Danny Crossman – November 8, 2024
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Friday, November 8, 2024
Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman
(Does everybody sit in the same seat in your meeting room every day, pretty much? Like LB Duke Riley has a chair?) – “For the most part, yes. Yes. And if they don’t, it screws me up. Because to me, that’s almost roll call to me. Like when I want to ask somebody a question – ‘boom.’”
(We learned yesterday that the decision was made to designate S Patrick McMorris to return. I was curious how he did on special teams for you in preseason.) – “He was obviously trending in the right direction, was doing a good job. Unfortunately, had the injury up in Tampa and has missed a significant amount of time, but good young player. Smart physical, tough. He’s got all the attributes you want. Now we’ve just got to get him back into the swing of things and getting some work.”
(Do you know the new snapper LS Tucker Addington? Like do you have any previous connection?) – “No, no true connection. Obviously with the games that he had snapped when he was with the Patriots, a couple of those games were against us. So the combination of studying him before those games and then obviously, in the games playing against us and being able to talk to him pregame, but other than that, no.”
(Is there anything we might not know about joining a team and being asked to snap? Is there an element to that that might be a little harder than anyone realizes?) – “It’s very similar to a lot of other positions. You got to understand and learn the terminology. Some of the techniques; certain teams do certain things differently with the snappers. Whenever you bring anybody in, especially in those positions – if you bring in a punter, a kicker, a snapper – initially you’re not going to change a lot of stuff. Their comfort level, first and foremost, has got to be where they are successful doing the job. If you don’t get the snap, the rest of the play is irrelevant. But having some history of playing in games and being in the league – Matt (Overton) did a great job and hopefully we bring Tucker (Addington) in and things continue to trend in that same direction.”
(I want to be careful how I phrase this because I’m not asking you the merits of bringing LS Blake Ferguson off injured reserve and using one of the eight spots that teams have, but I’m asking in general, do you think a team could get away with alternating long snappers all season? Having them on the practice squad, elevating them three times, get rid of them, bring in a new one and go through a cycle of six of them over a season or is it too risky because of what’s required as far as chemistry at that position?) – “Way too risky. First of all, you’ve got to – I don’t care what position you’re talking about, there’s not …. The number of qualified – the pool is shallow.”
(Are you hopeful that LS Blake Ferguson might snap again for the team this season?) – “Absolutely.”
(When you have DT Calais Campbell, you have his height, but you kind of want to limit his snaps. Is it automatic that he’s going to be on field goal block, extra-point block, that you stick him in the middle or do you ask him? How does that work?) – “Obviously, that length and the experience, he’s had a lot of success doing it over the years. That’s not a physically taxing play, so that’s one of the things that’s a benefit of that. It’s a play, it’s tough, it’s hard – it’s a lot harder on the protection team than it is on the rush team, but it’s not a taxing play.”
(TE Durham Smythe, how did he do in there for DT Zach Sieler for I guess, a couple games?) – “Good. It’s like anything else, when you have to play – any time you go to the next guys, you got to understand, you’re not doing the exact same things in the same techniques and you’re not playing the same calls. It’s part of the game planning and the personnel aspect of it. It all ties together. Whether it’s us game planning for ourselves or game planning against the opponent, you’ve got to make sure you have matchups. If you don’t have good matchups, you can’t be upset if you’re not winning those matchups. That’s part of coaching.”
(K Jason Sanders, he kind of got rolled into on one of the field goal attempts. I talked to him about it, is there anything a kicker can do? Because he was telling me he’s looking at the ball, and then this guy comes… It’s just part of the game, right?) – “No, there’s nothing and They’ve done a good job in identifying all specialists as defenseless players, but then the next progression of what is considered a foul or not foul, you put that in the same bucket of officiating. It’s decisions that are made by individuals in the split second of time and it’s not a call that they want to make, so it’s got to be, in my opinion, usually has to be egregious for them to make that call.”
(Would you like to see that called? Or should that play be reviewed?) – “No, I don’t think it should be reviewed and I think they do a pretty good job of when it is egregious, but there’s always plays that – and I always look at every penalty the same: Would I want that call? Would I expect that call? And if it is, whether it’s us committing the penalty or the opposition committing the penalty, I view it all the same. I change the uniforms and would I have wanted that call if that would have been us? Probably not, so it doesn’t bother me.”
(It looks like the Rams lead the NFL with 95 percent kickoff touchback percentage, is there any reason to believe that they have any intention to have anyone return any kicks this season? In other words, is there any reason for you guys to think otherwise on Monday?) – “There is and you just go back to the last game. (Ethan) Evans has an illness right now, the punter who is traditionally their kickoff specialist did not kick off last week. They went with (Joshua) Karty, their field goal kicker and they were a couple of the kickoffs that were not touchbacks. So again, it ties a little bit more of personnel, but you never know. There’s mishits, there’s – you work for the opportunity. If the opportunity doesn’t come, you can’t control that, but you’ve got to be ready when the opportunity presents itself.”
(Going back to long snapping, what goes into scouting a long snapper? Because from the uneducated eye, it seems like their job is to long snap – but how big are these margins when you’re scouting them? Is it just as simple as “well, he took 100 snaps and 99 of them were good”?) – “No, there’s a lot of things you look at – what’s the tempo, what’s the location, what’s the placement, the laces, on the hip, left, right, can he snap to an offset punter? Can he protect left? Can he protect right? Can he handle a big body? Does he stay square? There’s a lot that goes into it. Fortunately, if everything goes according to plan, it’s not something that you should hopefully spend a lot of time with, but when things go wrong, then it is, ‘well, why did that happen?’ Those are the things that evolve into a negative play.”
