Darren Rizzi – November 9, 2016
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Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Assistant Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi
(Before Sunday, there had been only two kickoffs returned for touchdowns this season in the NFL. Where do you come down on the new touchback rule, this desire obviously to – in the interest of safety – get at the expense of exciting plays like that? What are your thoughts about it now at midseason?) – “It has kind of gone the way I thought it would go so far. I think there are a lot of teams with better kick coverages that have tested other return teams in terms of putting the ball near the goal line. I think the reason there hasn’t been a whole bunch of big plays is because just for that reason – it’s hard to return a high, short ball for a long return. You may get some guys out past the 25-, 30- (yard line), but it’s hard to get a home run on those, and I think that’s why a lot of teams have done that. It’s kind of funny. It’s mixed. There are some teams that are not doing it, that I thought would’ve done more of it. I think what you’re going to see in the second half of the season is that – especially in the north with the weather and all that – I think more teams will start to do it more and the touchback percentage will start coming down even more. So, it has been interesting. I was looking at the stats the last couple of days and the average drive start obviously has changed, because the touchback is at the 25- (yard line). (You’ve) got to look at the teams that have been doing it, not been doing. I think a lot of it depends on your kicker. A majority of the kickers can put the ball down there, inside the 5-yard line – goal line – and make it tough on these guys. I think it’s going to continue to drop really, because the numbers would say that. But I actually think it adds a nice dimension to the game. When they instituted the rule, I don’t think they probably thought through every single facet of what was going to go on. I think it has really added a nice strategy thing. If you look at teams that are actually doing it when they’re leading, and you would think probably going in there it would be the opposite. Maybe when you’re down, you’re trying to make a play, but there are teams that are maybe up by a score, that are trying to put the ball down inside the 5- (yard line) to make a team go longer in a one-score game. So, there have been some unseen things I think that they’ve been pretty interesting, so I think that it’ll continue to trend downward.”
(A lot of teams don’t have a lot of dynamic kickoff and punt returners. How does that help you in terms of what you do, to have a number of different guys that can do that – punt return or kick return – help you out in that position?) – “It’s a good problem to have. It’s definitely a good problem. This is my eighth year here, and certainly, it’s something I’ve always been striving to get to a point where you have multiple guys and have some options. Certainly, we have a lot of guys in the building that have proven they can do that. Obviously, Jarvis (Landry) has done it for a few years now and now with Jakeem (Grant) and with Kenyan (Drake). Damien Williams is another guy that has been back there before. So, you’ve got some guys that can do it. I think what it does is when you look at a guy or a play like Sunday, when you have a guy back like Jakeem and Kenyan together, and you back the ball up 5 yards, it’s, ‘Okay, which guy are you going to kick it to?’ And that has been good. It’s the same thing in the punt return phase. We’ve had Jakeen back there, Jarvis back there and both those guys are both productive. I think they’re both over 11 yards per return at the moment. For a special teams coach to have options back there where you’re not just a one-trick pony, it really helps you. It helps your game plan. It helps you strategize against your opponent and it certainly helps you during a game.”
(The follow up to that, have you ever had a group as deep as this one to help you out as far as the number of guys that can be able to do those type of things?) – “Not here. This is the first time in eight years, I think, we’ve had this many guys that I feel comfortable putting back that I think can make a huge play or game-breaking play. We’ve had a lot of guys who can do it – had a lot of guys who’ve been very efficient at it and statistically have been good – but this is really the first time we’ve had this many guys that I think at any time could break one and make a big play.”
