Darren Rizzi – November 23, 2016
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Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Assistant Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi
(What would you say has been your most, I probably should phrase itthe best player in punt return and kickoff return coverage?) – “In terms of coverage, covering kicks? We’ve had a few. The two guys that stand out lately are Michael Thomas and Mike Hull. Both those guys got a game ball this week and both of them have had a couple tackles. They’ve been pretty consistent and we’ve got some great efforts. Neville Hewitt’s had some really good games – Damien Williams. Kenyan Drake has actually done a pretty good job in kick coverage. We’ve had pretty good multiple guys do it, but it’d say (Michael) Thomas and (Mike) Hull right now have probably been our two best, most consistent guys – our leading tacklers.”
(Talk about WR Jakeem Grant. It seemed like he struggled a little bit in the last few weeks. Is it more of a mental thing or is it something he’s not doing out there on the field?) – “This past week was really more opportunities. The way the game played out, the Rams are a really unique team because Johnny Hekker’s a quarterback. He was a Division I quarterback. So when you’re playing against the Rams, you’re defending a lot of different things. They’ve run so many fakes. They’ve run more fakes than anybody in the league so where the ball was and all of that stuff, Jakeem was back there a couple of times. He had two returns set up for him and it was (Hekker’s) two worst punts in the game. It was just the way the game played out. He had to end up coming up and fair catching one, which was a great decision. The other one ended up hitting the ground and he probably should have got to it. But as far as I’m concerned, I mean again, we put that San Diego game behind us and move forward. We try to get him some opportunities again this week. It just worked out the way the ball wasn’t punted (to him). Sometimes that happens; but we had a couple of returns set up for him. And then really, if you look at their kickoffs, they kicked the ball to Drake three times in a row on all three of their kickoffs. They didn’t even kick it to Jakeem so he really just didn’t get many opportunities this week. Again, he’s working at it; he’s working on his craft and I’ve got no problem with Jakeem at all right now. We’re in good shape there.”
(Did you ever think you’d live to see a weekend where so many extra points would be missed?) – “When they changed the rule, Yes. Before they changed the rule, no. Twelve in one week is a lot. As I’ve said from the get go, it’s no longer an extra point. It’s a 33-yard field goal. The other thing that you’re seeing is back when the old rule was in place, I think the players would probably self-admittedly tell you as well that sometimes that was almost a play off for the defense. You could look at the whole play and it didn’t matter how hard you came, the guy was going to make the kick. You could have the best effort in the world and the ball was still going to go between (the uprights). Now, there’s like a light of hope that, ‘Hey, we can block this thing. We can go get 2 points.’ And you look at how that changed the Denver/New Orleans game a couple of weeks ago. The whole complexion of the play has changed. The effort level of the defense has changed because of the rule on the 2 points – getting 2 points going the other way – that’s changed the play. It’s really an interesting thing. I did know at some point this day was going to come when there was going to be a lot in one weekend. I don’t know if I thought that it was 12, because there have been a lot of years where there wasn’t 12 in a year, right? It ended up being 12 (missed extra points). A couple of them were blocked though. They weren’t just all misses. I think (Seattle Seahawks K Steven) Hauschka had one blocked. (Minnesota Vikings K Kai) Forbath had one blocked. There were a couple blocked, as well. Again, what you’re seeing is the field goal block units are treating that play like a field goal now, where the old days, when it was PAT, they didn’t. You were almost protecting against making sure they didn’t fake it. You didn’t have the rush coming after you. So the whole complexion of the play has completely changed. And that’s why – I know somebody asked me maybe like a month ago about (Andrew) Franks and PATs as opposed to field goals – to me, we no longer grade it like that. We grade it like we combine them. I know one of them only counts for 1 (point) and I know the other one counts for 3 (points). I get it. But you may be kicking a field goal from the 5-yard line and you’re kicking a PAT from the 15. So you get 3 (points). It’s really opportunities now. But it is crazy. It’s really changed and we saw last year in the playoffs it changed in the New England game when they missed a PAT. So it’s really changed these games and you’re going to see, I think, these last six weeks of the regular season, I think everyone’s going to kind of focus in a little bit more on the play for sure.”
