Danny Crossman – December 12, 2024
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Thursday, December 12, 2024
Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman
(It’s funny, the whole tone of the WR Malik Washington questions obviously have changed from a week ago, the fumble, to what he did on Sunday. When you look at the upside of him as a returner, we saw a little bit of physicality with the punter last week, we know about his speed. What skills standout to you that make you think that this guy can be a long-term productive NFL returner?) – “It’s the same things we talked about last week from a negative to what we liked about him. He’s a talented player, he’s physical, smart. The biggest thing is the experience, and those things are going to keep coming, and in our opinion, he’s just going to keep getting better and better. He’s got good understanding of catching the football, reads the ball well in the air. It’s all the stuff we see on a weekly basis in practice, but it’s like anything else – it’s what happens on game day, and those are the things that’s going to be remembered and those are the things that’s going to get amplified. He’s a good, young player who, again, just has to keep gaining more and more experience because he wasn’t the return guy in college, but he’s really growing and we’re really happy we have him.”
(On the speed issue, of course the speed is good. It’s not track star. How important is speed with kickoff returners in terms of projecting how good they can be compared to punt returners, and where does he stand in that area?) – “The biggest difference between a punt returner and kick returner is that short area elusiveness on punt returns. You have to have that just because of the confined spaces. You’re always going to have more space to get started as the kickoff returner where you’re not going to have that obviously in the punt returner game. We feel he has the attributes to do both. We’ve all seen very successful kick returners that have blazing speed, and we’ve also seen very successful kick returners that maybe don’t have the great speed but they play and they win maybe more with power or running through blocks or being able to make the guy miss. There’s a lot of guys around the league that have had very good success. We have a variance of guys on this team that have had success in their careers that are all built a little bit different.”
(When I talk to him, he comes off as very mature for a young player. Can you talk about what you see in that, especially how he bounced back from that mistake to that return?) – “Very mature, he’s been that way since he’s got here. I mean, No. 1, he’s a worker. He does his due diligence. He doesn’t take anything for granted. But the earlier you can learn in this league that – literally it’s a week-to-week proposition in the National Football League, whether it’s an individual performance, whether it’s team performance, it all goes together. You win a big game; this is the picture that’s painted. You lose a game; this is the picture that’s painted. To be able to stay even keeled and learn from whether it’s the good or bad, there’s things you can learn. A good play is not always a perfect play. There’s things that go wrong, don’t lose sight of all of the little things throughout each and every play. If you can do that and continue to grow and get better as the season progresses, that’s where you will either get better as a player or more importantly get better as a team.”
(K Jason Sanders, no matter what kind of season or game he has, when the game is on the line the dude is like money. Is it something about his emotional make up to where he can just completely chill at that moment? There have been games where he’s kicked poorly and then the game is on the line and boom, it’s right down the middle.) – “I think the best attribute about Jason (Sanders) is he is almost immediately on to the next kick. He doesn’t carry anything, positively or negatively. Everything to him is play, done, forgotten, move on to the next. When I say forgotten, it’s not completely forgotten. It’s ‘OK, what do I need to take from that,’ on a positive, ‘What do I need to change from that,’ might have been negative, but everything is about the next kick. If he misses a kick, he’s not thinking about that. Just like if he makes a kick, he’s not thinking about that on the next kick either. He has a great ability to live in the present.”
(Take us inside the meeting room, if you will? When you’re watching the tape of WR Malik Washington’s return, especially the moment where he makes contact with the kicker.) – “The meeting room was a little bit – who was more surprised, Malik or the kicker. He gave the Tua (Tagovailoa) hard inside look, no eye contact before he cut back and the kicker never really went anywhere. He didn’t buy that fake, so it’s – I need to work on fakes more because that guy didn’t react at all to the fake. And when he came back, the guy was standing in the exact same spot and then he ended up with the contact. He made a good play and that’s part of it. Once that happens, he didn’t panic; it was OK, what is my counter to what just happened? I know what I’m trying to do. If it works, great. If it doesn’t work, what is my answer to that?”
(What about the move he makes once he gets the ball? He cuts inside, and then he goes outside and gets the sideline – just great.) – “Again, talented players in this league and guys that can do special things – understanding where we’re strong and understanding where we may be weak on every call. You don’t have great matchups on every player. You don’t have a great scheme for everything because there’s so many things you can’t control. But to understand all of those things and try and put yourself in a position to make a play, again a sign of a mature player, a guy that’s studying, who is in working, spending extra time with coaches and veteran players. You see him talking to Braxton (Berrios) a lot, so trying to just hone in and be very good at his craft.”
