Darren Rizzi – October 24, 2016
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Monday, October 24, 2016
Assistant Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi
(What is the challenge when you have got so many core special teamers having to come off your unit because they are now starters or regular contributors? How do you re-generate that unit again?) – “It’s a great question, because it’s every special teams coach’s – I don’t want to call it a struggle, but challenge during the year – is when you have guys through injuries. And everybody’s got them, we’re not alone there. If you look throughout the league, everybody’s got them. That’s why OTAs and training camp is so important for a special teams coach to prepare everybody that’s got to play. It’s got to be next man up. It’s easy to make an excuse and say this is the reason, but if a guy’s out there playing, we expect him to do well. It is a challenge, but then you have to find that delicate balance with a guy like Mike Thomas for example, who played a lot of defense yesterday. We didn’t take him off of everything, but he came off of some teams. The next guy up has got to play and we had some guys play that haven’t played a lot yesterday in the game. Again, like I said, that’s kind of the special teams coach’s challenge. It’s my job to get those guys ready. We didn’t perform as well as we’d like to. It certainly wasn’t good enough yesterday in my opinion. But, again, throughout the (game), we had a lot of young guys out there – you saw some young guys out there making some mistakes, I’m sure, as you guys probably noticed. But that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to keep getting ready. We’ve got a lot of football left to go and those guys who are out there, if they’re part of the 46, they’ve got to play and they’ve got to be ready. We’ve got to get them ready.”
(How do you reinforce that to them? That this is your chance, your opportunity, your job now.) – “That’s very clear, I can promise you that. That’s very clear. We’ve enforced that from Day 1, that at some point, this is going to be an opportunity that you’re going to have. If you’re one of the 11 guys out there, we expect you to do well. We expect the leaders of our special teams unit guys that have been here– like Mike Thomas, like a Spencer Paysinger, the guys that have been around a little bit – to kind of take that leadership role in trying to get those guys ready. We knew going into the game that it was going to be a … and these last couple of weeks with some injuries. And it’s a trickle down effect, and it always comes down to special teams. It’s always going to be that way, and when you have injuries – it happens. I’m a little more disappointed, quite frankly, in some of the guys that had played before and made some errors yesterday too. But again, they’re getting more chances on offense and defense. So we’ve got to find the right formula, we’ve got to find it quick and then we’ve got to play better than we did yesterday. That’s for sure.”
(There was an exchange I believe, on the RB Kenyan Drake hold, and then the ensuing punt was deflected. A) was the hold legit when you looked at it on film?) – “Yes, in this league, when you take guys to the ground – the chances of them throwing a holding call is pretty high. And Kenyan ends up on top of the guy on the ground. We had two penalties on that play. Someone said to me ‘Oh gosh, you had two rookies have penalties on that play.’ At this point in the season, we can’t … I’m not looking at guys as rookies anymore. Like I said before, if they’re out there on the field and they’re playing plays for us, it doesn’t matter if it’s a rookie or a 10th year guy, they’ve got to get it done. Yes, that next play shouldn’t have ever happened. Let’s be honest, Matt Darr hits a beautiful punt, we’ve got them pinned down inside the 20, and then all of a sudden the field position completely flips for the entire game on that, because we are playing a play that shouldn’t have occurred if it’s not for a penalty. Again, he didn’t need to hold on the play. If I was officiating, I probably would’ve called it myself. I can see why they called it, and again, those are the frustrating things. We’re going back now … we’re going back to play another play, those guys just protected, they just covered for 50 yards and now they’ve got to come back and replay a play. That’s just not something easy to do and we have a mistake on the next play, the ball gets tipped and fortunately it wasn’t a bigger play. Any time you get a guy with a hand in the kick zone like that, the ball could’ve went the other way. We’re fortunate that it went over the line, it could’ve been a bigger one.”
(You’ve dealt with WR Jarvis Landry on special teams, he’s an emotional player. He had that block yesterday on the crack back. I think he had a punt last year where there was a sideline violation. Have you ever talked to him about his emotion and is it at a point to where it might be working to his detriment?) – “That’s a good question. Yes, Jarvis is a guy that plays right up to the edge. He plays right up to the line. He’s an emotional player. I think he’s probably gotten to this point in his career because of that. I think it’s probably, I don’t know if you want to call it a blessing and a curse maybe at times. But Jarvis is an emotional guy. I certainly wouldn’t want to change his personality. The official came over and explained that penalty after the play. It’s one of those fine line things. He spins the ball. The way the official came over and explained it to us – if he had turned around and spun it the other direction, there’s no flag. Because he spun it towards their bench, it was a flag. I’m not going to get into all the dotting-the-I and crossing-every-T on the exact rule book and all of that stuff right now. It’s not going to get me anywhere. Again, getting back to Jarvis, I love the way Jarvis plays the game quite frankly. I wouldn’t mind having 46 Jarvis Landrys out there with the way … his intensity, his preparation, his enthusiasm and all of those things. Can we afford those 15 yard penalties? No. We can’t and that’s not just a Jarvis, that’s a team-wide thing. We cannot have … we can’t have those penalties. I’m sure (Head) Coach (Adam) Gase has already addressed that as well, and that’s something that we are going to continue to address with the team. We want the guys playing up to the edge. We want the guys playing up to the line. It’s a fine line in crossing over it and costing your team. I’m sure, like I said, I’m sure Gase has already addressed that.”
