Dave DeGuglielmo – November 5, 2019
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Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Offensive Line Coach Dave DeGuglielmo
(Just wanted to ask you on G Michael Deiter – has there been clear improvement to you the last few weeks? Just your overall assessment on him?) – “The thing at this stage is there are incremental gains. Little things. Little technique (things). Whether you’re working on your inside foot or your hand placement in the pass game or hand placement in the run game – things like that. He’s very conscientious. He’s working on those things to try to improve his overall game. He’s a smart kid. He’s played the position a long time, not necessarily in the NFL, but he’s played the position so the things that he’s working on now are to help him be more efficient play-in and play-out. They don’t really show up overall, but they do show up – I shouldn’t say – they do show up overall. They don’t show up in the individual rep per se. You have to kind of look for it. A guy like myself, I can find what he’s doing and how he’s doing it and those are things he’s working on now. So I would say yes, he’s making improvement, but it’s small stuff. It’s not the major things.”
(How close is G Michael Deiter to being the player that you all think he can be?) – “He’s got a way to go. He’s a rookie. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, so he’s one of those. Rookies – very few come in polished and ready to go and then rise to that level right away. That includes all rookies, including the one I had last year that we’re going to face this week (Quenton Nelson). They’ve got a lot to learn because they’re rookies and I think every guy will tell you, the change from your rookie year to your second year in the league is huge, and he’ll make that jump. He’s getting valuable reps right now. He’s playing against some of the best players in the league this year. Some battles he wins. Some battles he holds on for dear life and those are the experiences he needs to become the player we expect him to be. It’s not going to help him sitting on the bench watching it. He’s got to be in there and taking his lumps and fighting against the best in order to get his skills up to par. I think he’s doing exactly what we want him to do. I would be happy if we had a whole bunch more just like him.”
(So G Michael Deiter been competent, you think at that position?) – “Absolutely. Absolutely. And he’s got the right mentality for the job. He’s very professional. Like I said, he knows what he needs to work on. We talk about it regularly and he’s working on those things and is focused. He’s focused on them.”
(With G/T Jesse Davis – obviously he can play a lot of positions – do you have a sense of where he’s best? Right tackle where he is now? Left tackle, guard?) – “I thought he played pretty well at right tackle. I don’t know. People just assume that, ‘oh yeah, just move him back to guard because that’s where he played well.’ Who’s to say he played real good at guard last year? Just because he played there didn’t mean he was better there than somewhere else. I don’t say he played bad there, but what is the standard of guard play that you think that he’d be a better guard or what makes him better at guard than tackle? I don’t know. I see movement skills, body type. I see athleticism. I see the areas that make me believe he could play inside or outside. He might make a great center one day. I don’t think that’s in his personality; but if need be, he’s athletic enough to do that. I think Jesse is the kind of guy that wherever you need him, he can play. He may be more comfortable at one place or another, but he’s never one to let you know that. He’s just going to go out and do what he’s asked to do. I love that kind of guy. I wish I had a bunch of them, too. Slowly we put together a crew, a room full of guys like Jesse and (Michael) Deiter and those guys. That’s what we need.”
(Your offensive line is coming together very nicely the last couple of weeks. I know C Daniel Kilgore has been out, but what has been the key to solidifying the offensive line performance?) – “I don’t know if it’s coming together nicely or they just happen to do what they’re told for a change. (laughter) To me, they’re starting to get the principles of how we’re asking them to perform. There are some basic things that (Head) Coach (Brian Flores) believes in, that I believe in, that – staying on double teams, being in-sync with one another with our footwork and our hand placement, things like that – and it’s just finally coming to where no matter who we have in there, we’re getting what looks like offensive line play. It takes a while in terms of being able to play consistently together. I don’t know that that’s been the case because we keep rotating guys for various reasons – injury or we’re just trying to find the right combination. We’ll probably have three new guys in there this week starting. That’s just how it goes. You change your lineup and you make it what you think is best for the upcoming opponent and we have a pretty strong defensive front ahead of us, so we’re going to have to find the right combination to block those guys but more so, we have to focus on what we do. I think that’s – to your question – that’s what’s really happening, is they’re focusing more on their own fundamentals than they are on what they’re seeing in front of them and letting the techniques – trusting in their coaching – and letting their techniques bring them to successful blocks which is hard for a guy. Guys take panic. There are some great players out there and they try to get back to things that they’ve done in the past that feel more comfortable but may not be the right thing for them. If they just trust in what we’re doing – which they have been – and listen to what we’re saying, they’re going to be all right. They’re always going to a group – and they know – that’s going to have to fight tooth-and-nail to have some success because we’re playing against some really good opponents in this league. That’s every week. It’s never going to be easy. We’re doing the best we can.”