(You talked a little bit last week about CB Chris Culliver and how you saw him and scouted him in college, and he was able to help on special teams. How could he help you now and also maybe the role of CB Lafayette Pitts?) – “We’ll start with (Chris) Culliver. He’s a guy that did a lot of stuff in college. He was a very, very talented guy. Right now, in the positions that he can play right now for us, he can certainly be a jammer on the outside on punt return. We’ve done a good job there rotating some guys through, because you never know. Like the other day, you get a re-punt (and) you like to have some fresh bodies out there. So, he’s a guy that can do that, play jammer. On kickoff, he has done that in his career where he has been either a one or a two or a contain guy or a safety guy. He has done that. He was a gunner earlier in his career. He has done a bunch of jobs. He has done some field goal block stuff, so we’ve got him trained right now to kind of help in those roles. As far as (Lafayette) Pitts goes, going back to the preseason, he’s a guy that made some plays in preseason as a gunner, as a jammer on kickoff as well. And really, he has been impressive in practice. Here’s a guy that has really worked now through nine weeks of just working at it. He’s kind of a model of consistency in practice. He’s really getting after it every day. (He is a) blue-collar guy. I played college football with his head coach at Pittsburgh, Pat Narduzzi. We played college football together, and I remember having a conversation with Pat. He’s exactly what Pat described – a hard worker, really good football IQ. I know he has been anxious to get an opportunity. Depending on what happens here with the 46, we know he’s ready to go, certainly – mentally and physically – for sure.”
(After the muffed punt by P Matt Darr, did you say anything in particular to him?) – “I didn’t. He’s his biggest critic. I know he was going to be hard on himself. After I let him cool down for a minute, I just told him not to be too hard on himself. Listen, guys drop passes. As receivers, some of the best receivers ever have dropped a pass. He has never shown that he’s a guy that’s going to drop snaps or something like that. As far as I’m concerned, it was a one-time thing, and we’re not going to overdo it. Once in a while, I get a little upset on the sideline, as you may have noticed. (laughter) Once in a while. But those aren’t the things I get upset about. That’s going to happen. That’s why there’s a snap. That’s why there’s a catch. It’s something we practice all the time. Matt has been a model of consistency since the day he walked in. To me, it’s one of those things where it’s a once-in-a-while thing. I’m not going to sit there and yell and scream at a guy. It’s not going to get any production at all out of that. So, after he calmed down I just told him, ‘Hey, listen. Let it go. We’re going to make it up to you here, and we’re going to need you again at some point.’ It is what it is. He has probably looked at that play about 7,000 times.”
(You’ve been here for eight years and throughout that span, I’ve seen games won and lost on special teams. I don’t think the fan base has an understanding of how important it is until it happens. How do you get the players to understand the importance that this is really a significant third phase of the game?) – “One of the things we do is every Saturday morning we – actually, myself and (Assistant Special Teams Coach) Marwan Maalouf – we go through and look at all the league plays every week. We pull out maybe 20 plays away from all around the NFL, because it may not be our game that you can learn from the most. It might be another game, because like you said, you never know when it’s going to come up. We try to learn from other people’s mistakes, if you will. You know the old, ‘Don’t touch the stove, it’s hot. Don’t touch the stove, it’s hot. Don’t touch it.’ It’s like dealing with one of my kids. So, we try to learn from other people, and we pick out huge special teams plays from other games … We show them Saturday mornings, and we try to learn from those, because there is … You look at one or two games a week that come down to a play like it happened in our game, whether it’s the dropped punt or it’s the penalty on the punt return which we had or a kickoff return for a touchdown. People out there that want to be a special teams coach, you have to be ready to ride the wave now. They’re going to have some highs and lows. With that game, it was a great example of it. My point is it’s hard to get the guys to understand unless they see it. You can say it as much as you want. You can stand up there and I can beat the table and beat the podium and (say), ‘We got to be ready. We got to be ready. We got to be ready.” But until they see it happen … So, learning from other games, to me, is a huge tool. I think in this day and age of social media and video, games and everything else, seeing it is believing it. I can stand up there and draw lines on pictures and show PowerPoints until I’m blue in the face, but watching it happen to other teams, I think is one of the biggest learning tools we can do. We do that every week, and we show other examples. To me, that’s really the biggest way to do it.”
