Clyde Christensen – October 24, 2016
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Monday, October 24, 2016
Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen
(Head Coach Adam Gase mentioned that you guys need some new running plays because you’ve used them all. Is that what the next two weeks are going to be about?) – “Yes. He gets that rash from calling too many run plays, so we’ve got that under control. (laughter) Calling the same run over and over gives him a little bit of a rash, but other than that, it’s been pretty darn good for turning this thing around and certainly helping Yes, it’s been good stuff. It’s been good to see it rewarded. We’ve worked hard on it. We had a commitment to that outside zone. It really is, from a coaching stand point, you like seeing that, that you keep preaching it. It’s easier to face you guys after saying the same thing over and over. ‘This thing is coming, this thing is coming.’ It’s the same with the team. ‘Hey, this is going to happen.’ So to get some success on it helps make your job easier, helps sell the message (and) get the message sold to them. So it’s important. It is funny, but it is important too. As a coach, you’re selling, ‘Hey, if we do these things, this is going to happen. This is going to be the result.’ So it’s easier press conferences, but it’s also easier meetings with the players. So that’s the truth of it.”
(You said that you guys are committed to being an outside zone team. But I saw some trap plays mixed in there is that kind of what…) – “Yes. That’s been what we’ve been and that’s what we started out to be – that we were going to be an outside zone team and we were going to mix in a couple of the gap-schemes that are important. And we do a little bit of everything. The quarterback read was big. We had a chance to pop that one down there in the red zone. I think the point being, we just continue to try and get better at what we’re doing rather than (Head) Coach (Adam) Gase could have panicked when things weren’t going quite the way we wanted in those early games. We really have admired how he just stayed with it and we kept getting better at it. That’s not easy to do in this league, right? It’s not easy to do between just the feeling that, ‘Hey, we have to change something to get better,’ or ‘It’s not working and we have to go in a different direction.’ That’s hard to do. He has been, both on a game level and on a season level, he just kind of stayed with it and believed in knowing … just had a deep confidence that it was going to be good and it was going to work. So it has been good to see some rewards from it, some pay off from it.”
(Can you explain how a running game can work even when they out-number you in the box? And it seemed, based on what [Head Coach] Adam [Gase] said, they seemed to know what’s coming.)– “I don’t know if I’d give them quite that much credit but any time you’re a three-wide team and any time … every single defensive coordinator says the same thing in the Monday meeting: ‘Hey, we’ve got to stop the run. We’re going to get an extra half a man or a man in the box to stop the run.’ So how you run on that extra man in the box will determine how good a run team you are. The days of, ‘They’re scared of the pass,’ and you get Cover 2 on first and second (down), we don’t see them (anymore). So how you handle that extra man in the box is really important. I think the question was, how do you run successfully? Knowing just who that guy is and where you’re going to leave him, is really part of scheming the thing. The back being able to make that guy miss, makes you an NFL back. I’ve said to you, we’ve said it in here before, if you can’t make the extra guy miss, whether it’s the free safety or the strong safety showing up off the edge, that’s the deal. To be an NFL running back, you have to be able to make that guy miss. You’re not blocking all 11 and its open running lanes to the end zone. So that’s all part of it – the place where you get your movement and trying to push someone in, where at least that extra guy has an obstructed path to the running back. So all of that goes into it, but that’s our weekly job. ‘Hey, how do we handle that extra guy in the box?’ The play action has to help handle the man in the box. It’s kind of a multi-faceted answer, but it’s really important – all of them. The naked (bootlegs), right? We’ve been really efficient with our quarterback movements. That helps handle the extra man in the box. We’d love to get … we had a couple of shots yesterday that we didn’t … we hit one but we didn’t hit (one) … but there’s some play-action shots to be had that, that extra man, all of a sudden, it cost them. You have to be able to make them pay. You see a lot of people … little posts in behind that extra guy. All of those things. The little bubble (screens) you see us run, that helps handle that man in the box. So there’s a bunch of ways to help, but you have to handle that guy. When you’re handling him, it’s hard-sledding because they’re 1-, 2-yard runs. You’re not always going to get them, but overall, the good running teams in this league, have a plan for that guy and effectively handle him, not all the time, but regularly.”
