Darren Rizzi – October 5, 2017
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Thursday, October 5, 2017
Associate Head Coach/Special Teams Coordinator Darren Rizzi
(The thinking last week in WR Jarvis Landry returning punts instead of WR Jakeem Grant and is Jarvis now your primary punter returner moving forward?) – “Is he our primary punt returner moving forward? No. We have two punt returners. Kind of like I said all along, there’s really no story there. It’s just a thing that we’re going to do every game based on an individual basis. Last week there was one of the reps that Jakeem was going to get, but he was getting re-spatted – his ankle was getting re-spatted at the time, re-taped. He was up on one and it just happened to be one of the ones they punted. One was a game plan thing. We knew Jarvis was going to play on that particular call during the week, all week; and then one was just a coaching decision. It’s still going to be an individual basis. There’s really nothing that doesn’t … We don’t go into, I don’t go into a game, saying ‘Hey, if they have six punts, Jarvis is going to get four and Jakeem’s going to get two; or Jakeem’s going to get four or Jarvis is going to get two; or one guy is going to get six.’ It just worked out in that particular game that Jarvis got three and Jakeem got zero, but there’s not, again, it’s going to be a little bit more of a … It’s really as the flow of the game is going on and the call that we have, game plan, all of those different things factor in. It just happened to be coincidentally that Jarvis got three last week and Jakeem got zero. There’s no indicator of my confidence of anybody, lack of confidence of anybody. There’s really no story there. It’s just going to continue to be a committee deal. We are fortunate to have two guys that can do it and I have confidence in both of them.”
(Some might have watched that and thought well maybe it was because WR Jakeem Grant fumbled the punt late in the game against the Jets. Was that any bearing at all in incorporating WR Jarvis Landry more into the punt return game?) – “He did fumble one, but that wasn’t part of the decision. Honestly, Jakeem was going to take the very first one and was getting re-spatted, and the trainers had come to me and said ‘Hey, right now he’s temporarily down,’ and it just coincidentally happened to be that they were punting the ball, so Jarvis went on that first one. Then like I said, the second one was a game plan and one was just my decision. That was it.”
(If I’m not mistaken, K Cody Parkey has had three plays in the last two games. A kickoff, extra point and a second half kickoff.) – “That’s an accurate statement.”
(Is there such a thing as kicker rust and do you worry about that?) – “Those guys obviously get a fair amount of work in the pregame, which is great, and then obviously they have their work days during the week. They’re a lot like – I kind of liken them to pitchers. They have a five-day rotation, you kind of have your work day, your game day, your work day and your off day. So what we’ll do in that situation is make sure he’s getting a little more work on the days where – like a practice day like yesterday for example – was his work day on Wednesday. So if he’s not getting those reps in the game, we’re going to try to simulate as many as we can. So he maybe got a little bit more field goal yesterday than he had been getting. Obviously we hope we get many more attempts with him and hopefully he’s playing more in these next coming games; but that’s a legitimate question. We just have to adjust his week as his week goes. It would be like a starting pitcher getting – in baseball – getting 40 pitches instead of 90. We’re going to get him more during the week. So that’s basically how we (do it).”
(Did anything or anybody stand out on special teams against the Saints?) – “I though Walt (Aikens) had his best game of the year. Walt Aikens I thought really played well. He obviously missed that preseason time and so, not that he played poorly in the first two games, but I saw the Walt in this game that’s kind of the Walt from the second half of last year. I thought he really had a dominant second half of the year last year and I saw that guy again on Sunday. I thought he really played well. Bobby McCain plays a limited role for us, but he’s really played well through three games. Whether it’s the field goal block or once in a while he’s a gunner or a jammer, or kickoff – he made a big open-field tackle on a kickoff. It was a really nice play. I thought he really played well. Terrence Fede I thought had a good game. Those are the three guys come to mind.”
(I believe your 28th in the NFL in net punting. What needs to improve?) – “After a three-game body of work, I really take very, very little credence in the stats right now. With where the league is, other teams have had one more game than us as well, and so the rankings right now, whether we’re really good at something or really bad at something, I don’t really put a lot of stock into the stats right now. The one thing we need to do a better job of, I will tell you this, is there’s been times where I thought we should have gotten the returner on the ground quicker. Like last week, I thought Teddy Ginn had a few more yards than he should have gotten on the one return in particular. Again, I think there’s a combination of things. It’s not putting your finger on one thing. I thought Matt Haack, for the most part, has punted the ball fairly well. There’s probably one or two punts he’d like to have back; but he’s had really good hang time on the ball and enabled our coverage to get down the field. We’ve got to do a better job of open-field tackling. As I tell our guys all the time, on special teams and your coverage, they can’t get a hat on everybody. In this league, the free players have to get the guy on the ground. If you’re not blocked in this league, it’s the same thing with defense, the unblocked player has to make tackles. Period. If your unblocked players don’t make tackles on coverage and defense, it’s going to be a long, long day. That’s one thing we harp on. We had a couple of instances so far where the unblocked guy didn’t get the player on the ground. That’s what we’ve got to do a better job of.”
