Clyde Christensen – December 8, 2016
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Thursday, December 8, 2016
Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen
(RB Jay Ajayi is 92 yards away from a 1,000 yard season. I’m just curious of your perspective, is this something you could foresee in the summer? It has surprised a lot of us that he’s had such a big year) – “I think we were hoping. I’m not sure I could say I saw it, but we were hoping. We hadn’t seen him and there wasn’t a whole bunch of evidence out there. You just didn’t have a ton of film when you came in here on Jay Ajayi. We were certainly hoping. It was an up and down ride with him initially, early, and just kind of in the search (for a lead running back). But he’s really been a pleasant surprise. He’s really had a nice year and he looks like a pro running back out there. He’s physical, he comes and he goes hard every week – week after week after week. He’s earned it the hard way. He’s had a couple of big games, but there have also been some games where it hasn’t been easy sledding. He’s been physical. He’s stayed healthy and kept himself in there and kept pounding it up in there. He’s really, really had a nice year – a really nice year.”
(You guys in two of the last three weeks have struggled to score. If it wasn’t for a late rally in Los Angeles, you would have been shut out, and in danger of that again last week. What’s gone wrong those weeks?) – “We’ve just played bad football. We just haven’t taken care of the football side of it. This week, I think we had five snap or pre-snap penalties and snafus with the snap count, et cetera, et cetera. We had major penalties; we had the face mask, we had the holding, we had the personal foul. All of those things that kind of throw you off schedule that we’re not good enough yet, we’re not explosive enough yet to overcome. They’re hard for us to overcome. I just think the negative plays in both of those two games – whether it’s a sack, a penalty, a minus-yard run, a drop, a miss by the quarterback, any of those things – any negative plays we’ve had a hard time overcoming and those two games we haven’t executed very well. I don’t know that it’s been anything other than just bad ball.”
(I know we ask about WR DeVante Parker every week. Two things this week, what did he show you by playing last week with that back injury and what happened on the ball that DB Ladarious Webb took in the end zone?) – “The first part of the question, I’ve never questioned his wanting to play. I don’t think anyone has a question. This game is a hard game. I have a hard time questioning a guy’s heart. I think he wants to play. He plays hard. He goes in there and he throws his body around and I’ve never had any reason to question his heart in this thing, or his desire to play football. I probably question doctors’ diagnosis’ more than I question him. They tend to go up and down and up and down. (laughter) I was a little bit surprised he did play, but I wasn’t surprised that he was going to give everything he could to play. As far as that ball that goes up, same thing. You don’t know how much the injury hurt him, but from a coaching standpoint you’d say, ‘We’ve got to catch that ball or we’ve got to pass interfere or do something to make sure that ball doesn’t get intercepted.’ We certainly coached it and we certainly expected a ball like that – especially a guy like him, who wants alley oops thrown to him, who wants a jump ball thrown to him – but we’ve thrown two that have gotten picked. They can’t be picked. They may not be big plays, you may not catch them all, but they can’t be turnovers. We had the first down one at the Rams was a big one. It was a first-down play after we’re trying to get things going and you take a shot to your big guy and it can’t get picked. It just can’t get picked.”
(Given the pre-snap look, should WR DeVante Parker have felt the safety coming over the top?) – “No. That sucker was humming. (laughter) We’d try to hold it off, but you’d have to be able to tell the future to know that guy was going to make that kind of a play. He made a heck of a play. We did say all week that their Mike linebacker and their free safety, when they got a jump, they sold out and went. You can get them out of position, but some people start working their way that way. These two guys take off and run, so we did know that. But we’ve got to come down with that or we’ve got to break it up and we can help at the quarterback position holding that thing off a little bit with our eyes and just freezing (the safety). But he covered a ton of ground. I don’t think anything pre-snap would have told you don’t mess with that. I think it was more him making a heck of a good play.”