(There have been a lot more 2-point conversion attempts do you think?) – “You know what? I’m not so sure. It’s still one of those things. I think it depends on the score, situation, time of the game – all that. I know there are teams like the Steelers that will try the first one out of the gate, but they got themselves behind a few weeks ago. They got themselves behind doing that and I think missed four 2-pointers in one game. So you could get in the catchup game there too. It sounds good if you make it. It sounds good, ‘8-0 sounds great but 6-0 doesn’t sound too good,’ and it’s still just slightly less than a 50 percent proposition – the 2-point play that is. I think it’s still situational – how you feel about your team, the weather, all those things.”
(Where you concerned when they changed that, in particular with your kicker, but also the big picture, that there would be kind of a mental block just because it’s been such a routine for those guys to kick extra points from that distance and now they’re not?) – One-hundred percent, yes. Absolutely. I was concerned and one of the things … I’ll give you an example. We do a field goal period in the practice. In the old days – I’m going to be honest with you – we didn’t even bother kicking the PATs. We’d get right to the field goals. Now, every time we start a field goal period, we put the ball in the middle of the field at the 15-yard line and we make sure we kick from that spot in our field goal periods because, again, the old proposition was 99 point whatever percent. Now we’re making sure that we, again, mentality-wise the protection, like I said before, the flip side of the coin, the defense wasn’t coming as hard so the protection kind of relaxed. Now the protection can’t relax anymore because again, it’s our mentality. We’re trying to drum into the players that this is a 33-yard field goal. We know we only get one point out of it, but it’s the same mentality. But yes, there’s no doubt. I thought kickers, some guys might relax, and I think that’s changing quickly.”
(Do you figure the 2-point chance is about 50 percent?) — “If you’re looking at like the five-year average, it’s slightly under (50 percent).”
(So a 33-yard field goal, what’s that? 85 or 90 percent maybe?) – “It’s actually this year, ironically enough, in field goal situations, 32- or 33-yard field goals are at a higher percentage than PATs. Much higher. So it’s like a 98, 99 percentage for field goals this year – this year only. Again, overall it hasn’t been quite that…”
(I just wonder if you calculate the math over the course of the season, if you went for two every time and you make it 50 percent of the time, aren’t you going to score more points than if…?) – “Listen, the math part of it, the mathematician part of it, will tell you that it’s probably a flip a coin proposition. Where, if you did it 100 times, you’d probably end up with roughly around the same amount of points. But there’s some statisticians that will tell you to go for two every time. It makes more sense in the long run. Again, that sounds great. The statistician doesn’t have to come up here and answer to the fans and everybody else. (laughter) It’s, to me, it’s one of those things where you’re playing catchup. If you don’t get it, now a 6-0 game as we all know is a hell of a lot different than a 7-0 game. It just is, and now you’re playing catchup the rest of the game. Then you put yourself in position to where you have to go for two the rest of the game and I think that’s what I’m talking about what happened to the Steelers. They lost a game by five points. They missed four and a field goal in that one game. Again, you’re playing catchup. It’s just a personal … (Reporter: You’re blaming the media) … No, no, no. I’m not. (laughter) I still think, again, to win the football game, you can argue if you score first, you put the other team behind the eight ball but again, that’s all predicated upon you making it – you making the two pointer.”
(Can you talk about with that, especially with the emphasis with the extra point now, does that kind of change the way you scout kickers? You saw Tampa Bay taking one in the second round last year?) – “One-hundred percent. You know what? As good as a college kicker can be, there’s still a transition from college to the NFL. No doubt. It doesn’t matter. Roberto (Aguayo) is one of the best college kickers in the history of college football. I think he’s a great example on how the game is different. The football is different. The hashes are different. All these things are different. It’s not the same football you’re kicking in college that you’re kicking in the NFL. In the NFL, the balls come out of a box 20 minutes or two hours before the game, and it’s a brand new ball. In college, you bring your bag of balls with you. And they get checked by the officials, but if you talk to any kicker, the balls that are being kicked in college and NFL (are different). That’s just one aspect. Not to mention all of the other things. It’s a bigger transition than I think people realize. But to answer your initial question, there’s no doubt when you’re scouting kickers coming out, it’s a big-time factor because college hasn’t changed the rule yet and not all of those guys are kicking PATs still from down on the 2- or 3-yard line.”
