Clyde Christensen – September 21, 2017
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Thursday, September 21, 2017
Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen
(Opening Statement) – “I meant to say this the other day, just a shout out. Part of the win goes to our ops guys, Scotty Bullis and his staff and what they did last week getting that team out there. Everything kind of gets done for us and the players to win the football game. Film, equipment, IT and ops – what they did to pull that off, getting that thing all transferred out there … Because all of a sudden the team just kind of showed up on Tuesday. We take it for granted. I take it for granted a little bit that all of the operations, getting those guys out there, getting them from the airport up there, into LA, the rest situation, film getting set up, equipment getting out there – they did it all. That would be an interesting thing for you to look into how you move a whole franchise and servers and computers and film and stuff out there. I’m amazed that they pulled the thing off. It wasn’t without its little glitches, but in terms of having a chance to get a team prepared, it’s a pretty amazing job to go 3,000 miles and come from all parts of the country and give ourselves a chance to win a football game and get a team prepared. I thought they were phenomenal.”
(How did you guys do in the no-huddle, up-tempo offense?) – “I think we’re improving. One of the big stress things that we started again this week is you don’t just turn that on. It’s an experience thing. One of our key points this week it was listening – listening to the quarterback, being able to hear his voice, know when he gives you a formation, know when he gives you a play. I think that’s a work in progress. We were faster. Our procedure was better than it’s been. It’s not where we want to get it. We’ve got to hear the quarterback. We’re asking too many questions of him. We’ve got to get lined up a little bit quicker. I think it’s a knack. We did it for a lot of years at that old spot (Indianapolis) and you just kind of get … You have to learn your quarterback. When does he give you a signal? When does he slip you a little signal behind his back? When does he give you a formation? Which way does he say it first? Help your buddy who is coming back to the line of scrimmage, ‘Hey, hey, we’re over here, we’re over here.’ I think we’re getting better. It’s a big emphasis point for us. We know where we want to get to. Jay (Cutler) is really good on the line of scrimmage. He’s really kind of natural. I said that last week. I’m kind of amazed how smooth he is at the line of scrimmage. Now we just have to get where we hear his voice. We’ve got to hear his voice. That’s just a learned thing that happens with experience. That’s not just black and white and it happens. It’s going to continue to improve. I think we are doing a better job with it than at any point last year, and that’s everybody. That’s everybody from us getting into our stance where we can get a ball snapped quicker – ID’ing people. There’s a lot that goes into it; but just hearing his voice is a big emphasis. Just hearing and knowing how he does stuff. The more they do that, the better they’re going to get. You know where he’s going to send you. When we’re really good at it, you know where he’s going to send you and ‘Oh, I know what he’s going to call.’ You just know when the signals come and you can catch it from 30 yards away and get yourself lined up. We’re getting there.”
(We don’t know what to expect from T Laremy Tunsil. Do you have an expectation level? Did what you see last Sunday meet that expectation?) – “Not yet, but I think he’s a young guy. It’s one of the toughest positions in football and you’re on the road. Those were very, very, very good, borderline elite pass rushers coming off the edge. That’s an all day job he had out there. He’s just going to keep getting better. I think of him as a rookie left tackle, if you will. To think of him as an experienced lineman isn’t the case. It’s back to his position, but it’s new in this league. Those cats coming off the edge were really good players last week. I was not disappointed. I think he might have been. The sack was more on myself and the play call. We held the ball on a 3-step (drop) and let a guy come around. (Tunsil) protected it the way we needed him to. Sometimes sacks aren’t always quite as clean cut, clear cut as you think. He’s okay. He’s going to be fine. He’s going to be a really good player. He’s finding his way. He’s still an extremely young guy. I thought he held up pretty darn good. If you look around the league, there are some catastrophes and some quarterbacks getting hit really hard early in this season. That’s not a bad first outing. The same thing, right? It’s our first outing and everybody else’s second. Even that goes into it. It wasn’t his second game. That’s his first game and that was his first start at left tackle, if you will, for 2017. That’s a long answer but no, we weren’t disappointed. I think he’s going to improve, improve and improve. We talked about it last year but if you’re a batter, it’s your first time around the league getting these outside rushers. He was inside so he didn’t see these guys last year. It’ll be his first time around seeing some different guys and all of a sudden … If you go against those guys, you get a little book on them and that’s big. He’s developing his book and he’s going to see some new experiences this year.”
