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Danny Crossman – December 8, 2020 Download PDF version

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman

(We always ask you about special teams plays that go right. I guess one didn’t go right the other day with the fake field goal touchdown negated by penalty. Can you explain to us what should’ve happened and what didn’t go right?) – “I think it’s quite simple. There is an emphasis since about the middle of last year on some broken formation reports and eligible. It’s a long list but the bottom line is we didn’t get done what we needed to get done. As always, that starts with me. We need to get better. When you get those opportunities, they don’t come along often and you’ve got to make sure you’re not beating yourself.”

(After that game, Bengals Head Coach Zac Taylor had a pretty interesting quote I thought. He said ‘that is the No. 1 punt return unit in the league. He does not fare catch the ball,’ – referring to WR Jakeem Grant – ‘so you’ve got to put pressure on him.’ I’m wondering, obviously when two incidents like that happen to Jakeem, what was the message yesterday in film review and do you continue to push aggressiveness with him moving forward in terms of fielding the ball and utilizing that speed?) – “I think there is always a fine line. Yeah, we’re going to be aggressive; but we’re also trying to be smart and understand and manage the situation. Every punt is a different opportunity based on our look, their look, the punt. There are a lot of things that are involved in those decisions. The bottom line as a punt returner, the No. 1 job of that guy is making good decisions. We’ll just continue with our rules and how we want to play it, and make the right decisions hopefully each time.”

(Going back to that special teams play, you mentioned sort of a rule there. Is that a thing that’s sort of arbitrary where they call it or don’t call it? Or is that something where just the o-lineman made a mistake? I’m curious how that works?) – “It’s a little bit of a combination of a lot of things. Each crew is a little bit different in what they are looking for and what they feel they need. But if we’re doing everything like we should, it shouldn’t matter. We’ve just got to make sure we drill down and don’t out ourselves in a position where we are leaving it up to somebody else’s view of what’s happening.”

(Going back to WR Jakeem Grant and his punt return duties, don’t get me wrong, I totally find Jakeem blameless on what happened the other day, but do you think that he should fair catch more, for the sake of him staying alive? Would you like to see him fair catch more? What do you tell him about judging when to do it and when not to do it?) – “I think to answer your question, we have things that we tell them, and there are rules and different things that you give every player. At the end of the day, that’s why they are called players. It doesn’t happen on paper; it doesn’t happen in the meeting. It happens at full speed with live things coming at you, and the training of making those decisions. As I said, you want to be right on all of those decisions. Sometimes we may be wrong on some of those decisions. But we’ve just got to keep emphasizing what we are looking for and why. Then like anything, I don’t care what player it is – the punt returner, the quarterback, the left guard, the defensive end – on each play you have responsibilities and progressions, and our job as coaches is to give them all of the information and hopefully we make the right decisions in game time and game speed.”

(I know the league has gone through great lengths to make special teams safer, and kind of water it down in my opinion, for the players. But the two-yard window that these punt returners have, I don’t feel like it’s being honored this year. It especially wasn’t honored last week. Are they overlooking that? What happened to WR Jakeem Grant, that should kind of be an ejection, shouldn’t it?) – “Those things are way above my pay grade up in New York City, in terms of that stuff. It’s a bang, bang play. I think even those two plays were, to me, quite different. They were similar, but they were quite different in the timing and the spacing of it. It’s a tough deal. I don’t have a great answer for you. Yeah, I think the player’s safety should always be No. 1 at the top of anything – any rule and more importantly, how it’s judged on the field. But again, that’s not necessarily my department. We coach our guys on both sides of it of what the rules are and again, at game speed, everybody has to make those decisions.”

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