off the field and kept us moving defensively.”
(There’s so many ways to earn a role on this defense considering how many different schemes that they have. What in your opinion is the best way to sort of get noticed by this coaching staff?) – “Just to win your matchups. Like you said, there’s a lot of ways to fit in because it’s a very – it’s a match defense – so it’s just to go out there and win your one-on-ones, do your part and that’s what’s huge – you have to understand the entire scheme and work to your help, use your leverage and be accountable.”
(In a spelling bee, what would be correctly answered more: “Fejedelem” or “Igbinoghene?”) – “(laughter) I would say ‘Fejedelem.’ Once you realize there’s just an ‘e’ between every letter there, you’re pretty good. You’re set to go.”
(You and C Ted Karras are both Illinois guys right?) – “Yes. We went to school together.”
(So did you play together? What was he like back then? Did you know him then?) – “Oh yeah, he’s the same guy. He’s football through and through. He’s got a deep bloodline of football over there in the Karras family. He’s been a great guy since the moment I transferred to Illinois and our relationship just going through to where we’re at today. Just a great friend of mine. Great teammate.”
(Obviously a lot about this offseason has been different given the pandemic. I guess what stands out to you as the most unusual or different thing about preparing for a season this offseason?) – “You really just have to be a pro. When I say that, I mean it’s not like anyone is breathing down your neck in the offseason. You have to take care of your business. You have to get yourself in a routine. You have to make sure that you’re doing the proper workouts, working on yourself, which doesn’t sound like a big deal because everyone’s – but days get, they add up. You’re down here in the South Florida heat, and you really have to take yourself, take care of your nutrition and be on top of it yourself, which when you’re at the facility you have a lot of those moving pieces taken care of for you. So this year, it was a little different and you’re responsible for everything – your training, your nutrition – the whole nine yards. So take care of your own business and staying on top of it was probably the most difficult from just a league-wide instance and we’ll see coming here Week 1 who stayed on top of it.”
(I’m wondering if you could take us through the process of you joining the Miami Dolphins and why you’re in Miami.) – “I’m here because I really feel everything that Miami is doing. I had the option to come down here and I just loved what ‘Coach Flo’ (Head Coach Brian Flores) and what they’re building down here. It’s also not too bad to move down to the South Florida area.”
(Can you go through the concept of making sure a strong safety hits his run fits? What is the biggest challenge there?) – “What do you mean as far as run fits?”
(Run fits. Your responsibility hitting the gaps as a safety – assignment football?) – “As a safety, you know if the d-line, if they miss a tackle, the linebackers can clean that up. If the linebackers miss something, the safeties can clean it up. Safeties, we have to be gap-sound and we need great angles and you need to be able to get someone on the ground. If we miss a tackle or we don’t make that play or we don’t fit that gap correctly, it’s not a first-down change; it’s a scoreboard change. So it’s Judgement Day 365 when you’re in the back end and you have to be on top of your assignments.”
(I wanted to go back to something you said earlier about kind of the self-accountability you had to have this offseason. We’ve heard Head Coach Brian Flores talk all the time about he wants guys that love football, guys that it’s important to them. I wanted to kind of just get your take on how you’ve noticed that atmosphere around here at the Dolphins facility and just is it kind of prevalent across the football team?) – “It really is. The guys here are here for a reason. We have a very young staff. It’s not only that football is a job. Football is a lot of our lives – our passions – and if you’re not accountable and if you’re not willing to do whatever it takes here, this isn’t the building for you because right here we’re building towards something special.”
(Before you signed here, did either Head Coach Brian Flores or Defensive Coordinator Josh Boyer or General Manager Chris Grier or Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman reach out to you? What did they tell you if they did, and was the idea of needing a skilled special teams player part of that discussion if they did reach out to you?) – “With all the COVID going on, it was definitely – it was my first free agency – and it was a different one at that with travel restrictions, all those kind of things. So there wasn’t a lot of communication, but the system that Danny Crossman runs here is similar to what I ran the last four years and it was a good transition.”
(I got this story from the Chicago Tribune that they wrote when you were at Illinois. It was kind of interesting. It said you were a 103 pounds as a high school freshman and that you went to NAIA St. Xavier in Chicago. Honestly, I’m not familiar with that school. How would you describe your journey and how likely it would be that you wound up here in the NFL?) – “If you’re just looking at it from a numbers standpoint, it’s not very likely that anyone winds up in the NFL; but yeah, when I actually entered high school I was smaller than that. I was in the upper 90s going in, but by the time that second semester came around for wrestling, I was 5’2, 103 pounds. So it was a little bit of a transition. I hit all my growth spurt there late end – the late end of my junior, really sophomore/junior year was when I hit my major growth spurt. But that was a factor in why I didn’t get many looks going into D-I college. I started at NAIA. We won a national championship there at St. Xavier, which is in Chicago and then if I wanted to play on Sundays, I knew that I had to get to the bigger screen. I played in the Big Ten. It was a great transition and I was lucky enough to get drafted and here we are today.”
