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Danny Crossman – September 27, 2022 Download PDF version

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Special Teams Coordinator Danny Crossman

(I’m sure you probably weren’t very pleased with Sunday’s butt punt. But does any part of you get any amusement out of what a lot of other people around the league found to be a comical error? And also, does it help that it did not lead to a loss? That it ended up coming in a win. Do you get any amusement out of that days later? Or is it strictly a critical eye to what went wrong on that play?) – “Absolutely zero amusement and a 100 percent critical mistake that has an opportunity to possibly lose a football game. So yeah, it will never get any smile from me.”

(On that point, we talked to LB Duke Riley and he kind of had a different perspective just in the sense that he thinks it may have helped you out. Obviously you never want to give points to the other team and you want to execute to your highest ability, but he kind of made a counterpoint that because you guys were so backed up, as opposed to maybe getting a shorter punt and leaving Buffalo with a shorter field to get a touchdown, you were able to get the free kick. And we saw what P Thomas Morstead did. Just what’s your perspective on that?) – “I think it comes down to you’re going to defend between 40 and 45 yards of field, whether you’re defending 40 or 45 yards of field or 40 yards of field for them to score a touchdown, which if we get the punt off, that’s probably what you would have. Or you’re defending a very similar yardage for them to kick a field goal. So I think the yardage you’re going to defend would be somewhat similar but again, you don’t ever want – it’s a momentum play also, which you don’t ever want to give up. But to your point, to come back and the fortitude of this football team, like we talked about last week after Baltimore and we’ve seen all year, you get a poor play no matter what phase it is and then you come back and make a big-time play. So that was good to see.”

(I was curious, did DE Emmanuel Ogbah get a piece of the missed field goal for Buffalo? And then the second part is I just want to ask how you’ve been impressed by CB Justin Bethel and what he’s done since coming in here on special teams?) – “No. 1, yeah. Ogbah got a piece of that. So that gets turned into the league and they’ll make the correction on that. A good rush by really the whole club. We got good push and obviously Ogbah with those long arms was able to get a piece of that. And then yeah, Justin Bethel has been the pro that we expect when we claimed him. It’s very nice to have him on our club.”

(Anecdotally, it seems like you guys have been very good at downing punts inside the 15 or inside the 10. I think CB Justin Bethel and CB Keion Crossen come to mind immediately. Can you quantify how tough that play is to execute on the scale of special teams plays? Is that one of the toughest? Or is it kind of middle of the road, if that makes sense?) – “It’s a difficult play. It’s timing. There are a lot of things that go into it based on the rules that those guys have in terms of where and what the returner does, and that ties into where the ball is. You saw a great job by Bethel on Sunday having to play the ball of the bounce. Sometimes it’s trying to play it in the air. There’s a lot of things that go into that, which is why those guys spend a lot of times doing that both in drills and in practice.”

(What exactly went wrong on that punt anyway? Was it P Thomas Morstead taking one extra step forward too much? Or WR Trent Sherfield backing up too far?) – “Any time you’re in those situations, there are a couple of technique things that change for everybody. So when you’re punting from the 1(-yard line) or punting from the 2(-yard line), there are certain techniques that everybody has that have to change. Obviously and unfortunately, we did not get all of those variance of techniques accomplished on that play, which is what led to that negative punt.”

(I assume with the way the point differential was at the time, that you guys never really considered taking an intentional safety, right?) – “No, we didn’t. Not with that score sequence. We did not.”

(Back to CB Justin Bethel, do you believe he’s at that Pro Bowl level? Is he starting to make that incline towards that this year?) – “I think he’s been that type of player over the last couple of years when he was in New England. I think that trajectory and that performance level that he had there has carried over. So for him and for us, we hope that continues and even improves.”

(WR Tyreek Hill was asking postgame the other day about how WR Trent Sherfield took ownership after the punt mistake. What did you see from him when he got back to the sideline and what was your message to him?) – “Well again, like we saw, it’s a move-on moment. There is a great situation where there’s no stoppage of play. They wind the clock again and we’re ready to go. That’s why you have and enjoy veteran players and veteran players that have done what they do for a long time with a high level of success. There’s nothing you can do about it. You have to turn the page and you have to move on. You have to perform on the next play. Don’t let one bad play become multiple bad plays.”

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