(At this point in the season when you are looking for a spark, what’s your and Head Coach Adam Gase’s philosophy about how much to weave in plays that you haven’t shown teams on tape. We saw one with WR Jarvis Landry out of the backfield but it didn’t work out last week. Is there a philosophy that you’d like to weave in one or two of those a week?) – “We really want to weave in the ones that work. (laughter) The minus-yard plays, weaving those in isn’t exactly what you have in mind. So we’re going to try to weave in a couple of positive ones here in the next couple of weeks. But no, you do. Everybody has a lot of tape on you. We’ll go back into the division where they’ve played you already, so I think it’s two-fold. One, yes you want to give them a little changeup. Same thing I think still with us is you’re still figuring out what different guys can do. You’re still dealing with injuries. What if ‘11’ (DeVante Parker) doesn’t go? Where do our big plays come from? What do we try to … ‘He is going. He feels good. He’s had a good week of practice.’ It’s always kind of fluid. It’s always moving around a little bit. You’re always looking for things like that. You do want to give them a little different formation. Adam does a great job with that, of just giving them different formations and changing that thing up. I probably tend to be more from the … that all great teams have tendencies. I’m probably more on the conservative side, so it’s a good little mix. (Gase) usually wins, but I do think there’s something to doing the same thing over and over and over again and getting good at it. Then it doesn’t matter what they do. You do it better. You do what you do better than they do what they do. It’s a mix in there of those things and it’s always some fun and good and lively conversations with Coach Gase and I, but he does a great job of giving different looks. He’s a creative guy. I’m probably not. I’m probably whatever the opposite of creative is. (laughter) I’m probably boring. ‘Let’s do the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.’ Luckily, he wins a high percentage of those discussions. But yes, it is. One thing I always laugh at, that’s why you love to have good coaches around you. It’s lonely. You’re trying to put that game plan together in Week 14 and you’ve tried everything. You’ve tried every formation. You’re just dying for a new idea. There aren’t that many new ideas. It’s still football, but we do have a creative staff. Of course, Adam is an extremely broad thinker. That really helps this time of year. I would flounder at this time if I was alone, just because you start running out of things and it just feels dry. It is hard to be creative now.”
(You’ve coached on a lot of championship teams. You’ve coached playoff teams. Do those teams play different in December? Do they play faster in December as they see what might be ahead?) – “That’s really a good question. I always wrestle with it because you can’t say both. The sales pitch … One side of the coin says everything has to rise in December and the other side says you still win the games the same way – running the ball, don’t turn it over, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of the things that coaches keep saying over and over. So I would conclude, and what I believe, is this: you don’t have to do anything more than you’ve been doing. You still win the games the same way. But (in) December, the good teams are doing what they do really well, because you’ve been doing it that long. We talked to our team Wednesday, yesterday, and said ‘If you’re a lineman, your pass sets should be the best they’ve … because you’ve been doing it for three months. You’ve been working together for three (months). You’ve got the calls for three (months). You’ve worked on your three-step drop for three months.’ It ought to be the sharpest it’s been. The bad teams are worried about their offseason and start making offseason plans, and the good teams are doing what they do extremely sharp, because they’ve been doing it and they focus on it and it’s getting better and better and better. I don’t know that you raise your game as far as trying harder. Hopefully you’ve tried as hard as you can the whole time; but I do think there’s a sharpness that the good teams – that the great ones – are on top of their game in December because they’ve built up to that, because they’ve had a good routine. I do think you should play your sharpest football in December, but I’m careful to say everything has to elevate. Everyone says it all speeds up in the … Well, if it speeds up, I would question how come we didn’t run our fastest in the first and second and third quarter (of the season). I think your margins do get tougher. We talk to the team about that all the time: now you are playing the better teams and there’s so much at stake. You’re not going to slip by someone for the most part when you’re playing the good teams. Arizona has a ton at stake this week. We have a ton at stake this week. Do you still win at the same …? Sure, it’ll still be the team that executes and doesn’t fumble and doesn’t turn the ball over and those things, but they’ll be sharper than they probably were in September. We should, or better be, sharper than we were in September also. Does that kind of answer your question? It’s a little of both on the thing. I always wrestle with, because you do tend to say … I do think your five-star players have to play five-star football in December. That’s what you pay that top 10 percent of guys extra money for, is for these games. They do get important. I do think that. I do think those five-star guys have to play five-star or you’ve got problems.”
(How would you evaluate how T Branden Albert did, particularly in light of the handicap he was playing with?) – “I think he battled. I think he held in there. I think he probably did better than I thought you could do against a quality rusher like he was going against with one hand. I thought he really, really played well, considering (his injury). It wasn’t completely clean, but it was awful good. He stayed between his guy and the quarterback, and that’s a hard position to play against a really good player on the road, where you’re late off the snap count and et cetera. Everything was set for him to have a rough day and he really battled. I thought he really held up well, especially considering (his injury).”