(I was curious about it when you said, “the pool is shallow,” so as a team that’s had the same long snapper for six or seven years (five), how often do you guys check the pool to see exactly?) – “It’s the progression of the year. Every year I evaluate every snapper that’s coming out of college, look at him, you track him because you never know when things are going to happen when you are going to need that next guy – and that’s every position. That’s every kicker, every punter. So for me, it’s every specialist and then you keep the file on that guy and you track him throughout his career, i.e., Matt Overton was a guy who you track him for his entire career. You know a little bit of what he is, where he’s progressed in his career, whether he’s on the up, whether he’s on the down, whether he’s on the even. So that’s just the ongoing process of being ready when something happened when you need the next guy.”
(We talk about plays where you guys just missed – WR Dee Eskridge’s kickoff return, that qualifies, right?) – “Yeah.”
(LB Quinton Bell has a great block, I think No. 44 for Buffalo just got off that block, right?) – “Yeah, does a good job. Got a little bit crossed over with a small technique thing, but that’s the difference between being able to have the proper leverage and losing the leverage on an inside out block with the crossover and the guy was able to come over the top and make a play.”
(K Tyler Bass, the game-winning kick – I talked to K Jason Sanders about this, and he (Bass) misses the extra point on that open end. I guess the garage door opened for a lack of a better term. And Jason was saying maybe as a kicker, you can say, “well, I missed it at that end, now I’m kicking at this end, it’s completely different.” How much does mentality and that go into it? Can you tell yourself that was the open end? Is that a factor?) – “What’s funny is in that stadium, that was the wind that you maybe get once a season. Traditionally, the wind towards the closed end is the tough end, but we got a nice day, and the wind help was actually to the closed end as opposed to the tunnel end. The mentality of a kicker is, ‘I’m going to make every kick.’ If you are worrying about a miss, bad stuff is going to happen. But you give them credit, he had missed the PAT, he had banged one off the upright that went in, so they didn’t blink and went for the win, and he did a great job, made a heck of a kick.”
(In light of your comment with the risk involved with going through rotating long snapper, were there conversations about maybe giving LS Matt Overton a spot on the 53?) – “There’s all kinds of conversations. And that conversation about…that’s every position. Do you want to play a new quarterback every three weeks? Do you want a new snapper? Do you want a new defensive end every three weeks? There’s a lot that goes into those transitions and most importantly, every player is different and how you scheme and how you gameplan; all that stuff would continually be changed regardless of position. Any time you can get continuity, it’s a good thing.”
(I wonder what long snapper do in life as they’re waiting for long snapping jobs. We can’t talk to guys on the practice squad, but I’m curious, the two guys who you brought into audition this week, do you know what they were doing? The one that you signed and the one that you didn’t sign in real life these last few weeks – working at Walmart, something else?) – “Yeah, you know a lot about what guys are doing. That’s part of the process.”
(And the guy you signed [LS Tucker Addington], what had he been doing since we can’t talk to him?) – “Maybe someday you’ll get an opportunity to and that’s his business. I’m from Philadelphia, I don’t put people’s business in the street.”
(If you could have every kickoff to the opponent five-yard line, would you sign up for that? Is that pretty good? Is that perfect? Every kickoff for the rest of the year will be kicked to the five, would you be cool with that? Is that a good set up?) – “Are we kicking off? Are they kicking off? Who is the returner?”
(The Dolphins kickoff to the opponent five. Every kick, you’ve got to sign off.) – “No.”
(Really, why? That’s so interesting.) – “The average return right now is almost 28 yards.”
(So 28 plus five is 33.) – “So fudge your numbers a little bit and I may be signing up for something.”
(So what you’re saying is the rules are not generous enough to the return team to incentivize…) – “The number of over 40-yards returns are up. So there’s so much differentiation in terms of what goes into it based on who you’re playing, where you’re playing, who’s the returner, what are they trying to do? Last week, we played a team that a couple balls minus-two, were touchbacks. Three weeks leading up to our game, those were return balls. You can’t control what they’re going to do and there’s a lot more that goes into it.”
(For instance, like last week, how deep is too deep? Because you might think having a kickoff return is a better chance of scoriang a touchdown than a 17-lateral, last play of the game situation. How deep…) – “Again, that goes into you look at them; they kicked the ball into the fourth row and that’s a little bit of the coaching. You got a defensive head coach who’s been a defensive coordinator. That’s a play that you work every week, last play of the game for a must win situation. He felt much better playing defense on the last play as opposed to, how often are we working covering a desperado situation with our kickoff cover team? But head coaches are different. Some may play it to maybe try and end the play with a kickoff, but you get a defensive head coach, he knows exactly what they’re going to play on the last play to defend whatever we may have in store, so they’re going to play to the defense. Other people may play to the kicking game, and that can change week-to-week. You keep files on coaches, you know how they want to play certain situations and what you expect.”
(Did you have a return on?) – “We did, but we knew – and knowing Sean (McDermott) you knew it was going to be – we had talked about it on the sideline, ‘yeah, here’s what we have on,’ but this thing is going to be out of the back of the end zone because you know how Sean is going to play that.”