(Both LB Stephone Anthony and CB/S Jordan Lucas will be active on special teams this week?) – “It remains to be seen. We’re going to kind of see how the practice week goes here. They’re both working. Again, it’s my job, as you guys all know, to get everybody ready. Both of those guys are actively taking reps in everything that we’re doing and rotating in. We have some decisions to make here at the end of the week on who the actives are; but both guys could potentially be in there for sure.”
(In your role as associate head coach – I asked you this last year when you were 1-4 – now that you know Head Coach Adam Gase even better, what’s the best way to help him do his job the best way?) – “I think the best thing for me to do is making sure I have an overall sense of the entire game and what’s going on. Obviously as the play caller, the one thing I can do for him is help him out with decisions during the game whether it’s penalty enforcement or time outs or time management – whatever it is – so he can really concentrate on that role as a play caller. I try to take that off his plate as much as I can. We’re constantly communicating through the game. Obviously whether it’s all of those things that could come up, different challenges or replays or like I said penalty enforcement or the time outs, I’m just trying to always stay one step ahead in those instances – the game management stuff – so that he doesn’t have to. So he can be thinking about the next set of calls or the next down or talking to Jay Cutler or the quarterbacks or whatever it might me. I think that’s the biggest thing I can help him with.”
(As far as the saturation that’s hit the field this week, with the punting and kicking, do you use longer cleats or anything like that to try to make up for it?) – “Yes, I’d love to tell you I know what our stadium looks like but we haven’t been there in a couple of months. (laughter) Yes, it’s no different than this past week. When we played in London, a lot of the guys ended up going with seven-stud cleats when you have a wet, soggy field. A lot of guys, what they’ll do is they’ll go out, they’ll have two or three pairs of cleats in their locker on game day, and you see a lot of guys running around early on in the game. A lot of times, that’s what most of them are doing is testing out their cleats. I know a lot of our guys did the same thing in London because that field is known to be a slick field with not great footing and hopefully we get some dry weather here in the next few days and it dries ours out. I would like to think it should be in really good condition. We haven’t been on it, and the University of Miami hasn’t been on it much either. Hopefully it will be in really good shape.”
(Are you taking K Cody Parkey to Hard Rock Stadium in the next couple of days?) – “We were going to take him today, so that’s not going to work out too well. (laughter) We’re going to probably get him down there early, whether it’s tomorrow or get him down there early obviously on game day. We’ll kind of see how the weather goes. We had planned on this being the day that we got into the stadium but I think it’s going to be a little bit of a wash out here. We did get some good work in the rain yesterday though. I know that seems maybe like a small thing but specialists obviously, you see a lot of times in these rain games or wet games where the special teams things really swing games, and so our operation between the snapper, holder, punter and all that stuff, we really got some good work out here. We stayed outside yesterday in the rain and got some really good wet ball drills and didn’t have to simulate it. A lot of times we simulate it. We bring out a bucket of water. We didn’t have to simulate. We had the natural rain, so we got some good quality natural work.”
(What kind of latitude do you give your returners as far as returning balls out of the end zone? Because obviously WR Jakeem Grant returned a kick and it kind of cost you about 15 yards there. So what do you exactly tell your returners when the balls are in the end zone?) – “It’s a really good question because I think it really depends on the … There’s a bunch of factors because I think it depends on the situation of the game, the time of the game, where you are. I’m very confident in our two guys. My problem last week was not with them taking it out of the end zone. When I watched the game with them, I made that perfectly clear. My problem was not that we took the ball out of the end zone, I had about three or four other problems with that play. Our communication was poor. We had a couple of missed blocks and all that, and if you go back and watch the play on film, we actually had a play there. So do I want a guy taking a ball out from 9 (yards) deep in the end zone with a high hang-time kick? No; but that ball was a line drive right at us and I thought that’s a ball that we should have returned. I had no problem with it. It was more of the breakdown of the play and the way we blocked it and the communication. That’s where we weren’t good, on that aspect. I probably, to answer your question specifically, I probably am a little bit one of those guys that’s probably down the middle somewhere. I’m not really strict that you’ve got to say in and I’m not that I want every ball to come out either. I’m probably somewhere in the middle in terms of special teams coaches; but those are opportunities for us to make plays. We had two guys back there that have proven they can make plays with the ball in their hands. We have a bunch of guys that can block and so I have no problem in the right situation, the right time, bringing the ball out of the end zone.”