(How eager are you to get your ideal five linemen out there again? Are we going to see them playing at their best? We’re almost at the end of the season) – “I sure hope so. We’re extremely eager. The good news was it did give us a jump start when we did have them together. Again, telling the future isn’t one of my strengths, so all I can do – just like everyone else – is hope. I think I am going to start getting my medicine degree and start signing up for some courses in medicine as this job seems to handle medicine evaluation and rehabilitation. I’m just kidding. (laughter) But the truth of the matter is it is. It’s inexact. That’s what is fun about our job. That’s one thing I like about coaching – every day is different. Every week is different. It’s a different opponent. Your obstacles in this building are different, whether it’s an attitude, whether it’s an injury, whether it’s a surprise fall in the shower. (laughter) It’s just always changing. You get a game plan ready and they don’t play what you hope they played. It’s just one of the fun things about this job. It’s never the same two days in a row. I mean that seriously, that’s one of the things I do enjoy about coaching, that it is a constantly changing deal. I hope we get (Mike) Pouncey back. I hope something miraculous happens tonight and we have him back tomorrow, but you just have these contingency plans and you just go do the best you can and you play the hand you’ve got and it’s all you can do. It can derail people. I’ve seen it derail head coaches. I’ve seen it derail people. That’s part of being good at what we do. That’s part of being a good head coach, that it is the next man up. You don’t flinch. You’ve just got to go. Coach (Tony) Dungy was phenomenal at it. Adam (Gase) has been phenomenal this year, especially in his first year. There are all kinds of stuff that comes across the way and he hasn’t flinched. You just keep going. It hasn’t all gone well, but you just keep swinging. I’m sure these next four weeks will be the most exciting of them all, I think. At least we put ourselves in position that these are going to be an interesting four weeks. We’ll learn a lot about ourselves. We’ll learn a lot about our football team. We’ll have to make some more adjustments and hopefully we get some great news too and pick up a couple of pick-me-ups in these next two weeks. Maybe we get some good news on ‘Pounce’ (Mike Pouncey). Maybe we can head in down the stretch with everyone intact. That would be terrific.”
(What’s the level that TE Dion Sims is playing at right now?) – “I think he’s playing extremely well. We’ve used him inside a lot. It may not be the biggest number, but I think the tight end position has played as consistent as anyone. We’ve said it a lot of times. I’ve said it to you guys, for those guys being a two, three, and a four (string on the initial depth chart), they’ve come in, haven’t missed a beat, and played good solid football. ‘Q,’ (MarQueis Gray) the same thing. For a guy that started the season as a third tight end, and to come in and play at the high level he’s played at. I think it’s been one of the really pleasant surprises of the whole fall, the consistency of that tight end room, especially after losing our top guy. I think those guys have been really good. I think that (Sims has) played at a high level. He’s been consistent. He had that little hiccup with the concussion that he couldn’t help; but he jumped right back in there. He’s a good physical presence. Those guys are hard (to find): the guys who can catch passes, and block, and hold up against defensive ends. He’s a unique combination of all those things. He’s really been an important guy. He always was, but especially … because we lost the top guy, he’s had to take on a bunch. I think he’s really had a great year.”
(The way QB Ryan Tannehill played last week. Do you just flush that? He played obviously at a high level on the six-game winning streak. When a guy has a slip like that, what do you do?) – “I would say this. The whole unit, and probably bigger, but I’ll just speak for the unit. When we got together and compiled grades, no one played well, which is a little bit confusing. It was such a big game and we just laid an egg. We didn’t play well. The only thing you can do is just turn the page and go to the next one, and not let one turn into two. I don’t have an explanation for it. If it was one or two guys, it would be easier to explain. But really, we didn’t have one guy who played at a high … played one of his better games, which you would hope showed up. That was disappointing; I thought it was really disappointing. I thought that was really going to be a good football game. It was a great opponent; it was great training for what’s down the road. We’re going to have two more possible foul weather games on the road in hostile environments, against good football teams. That (game in Baltimore), hopefully is an outlier. We have to make that an outlier. Our theme this week is, ‘Let’s get right back on the track. The same way we won games, let’s get right back to it. We slid out of our lane, hopefully just for a week, a short thing. And now let’s get back to playing good football in the same way we went on the streak, which is not turning it over, running the ball well, being physical, cutting down on the critical errors, and the negative plays, and the mistakes.’”
