Danny Crossman – January 2, 2025
Download PDF version
Thursday, January 2, 2025
Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman
(Having WR Tyreek Hill return punts, was that your idea or Tyreek’s idea and how do you think it went?) – “I think it went well. They did a good job trying to keep the ball away from him after the first opportunity. But again, anytime you have a playmaker of that caliber, the more you can get the football in his hands, I think it’s a good thing.”
(What about him doing that again, is that on the table? Off the table?) – “Everything is constantly in flux, so we’ll see.”
(How do you assess this season as a whole – how about 2024? In 2024, now that we are in 2025. 2024 is complete.) – “It has nothing – I’m not there. It’s cumulative, it’s cumulative.”
(How did you assess last season?) – “Good try. (laughter) See me down the road.”
(One more on the WR Tyreek Hill thing. The reason behind it was what?) – “I mean he’s an outstanding player, great with the ball in his hands and give us a spark, possibly make a big play. All the normal reasons why you would assume a player of that caliber would be back there. There’s a lot of moving parts to it like there always is, weekly, in-game, so there’s a lot of things that can dictate that. But again, I think it’s a good thing; when he has the ball in his hands, it’s a good thing for the Miami Dolphins.”
(Not making any excuses. P Jake Bailey was on the injury report with a back treatment ailment. A couple of punts that he just barely missed. Did stiffness in the back or did the back have anything to do with it at all?) – “I’m not going to talk about injuries. That’s separate.”
(On the 54-yard field goal, it hit crossbar and went through. Were there some elements there that made it that close?) – “There were a couple things. The front end of the operation maybe wasn’t as clean as we’d like, the strike maybe wasn’t as good as you like, the field – a lot of elements. Any time you play, when you don’t know exactly what you’re getting in terms of field, wind, rain, whatever it may be, there’s always going to be moving parts. But there was parts of it that I think we could have handled better and controlled a little bit better. Fortunately, normally when he hits the yellow, it’s not gone our way. Fortunately, we hit the yellow and it went our way on that one.”
(What does it say about K Jason Sanders that despite all those things, it still went through?) – “Correct, and that’s sort of where he is right now. Hopefully we can keep that rolling as long as we’re playing that the good things keep shining on him.”
(I have a question that hopefully you can teach me some football on. On the play that I think DB Elijah Campbell was the one that drew the flag for fair catch called and you can’t make the contact after that. What’s the coaching point on that for a gunner when the guy calls fair catch or doesn’t call fair catch? Do you try to teach him to hit the guy? What’s the coaching point there?) – “No, well you can’t. Obviously, there’s a couple rules. There’s a couple ways that we’ll play the gunner based on field position, what ball we’re hitting, so there’s a couple things that go into what technique we’re asking him to play. Simply put in that situation is trying to attack and play the returner as if it’s going to be returned and then off the fair catch obviously. The best part of that to me was both Elijah (Campbell) and Siran (Neal) immediately were pointing at the returner and yelling at the official that it was an illegal play. They don’t want to hear from us, they don’t have time to get to us. For those guys, again, to be able to do that as soon as it happened and make the official aware of what happened – not that the official wasn’t, he was pretty quick to go to his flag – but good awareness by both those guys and understanding the rules.”
(General football question. When a player’s helmet comes off, I know it happened to DT Benito Jones, I think it happened to LB Mohamed Kamara on a special teams play not too long ago, but anyway, what is the rule? Is the play dead or what do you tell the players to do? What happens there?) – “You keep playing. The play does not stop when a player loses his helmet in the course of a play, the play continues. They just got to be smart in how they’re playing but a lot of it’s instinct at that point. They’re not thinking about any of that, they’re just playing football.”
(And so DT Benito Jones was carrying the ball with no helmet.) – “Has nothing to do with anything. In the course of a play, they are not going to blow a whistle because a player has lost his helmet. The play will continue.”
(If I were to ask you if you think if you found a long-term returner in WR Malik Washington, would your answer be “Yes” or “It’s too soon to know”?) – “I think we really like him as a player. I think we really like him as a returner. I really like the progress that he’s made this year and where he started, so I think the long-term prospects of him are very good, but that’s again, that’s for another day.”
(The Jets changed kickers since last time. Anything, any change in the process for you guys? I mean he was the one that was on the kickoff that WR Malik Washington returned.) – “No. We’ll go back, we got a lot of history and files and tape and reports on Greg Joseph, and as soon as the move happened, we got into that. Again, they’re going through something there. It’s hard, people don’t understand the constant change in the operation and that’ll be their fifth kicker of the year. So kudos to those guys for working through that, it’s hard. But he’s a good player, he’s got a strong history in this league and we’re going to get their best. It’s a good group.”
(No sympathy for them when you’ve had five long snappers.) – “Correct, but it’s all part of it. It just seems how it is.”
