Danny Crossman – January 10, 2024
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Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman
(How much sleep did you lose unfortunately over the return in the Bills game? And when you watched the tape, what stood out at what went wrong?) – “One, it shows you the NFL is a humbling, humbling league. I wouldn’t have slept anyway that night with the short week the league bestowed upon us. But then again, that’s a good thing because it didn’t give you time to dwell. I look at being a coach as being a teacher. So you’re trying to give the players, i.e. the students, all the information to be able to go out and be successful. And if something goes wrong, I first always blame myself of what could I have done differently? What could I have taught differently? We always talk about, did you do what you were supposed to do? How were you supposed to do it? And to the best of your ability? And if you did that, then where’s the downfall? Was it a matchup nightmare? That would be my fault. I got to get you in a better matchup. So I always look at myself first. But like I said, we went into that game after 16 regular season games and gave up the least amount of punt return yards in the National Football League. We punted three other times in that game and didn’t give up another yard, but it doesn’t mean anything because that play went for a touchdown. We believe in what we’re doing. We believe in the players. But that just shows you one play you go from leading the league to you go plummeting. But that’s the National Football League. That’s what makes it so great.”
(Have the coverage teams met your standards this year?) – “My standards are probably disillusioned. You don’t want to give up anything. You look at kickoffs, we’ve given up two long kickoff returns and we’ve kicked off 100 and something times. Two is too many to me. One is too many. The guys are doing a good job and the plays that we haven’t been able to make, there are reasons. There are coaching points. Some of it is individual where we didn’t do something correctly. Some of it was we were late in doing something. But then again, I always look at myself and blame myself first. Why didn’t we trigger fast enough? What were we looking at that didn’t put us in position? So I always look at myself first. Then it’s look at the players. If it’s the same guys making the same mistakes, then we need to do something different with that. But like I said, we’ve kicked off over 100 times and in my opinion, have had two negative plays and one play that I would like to have back just because we could have been really good on it. We went into that game doing a pretty good job covering punts. The longest return was 14 yards, then we give up a touchdown. Again, it cost us. And yeah, I’m going to beat myself up a long time for it.”
(Head Coach Mike McDaniel said it was probably the first guy who had the best shot at him which was CB Justin Bethel. Did you see it the same way?) – “Yeah. Again, what I’m talking about with a coaching point, we have a certain technique we want to use there and we didn’t get it done. What could I have done better where he would’ve played the right technique on that? Then you get, sadly we had some guys moved positions because of injuries then we lose another guy on that play with an injury. A bad play in a lot of ways. Most importantly because of the injury.”
(If FB Alec Ingold doesn’t get shoved into LB Cameron Goode, eliminating both from the possibility of a tackle, do you think one or both of those guys might’ve had a shot?) – “Well you’d like to think. It was more Goode into Ingold when his knee buckled. So it was a combination. You’d like to think so, but you don’t know. It’s hindsight. They made a good play. The returner made a good cut to get away from the first initial player then we had the misfortune of running into each other. They made a play.”
(Have you and your staff kept the weather forecast for this weekend? How much do you think the wind will be a factor on the kicking game this Saturday?) – “Until you get there and get out on the field and see exactly what it is – I’ve played in a fair number of cold weather games. I’ve played in a fair number of wind games. None of them are the same. How cold is it? What is the wind doing? How is it affecting the ball? There’s a lot of things we won’t know until we get there. We can’t control that. We’ve talked it in here a bunch of times. You can’t simulate the wind. You can’t simulate the cold. It’s going to be what it’s going to be. But yeah, it will have an effect. What effect? We won’t know until we get there.”
(How often I guess do you remember the last time the team made a decision based on picking the end zone off of the wind? Does that happen more often than you think?) – “No. No. I’ve never been a part of a game where the wind took precedence over possession.”
(LB Andrew Van Ginkel had been hurt prior to the punt return.) – “Yeah.”
(Was there any other player who began the game on punt coverage or was that just the one injury that occurred during the game?) – “That was the first one. Then obviously losing Cam and then we had another move. We had a couple moves going on. ‘Bake’ (Jerome Baker) was the next guy to go and then he went. It was one of those games.”
(I’m doing something on the big play. From a special teams standpoint, can you talk to me about the euphoric effect of a big play? How can it affect a game? Change the teams momentum? Change the team’s coaching strategies? All that kind of stuff) – “From my perspective, I don’t let the plays, good or bad, I try not to let them affect me. You have to be onto the next play. But for the sideline, the team, the stadium, whatever, I think yeah, it’s a huge swing. The biggest thing is when you look at the numbers, returns for touchdowns compared to blocked punts, blocked field goals for touchdowns, there’s a big difference in terms of what team wins the game. You’d be surprised, but the blocked punt for a touchdown, blocked field goal for a touchdown, those teams have a much higher percentage of winning than a return for a touchdown, which you wouldn’t think. But it’s crazy. Obviously it’s a huge thing. It’s a game of scores. The team with the most points is the team that wins the game. Anytime you’re able to make a play to score, it’s going to be a great thing. And anytime you give up a play to give up points, you’re making it harder on yourself to win the game.”
(Do you know what those numbers are, just in general?) – “Not off the top of my head. It’s a 20 or 30 percent swing. In terms of kick returns or punt returns for touchdowns, the team that had the return is actually less than a 50 percent chance of winning.”