(It looks like you’re not afraid at all to run RB Jay Ajayi in what would appear to be obvious passing situations.) – “Well, yes. I think we came out of Week 1 the most balanced run/pass team in the league. That was darn good balance. I know it’s a little cliché-ish but you look for balance, we got balance, we’re better on our play-action than we’ve been, so I don’t think it was … The more we can keep – I think we averaged 6 yards, third-and-6 was our average distance on third down. So we were better on first and second down. We still had too many minus plays but the more we can stay on schedule where you can call a run or a pass, and (Head) Coach (Adam) Gase will dial up a … If we can keep our third downs to third-and-5-or-less or third-and-manageable, then he’s not afraid to dial up a run and he’s not afraid to go for it on fourth down. If we can just keep those options open, we’re better. This week was pretty good balance. It was a good football game. Neither team turned it over, so we weren’t going to get a bunch of possessions. We had to make them count. I’m not sure, of the non-2-minute (offense) we didn’t score on five of the eight (drives) maybe or something; but there weren’t a ton of possessions in that game. The balance was really key. We think of it more as let’s keep it run/pass downs on first and second down where we can call either one, and now we’re going to tend to be close to a 50/50 team, which is optimal. You do want balance. You do want them not defending … You don’t want to be single-dimensional at any point so that was a plus in the game. Coach Gase has always been willing to dial up a run in some pass situations.”
(QB Jay Cutler’s ability to buy time in the pocket, to maneuver around. Is that something you see on the practice field? Did that surprise you how smooth he is in that area?) – “It’s been on his film. I haven’t known Jay but obviously I’ve seen him just crossing over. He’s always had a knack for doing that; but it has surprised me how natural it is. It has surprised me just that he’s really good at it. I thought he did a really good job. He didn’t put the ball up. He took calculated chances. He wasn’t careless with the football. If you can calculate your shots – he gave DeVante (Parker) a couple of jump balls and 50/50 balls, which were great. We want those. He really did a great job of managing it. On the play to Kenny (Stills), he bought the time and that was huge. I think he is … I’ve said that. He’s just kind of natural. He has a great feel and you do forget he is a veteran. He’s played an awful lot of football games; but that’s not a taught behavior. He just kind of moves around and kind of knows where people are coming from and he does have a great knack. That’s going to be great with our Big 3 receivers. Those guys can run and jump and I can see more of the same where we’re going to get a couple of those balls downfield and we have a chance. We want DeVante (Parker) to catch one more of those 50/50 balls. Let’s keep them over 50/50 balls. Throw them up 50/50 and let’s be a higher percentage than that. He made the huge one that got us kind of cranking and had a chance to make a couple of others that I think we’ll make before it’s all said and done; but it’s darn close.
(Head Coach Adam Gase has talked about he was not in rhythm in his play-calling and he took responsibility for a couple of them, like a sack or something. Any idea why that might have been?) – “I think opening day, a new staff, a new defensive coordinator, there wasn’t film available on these guys – I think all of those things. Still, we’ve talked a lot about what are we? What does it look like with Jay (Cutler) at quarterback and blending in with these guys? I think there are some natural things. (It was) opening day. An opening day is hard to have a feel, so we’ve had some changing of parts in this thing, so I think it was that. The same thing this week. Opening day is hard on a new staff because you don’t have film. The preseason doesn’t help you that much and you can go look at Buffalo but that doesn’t help you on the defensive side, and this guy was a head coach (for the Chargers). You just don’t know what he’s bringing with him, what has changed. So I think that was all part of it. (Gase is) always harder on himself than I am. I thought he dialed up some things in the red zone where he gave us a chance to score touchdowns and we ended up going 0-for-3 in the red zone, which was big. We needed those points. He’s blaming himself and I thought that we have to make those plays for him. We’ve got to make some plays on those. We had some chances in the end zone and stuff there. I do think it was a hard week to get a feel film-wise. Really, you just don’t have any film on that head coach, with that defensive coordinator and with that defense. You’re speculating. You’re kind of calculating, trying to guess what they’re going to do; but you really deep down don’t know. I’ll tell you the other thing. The first game, you have a lot of things going through your mind. You kind of tend to do too much and you’ve got too big of a menu and sometimes you can get lost on that sheet. Especially opening day is kind of ‘Here’s what I want to be. Here’s how I want to get the ball to these different guys. Here’s what Jay (Cutler) does well. Jay and Jarvis (Landry) are this together.’ I think all of those things will get better and better, but I don’t think he called as bad of a game as he’s kind of saying he did.”
