Darren Rizzi – December 14, 2016
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Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Assistant Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi
(There’s a lot of focus this week on backup quarterbacks. What about the challenge of grooming a backup long snapper? Can you talk about that?) – “I did not think that was going to be the first question, I have to be honest with you. Having a backup long snapper is interesting. You’re only going to carry one on the roster. It’s one of those jobs that you look … Every time you have a guy come through as a rookie, you kind of see what his background was – if he ever did it in high school, if he ever did it in college. Usually sometimes you can find some backups. For example, Mike Hull was a backup long snapper – surprise, surprise, right? Mike Hull. The more you can do … But Mike Hull was a snapper at Penn State. He was kind of their backup guy. He snapped in high school. Jason Taylor is a guy when I first got here was a backup snapper. He had done it in college and high school. So we’re always looking for those kind of guys. There have been years where we didn’t have anybody that did do it, so we trained a guy. So like Jason Trusnik a couple of years ago was our backup snapper. We started with him from scratch and just tried to teach him how to do it. We worked with guys like MarQueis Gray, who was a quarterback. Sometimes those guys who at least knew how to throw the ball can throw between their legs. A lot of times you’re looking for a guy that gets you out of a game, if you ever have an injury, knock on wood. I know it happened with the Eagles with (Special Teams Coordinator) Dave Fipp this past weekend. I knew he was going crazy. They were trying guys out on the sideline over there. You always have a plan. You’re always going to have a guy that you know is going to be the next guy in. In a rare situation, I think they were down to their third guy or something like that, which is crazy. All of the specialists, you have to have a plan for all of the guys you only have one of. You have one kicker, one punter, one snapper. You’re always having a backup holder; you’re always having a backup snapper, backup punter and backup kicker. You always have a contingency plan, but it’s certainly not easy, especially because most of the time that guy has never really done it a lot in games or ever in a game. A lot of times it’s a guy that has maybe just done it in practice and was ready to go as an emergency guy.”
(Is LB Mike Hull your [backup long snapper] right now?) – “Hull is our guy right now.”
(How much does LB Mike Hull practice [long snapping]?) – “We practice it every week. If we don’t get him into the actual team period – because now, as the season goes on, the team periods get shorter – so we’ll work with him on the side. Again, he’s a guy that’s done it at least through high school and college. He’s at least worked at it.”
(What did you tell K Andrew Franks both before and after his game-winning kick and how important was it for him to make that kick?) – “It was extremely important. It was a game-winner, so it was definitely important. Before the kick, I told him absolutely nothing. After the kick, I told him congratulations. (laughter) We prepare for those situations all the time. That’s not – in my opinion – that’s not the time for a pep talk. He trains himself and he trains his mind and body to put himself in those situations all the time. Certainly it was a little different with the rain. Ironically enough – because we kind of looked at the weather forecast – on Thursday at practice we did some wet ball drills with the snapper, holder and kicker. They worked on the side and it’s a little tough to do that in South Florida sometimes when it’s 80 degrees out, but we had some balls out and John Denney worked some wet ball drills with Matt (Darr) as a holder, so we actually simulated that situation. We didn’t do it with 1 second left, but we simulated the situation. Andrew, as I’ve said many, many times, is a very mentally tough guy. Again, I’ve always felt like, as a special teams coach, that’s the last time you want to start putting your arm around a guy. You just want to keep it business as usual. Heck, by the time I got to him, he already had 50 people congratulating him. I don’t even know if I saw him until I got into the locker room. I tried to get to him but he was getting mobbed so I kind of let him enjoy the moment. Good for him.”
(Cardinals Head Coach Bruce Arians went on the radio last night and mentioned something about an illegal snap count. I didn’t hear it myself, but I saw that Alex Marvez reported that you illegally shouted a snap signal that led to a botched extra point. Had you heard that before and is that accurate?) – “Someone brought it to my attention last night. I can tell you that we didn’t do anything illegal, so I’m a little bit taken back by it. Quite frankly, I’m a little bit offended by it. It’s really accusing of cheating, to be honest with you. I was a little bit offended by it. We certainly didn’t do anything illegal. We did our normal field goal block procedure, so I was a little bit taken back by it. Other than me making it rain when they had the ball, we didn’t do anything. (laughter) There was nothing that we did that was illegal. Seriously, we went through our normal procedure. The thing that is kind of ironic about the whole thing is, if I’m not mistaken, I watched them in pregame and they have a non-verbal snap count on their field goals. So I don’t know why a word or something would have set them off. To be honest with you, I don’t know which one of the three he was talking about, because they missed three (kicks). The very first one, they had three guys jump offsides and the play really should have gotten shut down by the officials. If you go back and watch the play, their long snapper, left guard and left tackle all moved, and they really should have shut the play down. I don’t know if that got their rhythm a little bit off. Then, obviously, their other two, they hit the upright on one and we returned the other one for 2 (points). I was a little bit taken back by it. I can tell you that none of our players did anything illegal. Nothing that we’ve ever coached is illegal. We don’t simulate a snap count, nothing like that. Do we have calls? Yes, of course we have defensive calls that we make and stuff like that. Every field goal block team does; but there was certainly nothing taught nor executed that was even close to illegal.”