(Do you think they are going to follow the NFL’s lead [and change the college extra point rule]?) – “I’d like to see that. The problem is there are so many Division I teams and I don’t know if there’s enough kickers. There are not enough elite kickers to go around, so I think that would probably be why they don’t change it. I’d love to see them change it because I’d love to be able to grade those guys based on that, because a lot of times you don’t see guys with a lot of field goal opportunities. On some of these good teams, the best teams in college, sometimes your field goal kicker has 12 field goals for the year and most of them are in the red zone, so you don’t get those longer opportunities. Selfishly, yes. But I don’t think that one’s coming.”
(Follow the course, you routinely bring in players on Tuesday for tryouts even if they’re not in positions of need, just to see what’s out there obviously. Have you done that at all with kickers this year? Have you brought in a single kicker for a look on a Tuesday during the regular season? Is it different with kickers from other positions in that you don’t want to give the impression you’re looking to replace the guy in that positon? Is that position different from others in terms of that?) – “First answer is no, we haven’t. Second answer – I really think it depends on the person. There are plenty of guys that are confident enough in their ability. They don’t care who you bring in. They’re just going to go and do their job. What we do, because there is only one kicker, one punter, one snapper, what I’ll do … I spend a lot of time in the offseason going out and working out free agents and going to these free agent camps and kind of having a short list on who we would go to God forbid there was an injury. Knock on wood, or whatever happens. So we kind of have that short list of guys we would go to if we need to in an emergency. I think every special teams coach does. But we haven’t had one this. We haven’t had one of those workouts. In the past, we’ve had, on the bye week, sometimes we brought in three or four guys to kind of see where guys are at. But I know a lot of other teams have done that this year.”
(You brought CB Lafayette Pitts up [to the active roster]. How has he performed in your eyes?) – “He’s had a very good two weeks. I hope he can keep it going. He really performed well again this week. We put more on his plate, like I said we were going to. He was a four core player this past weekend. He played on eight of the punts as gunner – as a gunner, eight of the 10 punts. He’s really playing fast. He’s playing with confidence. I think he’s exceeding expectations at this point throughout the building.”
(This speed out there as a gunner. How does that affect you guys?) – “Yes, it helps. There was one punt that Matt Darr had the other day. We were punting to our left and (Lafayette Pitts is) the left gunner and he beats a double team, gets down the sideline and he’s in Tavon Austin’s face and he’s got a fair catch the ball. Those are little plays that go unnoticed throughout a game maybe by the common fan. But we just watched it as team right before I walked in here, and you can hear the older guys, the veterans, be like, ‘Hey, ‘Pittsy,’ that was a hell of a play.’ When Tavon Austin doesn’t get an opportunity to return a ball, that’s a big play because we all know he’s a game changer. Kudos to our coverage team. We weren’t perfect, but our effort, of the 10 guys that were covering it, our efforts were … We had really, really good effort. That was one of the things I was most proud of coming out of that game.”
(Generally speaking, how do you determine which guy you have in there on punt returns?) – “It’s really situational. Obviously we have both of those guys (Jarvis Landry and Jakeem Grant) and honestly, the true answer is its game-by-game, situation-by-situation. There are times, like on Sunday, where I have both guys waiting and depending on the down and distance, where the ball ends up, all of those things and what I think what our call is. Are we going after a block? Do we have a return set up? I’d love to tell you there’s one. There’s not. It’s really, really situational and it’s really based on (the) game plan. But I have confidence in both guys.”
(And that’s your call?) – “It is. Yes, absolutely.”