(Speaking of last week, it seems like you had some good plays, some not good plays in the special teams. Is that a good kind of teaching tool as well? Since you had great plays in that game and you also had some penalties throughout the course of the game as well?) – “It is. I think it’s a great lesson for guys. You just take Kenyan Drake for example, a rookie. At halftime, he was down. He was down, because he had that penalty on Jakeem’s (Grant) touchdown. At that point, we could’ve maybe blown the game open there a little bit and got a nice cushion. At halftime, I came in, and he was sitting down, and he was really in the dumps. I just walked over, I said to him, ‘Listen … You’ve got to let that one go. You’re going to make one up here. Either you’re going to get a block …’ I’d be lying to you if I told you he was going to get a kick return for a touchdown with five minutes left in the game. But I knew at some point he was going to have an opportunity to make it up and there it goes. Luckily and fortunately for us, it happened in the fourth quarter of that particular game, but it is a great lesson to learn that mistakes are going to happen, whether it’s Matt (Darr) dropping the ball or getting a penalty like that, but we’ve got to be able to respond. As (Sun-Sentinel columnist) Omar (Kelly) said, I’ve been here for eight years. I’ve seen a lot. There are a lot of times where we didn’t overcome those mistakes. There have been plenty of times in my eight years here where we didn’t overcome the mistakes that were made, whether it be offense, defense or special teams. I think one thing you’re seeing these last three games is you’re seeing a team that has started to play complementary football in spurts. We have to do a little bit more, we’ve got to be a little more consistent and all that, but I think that we’ve overcome some of those things, and that has been the impressive thing to me about these last few weeks.”
(If you can take a view of the special teams from maybe 10,000 feet, where are you happy? What needs to improve?) – “I’ll start with the improvement. We’ve got way too many penalties this year. Way too many. There have been way too many. Again, a lot of them are effort penalties, and I understand that, but things like we lined up wrong on the field, that ‘L.T.’ (Laremy Tunsil) was too far back, and we’ve had a couple after the whistle penalties. We can’t have those at all. Kenyan Drake is trying to make a block in the heat of the battle, and it’s full speed, and he’s running a high-speed decision. Once in a while, a rookie is going to put a hand on a guy’s back. I get that. We’ve had way too many there. It has been the inconsistency that I’ve been a little disappointed with. We’ve shown at times to be really good in the return game, but we have too many peaks and valleys. So, number one is the penalties. We’ve got to get rid of that. We’ve had some missed assignments, some mental errors, which again, in my opinion, we shouldn’t have any on special teams. The things we’ve done well, I think one of the things that goes unnoticed right now is (that) our kickoff coverage team, knock on wood, has been pretty darn good in terms of pinning them down when we’ve decided to not kick it deep. We’ve been pretty darn consistent on our punt return yards. In our opponent’s gross punt average, I think we’re second in the league right now. And so those things … Giving our offense some field position, we’ve been good there. It’s really, from an overall standpoint, the consistency. We’ve had, to me, we’ve been good play, bad play, good play, bad play, great play, poor play. So, one of the challenges as special teams coach is trying to stay (consistent). You don’t get that second opportunity. Now, we were lucky that day. We got a second opportunity on the kick return, the punt return. You usually don’t get those. Usually you’re out for one play and you’re out. If you make a mistake, it could affect the game tremendously – not like offense and defense. That’s where I think where we’ve got to get better – penalties, consistency.”
(Were you surprised when they kicked it, that they didn’t try to kick it out of bounds? I mean not out of bounds, but in the end zone?) – “A little bit. I thought they’d try to drive the ball a little bit. They popped it up to (Kenyan) Drake earlier in the game, so we changed our call. We initially had a sideline return, so after the play, I thought maybe – when Jakeem (Grant) made 10 people miss – maybe they’ll overplay that one. We changed it from a sideline return to a middle return, and fortunately, it worked out.”