(What makes you confident that this can be a consistent approach that leads to success for this team as opposed to a two-game aberration?) – “Good question. You don’t. Other than just, I believe in what we’re doing with all my heart. I’ve seen it work for a long, long time and it’s based on the right things –being hard-nosed, coming off the ball, starting with the run, being a good play-action and movement team. It helps your quarterback. It takes a lot of pressure off your quarterback and those were two really hot defenses, as we kind of talked about in the press conferences the last two weeks. Those are hot defenses. Those are hard-nosed, Mike Tomlin, and the Buffalo Bills. They’re known for being hard-nosed teams. That’s encouraging to go have some success running on those guys. They’re hard teams to run it on. They built their whole reputation on being hard-nosed, tough, stop-the-run guys. If we keep doing what we do well, if we keep just improving and if we keep doing those things, I just believe it’ll be more than a two-game thing. It’s not going to be 200 yards a game. It’s not that easy. And some of those are an aberration, an exception, an outlier, if you will; but the fundamentals of blocking, running, play action-ing, getting third downs shorter, possessing the ball, your defense – those are tried and true principles that I think we’re trying to build this thing on a solid rock that will hold, and it will hold up in December in Buffalo and New (York). It’ll hold up for year, after year, after year. And you can get your right kind of guys in here and you can get people sold on this thing. I don’t think it’s any secret formula. It is football, but it’s, as we say, ‘It’s simple, but it’s not easy. It’s simple, but it’s not easy to do.’ They’re not novel concepts of being hard-nosed, running the ball, getting movement on double-teams, making the extra guy miss, all those things. But we’ve seen it. You’ve got to convert some third downs. It’s all tied together, and it is hard. This league is dad-gum hard to get 100 yards rushing. It’s hard to run the football in this league. It’s extremely hard.”
(Do you think you guys didn’t know what you had in RB Jay Ajayi? RB Arian Foster was signed. There was an attempt to sign Broncos RB C.J. Anderson, Cardinals RB Chris Johnson and re-sign Texans RB Lamar Miller. Did you maybe not realize what you had in RB Jay Ajayi?) – “No, that would not be the case. We really felt like … He didn’t have a lot of data out there. He was a young guy. But we felt very, very good on him. I think the veteran presence that we were looking for in Arian – and looking for as we looked around – was more for the (running backs) room than an indictment that we didn’t think we had running backs. We loved Damien (Williams) from the get go, from the first film we watched on him. He’s a playmaking, tough sucker just like he has shown to be. And we felt like Ajayi could really be a big physical guy and do those things. There wasn’t enough data to say, ‘He’s an established guy.’ (It) wasn’t that. It was a bit of an insurance policy, but it was a bit of having a veteran presence. That’s a young room in there. Who would have seen Ajayi having the two weeks that he has had or any running back having the two weeks he has had. Jay is a tough guy. This thing means a lot to him. I’m really glad that he has seen some results from all his hard work. He has worked his tail off and gosh, he’s protecting the football. He has bought into what we’re selling and how we want to do things. It has really been fun to see him enjoy the success. You love seeing a guy like him who just works hard and for it to go right for him.”
(What were your thoughts on the WR Jarvis Landry hit after you watched it on tape?) – “Just that we got to target lower. It was a good call. It was a penalty. We can’t go high, and the league is emphasizing that. The effort, I don’t think it was malicious in any way. You can tell by even right after the hit that he has a concern for the wellbeing of the opponent. I just think that this thing is a high-aggression thing. You get the adrenaline going. Gosh, you love the effort. We got to lower that target a foot and get under his ribcage without putting any damper on the energy. That’s one of the great challenges of football is getting wide receivers to block. That’s not easy in this league. You just love what he has done for us tempo-wise, but we don’t want to hit anyone in the head. We don’t want to get 15-yard penalties, and we just got to lower the target. We can fix that. We can correct that. That’s an easy correction. The hard correction is to get someone who doesn’t want to block to block. We can lower the target and get down in there lower. That was my impression of the thing, but I thought it was a good call. It ends up being helmet to helmet, and we got to lower our target.”
(You talked about the running backs and also the extra man in the box and sometimes he’s not blocked up and the running back has to account for that. Do your running backs in that running back room, do they feel comfortable, or do they actually look forward to defeating that guy? Because often times, that’s what running backs look forward to, because they can break a long run because of that extra guy.) – “It is one of the top criteria for being an NFL running back. When we inserted the first run the first day we got here with the players, the thing (was), ‘You have to make that guy miss. If you can’t, then there’s probably not a position for you as a running back in this league here or anywhere else.’ Yes, I think they do look forward to it. I think there’s something fun about it. Sometimes you house them and run over them and sometimes you run around them, and everyone has got their own way of handling that guy. Jay (Ajayi) last week kind of jukes the corner and goes for a big one, and we’ve seen him lower his shoulder and run over them. When you have both pitches, then you got something, which he has going right now. If I’m a DB (defensive back), and I go sticking my nose up in there, I’m not sure he’s not going to try and launch me out of the stadium, or he’s going to side-step me and go. Now when you have the two-pitch working, and you’re not just a single-pitch guy, then you really got something. He’s unique that way. You better not tiptoe up in there, because if you do catch his one-pitch and he lowers that shoulder, that’s a load. He’s a load. But yes, the answer to your question is absolutely. I think they know that, and it’s kind of fun. That’s kind of fun to turn on the film and handle that guy. (It is) equally frustrating when you don’t handle him, and that guy takes you down. It’s hard. It’s really hard, because there’s no answer. There’s no answer for that extra guy. You only have so many blockers, and they got an extra guy in there. That’s why it has to be the running back.”