(When you face a team the second time and the first time you took a kickoff to the house, do you expect to see totally different special teams on their part, as far as kickoff coverage? What normally happens in that situation?) – “There is only so much you can do in kick coverage, only because formationally you’re kind of limited in what you can do. You can only put six guys on one side, things like that. What some teams will do and the Jets do is they’ll motion guys in and they’ll have different lineups and try to hide people. I’m sure we’ll see a new look. Usually when you play these division games, you try to change things up, and everybody does it – offense, defense and special teams – and not give the same exact look that you’ve given before, because obviously when you’re going to practice, you’re going to practice against things you’ve seen. We really are anticipating a new look and anticipating for them to throw a new wrinkle in, if you will, in those situations. We’re going to be prepared like we are every week. They’ve done a decent amount – more than most – of pre-kick motions and shifts and things like that. We’ll be ready for all and any, for sure.”
(The blocked extra point, can you talk us through that?) – “First of all, it’s a great job by Jordan Phillips of penetrating the A-gap. We actually moved him last week into a new spot and good for him. He kind of got penetration there. They had a little problem there with their operation. They had a little bit of a high snap and a low kick; but at the end of the day, he blocks it, and then (Andre) Branch gets his hands on it first and then loses the ball and ironically knocks their holder down and the ball spits out and Walt (Aikens) scoops it up. The thing that I really liked was all of the guys out in front blocking. You saw Mike Thomas, you saw (Lafayette) Pitts, you saw Jason Jones, you saw (Tony) Lippett kind of giving him a convoy – if you will – down the sideline. Those are big plays and the ones that have happened this year in the NFL, the run-backs for 2 (points) off conversions, whether it’s a 2-point try by the offense or a blocked PAT, we try to watch all of those and learn from them and explain how important those can be. Obviously that was a big play in the game, so I was real happy with our guys on that.”
(You mentioned DT Jordan Phillips being moved along the front [of the field goal block team]. What led to that?) – “It’s just personnel every week. We just move our guys around. Like I was just saying, you try to give different wrinkles so we were kind of getting into a situation where we were lining them up in the same place a bunch of times. We just thought personnel-wise, we had a better matchup back there in the A-gap. He’s a big guy, obviously a big, tall guy, and does a great job of getting up off the ball. It all worked out for us.”
(Sometimes you watch games where athletic guys line up 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage and then jump the center and block the kick and it looks beautiful. Seahawks S Kam Chancellor has done it and Patriots LB Shea McClellin did it for New England. Why doesn’t that happen more? I know that you can’t touch the center. Why doesn’t that happen more? And more specifically, why doesn’t it happen here?) – “I’ll touch upon it a little bit on the first part of that. Every field goal protection scheme is a little bit different. I’ll start with like our field goal protection. We have a little different scheme inside – where some guys really stay low. You see that a lot of teams are doing that against teams that stay down and stay low. Our guys inside, (they) really work to a position where they strain and they’re up. My guess, my hypothesis if you will, my coaching hypothesis is that’s why no one has tried it against us, because our guys inside get a little bit higher and you can’t hit anybody. So if I go to jump and I make any contact, you’re going to get a flag. Really, our field goal block unit week to week, we kind of look for the best options that we can do. It’s a timing situation and it’s really, really difficult. Some teams will try to keep you off-balanced with their timing, so you really have to do a good job. The other day, the Patriots did a great job of timing up the Baltimore (kick). Now, if Baltimore did a double-cadence or something, New England is going to get a penalty there – or if they hit the snapper. As you jump – the thing that most people don’t realize is, when you get to that point, if the long snapper snaps the ball – if you’re over (the long snapper) as he snaps it, that’s a penalty – a pre-kick penalty – because you can’t cover the snapper. So that guy that’s jumping actually has to be more than a yard and a half off the line of scrimmage as the ball is being snapped, so the timing is very important. It’s the most important part. If the Ravens had held the ball for another half of second, he would have covered the snapper, they would have gotten a penalty and it wouldn’t have counted. So I know everyone talks about the Seattle one earlier in the year against the Cardinals where he brushed the center. You can’t leverage, you can’t gain any height advantage and you can’t land on anybody – your guys or their guys. It’s definitely a risk/reward. You’ve got to feel really, really good about it going into the game. We’ve discussed it. We discuss all the options every week. Everything is always on the table, so it really depends more about the field goal team you’re going against it, the timing and how good you feel about the person doing it. All of those things.”