(Head Coach Adam Gase is hard on himself. Has he stopped saying ‘I did bad?’) – “No, but I do think one of his strengths is that he takes responsibility. I think the players respect that. At halftime, he told me ‘I didn’t get us into a rhythm in the first half.’ That’s the job of a play-caller. It isn’t to get guys 40 yards open, but just to get your offense in a rhythm. The first drive was darn good and then we kind of lost it a little bit. I do think the players respect how he takes his share of it. They win the game. It’s not coaches who win these games, it’s those guys. Everyone’s got plays. Everyone has a trillion plays but it is how you do things and the way you do it and execute it was the key thing. I didn’t think he was … He felt like he lost a little rhythm in the second quarter – midway through the first quarter and the second quarter there – but I would take his side and say we also dialed up a couple of things we have to hit. We have to hit that thing in the back of the end zone.”
(You mentioned the red zone. Do you have a go-to guy in the red zone and should you have a go-to guy in the red zone?) – “I think we’ve got a bunch of go-to guys. I think Julius (Thomas) is going to be a good go-to guy. DeVante (Parker) has to play big. If you single our wide receivers, we should make some big plays out there. We had a jump ball to DeVante. He almost came down with it but he didn’t. We had Jarvis (Landry) at the back end line. We had a close, a shot at him. They hit theirs to (Antonio) Gates, the back-shoulder throw there; and we didn’t hit ours. We didn’t make that play. Yes, I think we do. Then just having the ability to run in the red zone is key too. Having ’23’ (Jay Ajayi) banging up in there in the red zone is huge.”
(You mentioned you didn’t have film on the Chargers. What did you mean?) – “I’m just saying … We had film, but it was a new staff. You didn’t have any film other than preseason, which is really hard to watch. No, we had a film set up…”
(We agree) – (laughter) “If you think I like watching preseason any more than you guys … I’m always amazed there are fans in the stands. (laughter) No, it was just hard to get a feel because it was their first time as a staff in the regular season. It was hard to get a feel for the film. They didn’t have cut ups. By Week 8, we’ll have cut ups on top of cut ups of what they do and their tendencies. We didn’t have those. It was more ‘Here’s what we think.’ But you really didn’t know, so now you’re preparing for everything. Are they going to come after us? They ended up playing 3-deep zone – some form of 3-deep zone – most of the game. We had worked on all of the contingencies because you don’t know. They may be coming.”
(What did you think of that play in the fourth quarter where QB Jay Cutler rolls to the right, sees a guy running at him, looks like he’s going to run, then he stops, backs up and kind of lobs it to WR DeVante Parker while backing up. It occurred to me that there may be times where Cutler isn’t in the sort of traditional, prototypical position with his feet and arm. Is that something you expect throughout the year, that he just kind of makes it work?) – “I would say his rhythmic throws are non-conventional. (laughter) He kind of has an ability to throw the ball with his feet in a lot of different positions, which is a plus. That play falls in the category of ‘you don’t teach that.’ We do drill a lot of stuff, but that’s one of those that you just have a knack and he threw that thing really early. In fact, he let it go and it was one of those where the coaches are going ‘Oh, no. Oh, yes!’ DeVante made a heck of a catch on that ball, over the top of him; but that was an anticipation throw. When he lets that ball go, there’s really no one open and (Parker) is a long ways from coming open. I think that was special. That was a huge, huge play in the thing. A big play – big catch, big throw.”