(On that move by WR Malik Washington, was that spur of the moment athleticism or was that scouting knowing that this guy tends to—) – “Well it’s a combination of both – how they play a little bit and then also based on ball location, what availability do you have, what vulnerabilities do you have and then as you said, in the spur of the moment being able to execute. We talk about it all the time; we talk about it in the meeting room. It’s easy for all of us – players, media, coaches – as we sit in a nice, air-conditioned room and watch the tape and have our Gatorade or our water and say, ‘This is great.’ To be able to execute and do those things when you’re battling or dealing with another human being, obviously 22 of them on a field, and then be able to execute, that’s what makes these guys so special.”
(The defensive play right before that was so big. CB Kendall Fuller getting WR Davante Adams out of bounds, helping save 40 seconds there. Does that affect the decision to bring the kick out?) – “It affects a lot of things. It affects how or what they’re trying to do kicking the ball, in my opinion. It affects what we’re going to try and do in terms of what are we going to return, how are we going to return in, what are we going to not do. So yeah, time and timeouts, big. Quarterbacks, kickers, there’s a lot of elements that go into the situation play of those scenarios.”
(So you think they intentionally put that ball in play?) – “I think for them, based on our timeout situation, the ball in play there with no timeouts is a good plan, as long as you feel like you can execute it because again, you’re taking time. In those situations, time is the most important thing; it’s more important than field position. And if we’re not able to field it, they get a great bounce, it ends up being an even better kick because if we’re not able to handle it and it gets in the end zone, the balls on the 20. Conversely, if it takes a bad bounce for them, that thing may go out of bounds and now you got the ball on the 40. Again, but those are parts of the situations and what are you trying to do and then like anything, the execution of the play is a whole another level.”
(With the WR Malik Washington return, that ball looked like it was probably going to go out of bounds. What do you tell Malik when it’s that close?) – “You have to play it. You have to field it – as long as you are not in an awkward position of fielding it. If you’re able to, you got to play that.”
(With the kicker in that situation, what do you advise a kicker to do? He obviously didn’t go for the fake; do you want the kicker to stand his ground?) – “Get him on the ground, whatever. Again, you got to get him on the ground. When that thing pops as a kicker, your job is to get him on the ground. But again, you’re talking about a situation where you have a – kickers aren’t spending a lot of time working on open field tackling. It’s something you work a little bit here in the offseason, in training camp, but it’s not something you drill time and time again. So that player in that situation is not something he sees. It’s the human element that makes the NFL so great. You don’t know what humans are going to do.”
(One more about WR Malik Washington, his college resume had 14 kickoff returns, no punt returns. What was it about maybe you saw something on film or early on when you had him here that led you guys to believe, “that could be our returner?”) – “Based on what your role is going to be and finding a niche to be able to make the club – when you’re a later round draft pick and the team you get drafted to has two elite receivers, if you want to make the team and get on the field, what else can you do? Whether that is, not only am I a good receiver, but I’m a good blocker. Maybe I’m a good special teams player, maybe I’m a returner. The old adage to stick around in the National Football League, the more that you can do to enhance your resume and what I can do on game day, you have to do. So there’s a guy who had limited experience, but very early on, like, ‘Hey, this is going to be part of what you need to try to excel at.’”
(You mentioned kickers and punters drilling a little bit on tackling, how good are K Jason Sanders and P Jake Bailey in that regard if that situation arose?) – “I can’t answer that. (laughter)”
(I would not obviously ask you what you would tell General Manager Chris Grier or Head Coach Mike McDaniel, but I am curious. When the Dolphins are deciding who to designate to return, a case like S Patrick McMorris, would they ask your feedback on whether you see him as a potential core special teams player? And does he have the quality to make you think he could be?) – “Well, yeah. Those conversations are constantly ongoing about the roster. Everybody’s input is part of it, of ‘if this happens, what is the role, what is the contingency,’ and it’s constant. It’s ongoing, it happens because of injuries. It happens because of activations, deactivations. It happens for a myriad of reasons, but yeah, those conversations are important because it’s the lifeblood. You only have X amount of players and you need players that have uniforms on game day, they need to be playing. So that’s the key to this league is getting production from everybody that’s got a uniform on game day, that makes it, well I’d say, the greatest team sport in the world.”
(And does S Patrick McMorris have the qualities to be a core special teams player?) – “He does.”
