Danny Crossman – September 22, 2022
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Thursday, September 22, 2022
Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman
(Head Coach Mike McDaniel was saying it was the first time in your career you had a kickoff return taken back for a touchdown. I’m sure you obviously weren’t happy about that. Can you give us a little insight on maybe what happened there?) – “Well No. 1, it was an opener. I’ve given up a couple others, sadly. It’s been a while though. But it’s like anything else. There’s fit. Think of it as a run play – there’s guys that have certain fits and certain responsibilities. Against a dynamic return guy, if everybody’s not where they’re supposed to be, there’s going to be an issue. And then we had compounded that with a second issue of a secondary player. So it was a very poor play. I take the blame for it. Like anything, good plays – you guys have been around – good plays, give all the credit to the players; the bad plays, blame me. So I have to do a better job.”
(How did you like the way special teams responded to that after the fact?) – “I think that was critical. And really, not only the kicking game players but our whole team. If you think about that game, we overcame a couple of turnovers. Minus-two in the turnover (battle) and you have a 17 percent chance of winning. You give up chunk plays on defense. You give up a big play in the kicking game. We overcame a lot as a team. And the kicking game in particular, bad things are going to happen. It’s the National Football League. Some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you. But you better be able to overcome and not let things spiral. It’s the old adage that we played 30 plays but you only remember one of them. And that’s the way it is.”
(This is a little bit philosophical. The kickoff has kind of been decreased, some of the rule changes and kickers kicking it out. Because of that, there may be less reps in games. So I’m curious how that impacts how you coach that play in particular?) – “I think any time you have less live reps at something, it’s going to be a factor. But if we play our rules, if I do a better job of coaching our rules and our techniques, that shouldn’t be a factor. But I think without question, you’ve seen the reduction in the number of returns over the last couple of years. But like we all know, as the season goes on, based on who you’re playing, where you’re playing, weather becomes a factor, there’s a lot of things that go into that goes on that.”
(What is practice like for players on that kick coverage team? What do they hear from you? Is there an added intensity that comes from you in the week after giving that up?) – “No. Whether it’s a good play or bad play, it’s a play and you’ve got to move on. As long as you’re coaching and teaching the same things and you don’t go and try and change things, you’re going to be fine. We’ve been, in my opinion, fairly successful at what we’ve been doing and how we cover kicks. So we’re not going to make changes and we’re not going to – I’m not going to act like a knucklehead. We gave up a play, give credit to them, take blame where it’s deserved on our part and move on and continue to teach and coach what we’re doing.”
(What do you see from the Buffalo returners in terms of WR Isaiah McKenzie and RB James Cook?) – “And (Jamison) Crowder does the punt return. When you look at the Bills as a whole, they’re a very good team, well-coached, good players. Point differential, which year-in and year-out is a great indicator of quality of clubs. The last several years, they’ve been near the top or at the top of point differential every year. They’re stingy on defense, they play well in the kicking game, explosive on offense, very good complementary football. So it’s going to be a challenge for our club this weekend.”
(Very random question here. Fake field goals, you see them so infrequently. Is it harder to execute that play or defend against that play?) – “Well, I think again, there’s a lot of variables. Any time you talk about any – I don’t want to say risk play – but there’s a lot of things that that you look for when you break down people. So I don’t think that either one of them is harder or less hard. I think as a coach, you cover all the bases of our possibilities of what we may be able to execute and then making sure all our bases are covered on what the opposition may be able to execute. Then you constantly self-scout as the year goes by of, what are we doing? If I was playing us, what would I do? So all those things go into it.”
(Just kind of following up on that, I’m curious, in your career, do kickers or punters try to come up to you and show off their arm strength or show off their legs and try to convince you?) – “From my first meeting every year when we get together, it’s ‘I want to see – show me what you can do. Don’t tell me what you can do; show me what you can do.’ When we go out for practice and walkthroughs, guys are always – sometimes, they’re doing it on purpose and sometimes, they just happen to be messing around and I see something and it piques an interest and ‘Hey, maybe we can execute and do something with that.’”
