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Danny Crossman – October 6, 2020 Download PDF version

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman

(What’s impressed you about K Jason Sanders in your nearly two years around him now?) – “I think the biggest thing that jumps out at you is how coachable he is. He’s always looking to try and improve weekly, almost daily, every time we go out on the practice field. He’s willing to try and work on anything you give him and then if you scrap it, you scrap it; but he’s always open and willing to try whatever you may suggest. I think that’s the biggest thing.”

(I wanted to ask you what was that kick that you did that you pinned them inside the 5-yard line? What do you call that and what goes into the thought process of making that kick in that situation?) – “Not to get into what we call it. We’re just trying to change things up, give some different looks, change up what we’re doing. See if we can’t maybe – like it worked out – help ourselves in terms of some field position, but like anything we’re doing, we’re just trying to give them a different look and see if we can’t come up with a play.”

(Just following up, I thought that was real interesting because nobody expects to return kickoffs at this point in time. I guess my question would be how hard is it for the kicker – your kicker – to consistently place the ball within the 5- or 7-yard area when asked and then what is the research showing about whether it makes sense to even try that? You know what I’m saying?) – “I do and this question sort of ties into everything we’ve talked about. I think it goes back to Jason (Sanders) and him being willing to, ‘hey, let’s look at this, let’s look at that.’ But I think as we all know, a lot of those kicks, when it comes down to the end of the day, you’re at the mercy of the bounce. You get a good bounce, then it’s a good kick. If it’s a bad bounce, then it’s not a good kick. (laughter) But having confidence in Jason and obviously anything we do, we work on where we feel the percentages are good enough to attempt it – to put it on during a game.”

(Sort of a two-part question. You mentioned it goes back to K Jason Sanders. I’m curious if he was the first person to bring up that idea? I know a lot of teams do it, but was he the first one to suggest it. And also going back to the previous question, it worked so well for you, I wonder is there is a limit you think as to how often you can pull that off or I can see where some fans might see it and say “why don’t they just do that a whole lot more often?”) – “I think there’s a limit to everything. I think you’ve got to be smart and diligent in terms of what you’re doing and when you’re doing it. If you go to the well too often on anything, I think it’s eventually going to not work out like you hope it would; but in terms of where it developed, I think we’re always looking at things and it’s just something that you work with Jason and you work with Matt (Haack) and you work with any specialist, and you’re just trying to explore, ‘okay, what do we like and what do we not like in terms of what we could possible be able to execute in a game?’ And to be able to do that, you’ve got to be able to do it in practice and it goes from there. It’s a group effort on everything we’re trying to do in terms of trying to make a play to win a game.”

(Going to the onside kick, it looked like a pretty good kick. The guy made a nice catch. If there’s ever a chance in the world that he bobbles and RB Matt Breida is running through there real fast like a – well, real fast, Breida’s fast – I guess what were your thoughts on that kick and the strategy to place it over the first lineman?) – “I think you’re just trying to get numbers. What are the numbers? Where do you think you have an advantage? So it’s like anything you do, what kicks do you like and then what numbers do you have? There’s always a balance; but we liked what we saw. We just weren’t able to pull it off.”

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