(But you are confident it wouldn’t happen? Because it’s embarrassing when it happens to you.) – “I’m sure at some point somebody will try it against us. I think the reason we don’t see it a lot against us is because of our scheme. Our guys are a little bit higher than most. A lot of guys that go low in the middle there, in the A-gaps, in the past – like the Patriots have tried to do that same thing, I think it was with Jamie Collins a couple of years ago, but they did it in a different gap. They didn’t do it over the center. They jumped him through like the B- or C-gap, because we’re a little bit different there. So it really just depends. Nobody’s tried to jump our long snapper. No. 1: John Denney is a tall guy. So when he does rise up, you probably have a pretty good shot at getting a piece of him. No. 2: The way we play our guards.”
(I’m still not sure how S Walt Aikens did that, downing the ball at the 1-yard line, when he’s reaching out. It’s a pretty cool photo. In your experience, what percentage of time is that ball stopped inside the 2-yard line when there is a shot at it?) – “It’s something that we try … We work on it a lot. You see us at practice all the time. Walt has a very good knack of it. Walt played a tremendous game that day. He got our game ball on special teams. He was really all over the field. Walt in the past few years, if you look back at the film, has done that a few times. He’s a longer guy so certainly his long arms helped in that situation, keeping that ball out of the end zone. There was one earlier in the game that we missed. He kind of turned the wrong way and (Cardinals CB Patrick) Peterson was coming at him. It’s definitely a timing thing with the punter, where the ball lands. A lot of times, the punter doesn’t get enough credit for that too. Matt does a heck of a job of dropping it down and giving him a chance there. Again, we work on that. Two or three times a week, we work on those going-in punts because downing the ball there inside the 5(- yard line) obviously changes field position, especially in a weather game like that. We know how important that is. It really was a great play by Walt.”
(When you consider the degree of difficult for K Andrew Franks on that game-winner, it appeared that there was some pressure coming from the left, from around TE Dion Sims. Is that true? How close was it to being blocked or not close at all?) – “(Cardinals CB) Justin Bethel, I’m going to say this, is probably the best edge rusher in the league on field goals. He’s blocked a number of kicks. He’s obviously been a Pro Bowl player. He is the best guy, so that certainly was nerve-wracking for me, because of the weather. I was trying to … When you combine the fact that it was a weather game plus Justin Bethel. They had Justin Bethel and Patrick Peterson on their edge rush, two of the better players, special teams and athletes in the league. He was close. Dion Sims was our wing out there and he did the right thing. (It was a) great job by John (Denney), Matt (Darr) and Andrew getting the ball off in timely fashion in that weather. It’s a thing where, it probably at full speed is a little bit closer than it really is in reality. Justin Bethel, like I said, has done that a number of times. There definitely was pressure there. My degree of certainty in the weather there, there was no certainty. I look at what happened on their three kicks. I look at what happened really all day with the ball bouncing all over the place. When you talk about that end of the game situation, when we were talking through it, usually on a dry day when you get the ball on the 1-yard line, we might have played the end of the game a little bit differently. But because of the weather, we certainly were keeping that in mind.”
(Did you want to run out and tackle RB Damien Williams on that last play?) – “I did. (laughter) I did. I know (Head Coach) Adam (Gase) has addressed that one. It’s funny. I was talking to the official when Arizona called timeout to kind of ice Andrew (Franks). The official had walked over and he said, I heard him say to me and Adam, ‘You called that timeout with 3 or 4 seconds. We would have never let that go to 0.’ I think it looked a little more hairy than it was, getting down to 1 second. But yes, I did want to tackle Damien. I still want to tackle him. I think I’m going to go back in and tackle him now.” (laughter)