(Can you give us an update on your rookies – G/T Laremy Tunsil, RB Kenyan Drake, WR Leonte Carroo and WR Jakeem Grant – where they are in terms of understanding the offense and their performance?) – “Yes, I can. Tunsil, I think, is just improving in big strides. Big strides. I was teasing today, his first pull … if you watch his first pull in the game, I think he could have played for Vince Lombardi and run the Green Bay sweep. We talked about him struggling pulling because he just hadn’t done it a bunch early and he goes tip-toeing through there and he’s agile and he locks him up. It was really impressive. He’s improving. He’s a professional guy. I’ve said it all along, I love the way he’s approached this thing from Day 1. It means a lot to him. He’s really improving. He played his best game (on Sunday) and his last two weeks have been really good. Jakeem, we’re trying to get more and more plays for him. He’s a dynamic guy. He won’t show up in the box score but as soon as we stuck him in there on Damien (Williams)’ run, you saw everybody on the (Buffalo) sideline pointing at him and (Head Coach) Adam (Gase) called a little fake reverse – a fake reverse to him. It influenced a couple of guys, which helped Damien get the (touchdown). That’s another way to handle the extra guy in the box – having a Landry or having (Grant go in motion). He’s improving. We’re trying to get him more and more involved in the offense. We’d love to have a package for him each week. He’s a dynamic guy. He’s a playmaker, so he’s picking it up. He’s improving. Carroo has improved a tremendous amount. We’re really pleased with him. I think a lot of it is just understanding the heat. He’s got himself in great shape. He was in good shape but it’s a little different playing down here. We’re really pleased with him. He continues to improve. I think you’re going to see him more and more and more. Percentages say – hopefully not – but percentages say there’s going to be a point in this year where he’s going to have to play some key snaps. So we’re stressing that and we’ve got to work him into some games early so we’ve got some deposits in the bank when that time, if it does come, comes – whether it’s this year or next year, it’s coming – and he’s going to have to come in there and make some big plays for us. So we have to slip him into some of these games a little bit earlier and it’ll also help us rest some of the guys who are in there. A lot of it is hard to do just because of the no-huddle and when we’re tempo-ing and all of those things. The last one was Drake and I think you’ll see more and more of him. He continues to improve. He’s growing up into this professional football thing and I think the big thing with him is that we throw a lot at him because he has the special teams plays. All of a sudden you’re having to learn the special teams and you’re having to learn this and the protections. He’s one of those guys that can do so many things that it’s a blessing and a curse. It helps you get on the field but it also … he has magnified study from the average guy because he’s learning a bunch of different positions. We split him out a little bit and then also the special teams. I think all four of those guys, the arrow is pointing up. We’re really, really pleased. I think they’re really going to be good, fun football players for the Dolphins fans and for us. I think you’re really going to see them affect some games, even more so – those three skill guys – before this year is over, you’ll see them affect a couple games in a big way, which they already have. Tunsil has, just by his play; Jakeem with his punt return. But I think all four of them, you’re going to keep seeing them show up on that box score and say, ‘Man, they had an impact.’”
(You mentioned RB Arian Foster’s presence in the running back room. For veteran presence, now that he’s kind of more of a secondary type of guy, does that now need monitoring to make sure he stays engaged and doesn’t get down on the situation?) – “He’s like everyone – he’s got a role. I don’t know if he’s been secondary as much as he’s been recovering from an injury. He hasn’t been healthy. He’s been nursing that thing. He’s been fighting to get back on the field. I’d probably stop short of saying a secondary role, his role is still really, really important for us. Maybe it’s not in carries, which would be the out-front thing you measure, but as far as presence and some of the things we ask him to do, yes. He’s no different from anybody; he’s got to keep fulfilling his role. We won a couple of games. There’s a long way to go in this thing. We’ve got to keep improving and everyone’s got to keep doing what they’re supposed to be doing and he would fall in that category too. It is bigger than carries, if you will, in a lot of cases.”