(When you look at the pass protection – and I know you just said they’re believing – anything that’s going on there that’s made – QB Ryan Fitzpatrick has been on his feet for the most part.) – “That’s not supposed to be a surprise now. (laughter) That’s the intended result. Again, it’s people adhering to the techniques. The way we teach pass blocking, we teach it to be firm and flat in the middle and teach it for the tackles to on their sets, to assist guards on their initial release and things like that that they can help one another. In doing their job, they can help another guy do his job. It takes a while for guys to truly trust that the guy next to them is going to do exactly what he needs to do so that I can take a risk and set a little bit differently than I might feel comfortable doing, but the only way I can do that is to know that that guy is going to be in the right position and not fade away and leave me with too much space to cover. That type of stuff is starting to come around and a lot of it is trial and error. A lot of it is me being stubborn and saying, ‘no, trust me. This is going to work. I’m not interested in what you think. I’m interested in what I know to be true because I’ve seen it in play. I’ve seen it work.’ I’m a believer – I’m one of those coaches, ‘hey listen, if you do it my way and it doesn’t work, then it’s on me; but if you do it your way and it doesn’t work, guess who it’s on?’ (laughter) You have to trust that I’m not going to put you in a position – what do I gain for you doing it wrong? We’re not having success. So everything I teach them is for them to have success in their individual play which turns into group success, which then I get a little satisfaction because I get to see smiles on the sideline instead of seeing frowns. Ultimately this game, you go back to the root reason you coach and even though they’re grown men with children and wives and lives outside of the game; the feeling to see your players smile at the end of a game or come off to the sideline after a play and say, ‘Coach, I saw that blitz and I slid right to it.’ The excitement over being able to pick up a complex twist, things that we practice and we may have failed at it three times in practice until we got it right, but those simple pleasures are truly – they’re as gratifying as anything. Obviously winning is great, but seeing my player success, that’s an awesome feeling for a coach. I’m going to be a bum no matter what, win, lose or draw. The o-line coach is, I’m disposable. That’s how it goes. I get it; but they are not. I take great joy in their successes, even little ones that they know that I see because we talk about those little types of things. Every time one of them goes and takes a little step and takes a step, puts his feet in the place or puts his hands in the right place; he comes off and I say, ‘I saw it. Now you see what I’m saying? It works. When you do it, it works.’ You can just tell that they’ve taken it. It’s like when you’re lifting weights and you want to bench press 400 pounds and then you go in there that one day and you hit it. You never even think about 400 pounds after that. You’re onto the next thing. Now you want to bench 415. It’s that way with offensive line play. You struggle to get to those little points and then you go beyond that and the next one and the next one. That’s what they’re doing and I take pleasure in that.”
(If I told you that you would have started six different offensive line combinations in eight games, what would your response have been?) – “It wouldn’t be the first time. That’s what it is. It’s the hand I’m dealt and there’ll be a seventh. I promise you. Maybe more than that down the road. We have a constant flow of players injured, not injured, moving positions. I think there’s value when players can play multiple spots. We went to the game the other day and the question was, ‘okay, who’s the third center?’ Well I actually had, let’s see, one, two, three, four – I had four guys that could snap, five guys that could snap at the game the other day, that could snap a ball legitimately and have done it in practice. Five different guys. That’s not bad for seven guys active. You always worry about having an extra center. Well, I had four extra centers if need be. Now obviously you don’t want to live life like that, but yeah would I love to have one lineup for 16 games? Sure, but…”
(Have you ever had that in your career?) – “I had it as an assistant line coach at the Giants. We had it.”
(No one got hurt? Same lineup?) – “They plays three years in a row, regular season. Yeah.”
(With this – the rookies – obviously Head Coach Brian Flores talked about G Shaq Calhoun hitting the rookie wall. What is the rookie wall for an offensive lineman?) – “The season is a long season. I think that’s a phrase to say like, ‘listen: most college teams, they’re winding up their season in the next couple weeks. We’re only halfway.’ And rookies, because they haven’t been through a lengthy season – really, it’s 20 games counting the preseason. You could say, ‘well colleges, they could play up to 13, 14 games,’ but there’s a big month between when they play their last one so it’s really not the same. I don’t know. Maybe that’s what he’s experiencing. I look at it whether it’s early in the season rookie stall a little bit or late in the season, there’s a learning process. There’s an adaption. You have to figure out how to be a pro football player. Part of that is the marathon-type season that we have. That’s why you look at even veterans – the guys that can make it seven, eight, nine, 10 years – it’s a miracle that the guys can even walk after that, to make it that long in this league. These guys that play 15 years, I don’t know how they do it; but rookies, it’s probably a little bit of an eye-opening experience. They come in all fresh and young and spry and the veterans laugh because they know what’s going to happen. Maybe that’s what he’s experiencing, but he’s done a good job for us and I think he’s practiced well and it’s just, we have a bunch of guys that we want to see them play and see how they do and we had a couple guys last week and I thought they did a fairly decent job.”
(How is T Julién Davenport’s return going to impact the line and how is he performing?) – “I don’t know. We’ll see how that happens. When he gets to going full speed, he’s got to perform well enough to displace one of the guys that are playing tackle now or maybe he can be a swing guy or maybe he’ll walk right in the door in the first period and let’s say, ‘hey, this guy’s moving great.’ It all depends on how he’s moving and what he’s doing. He’s played a lot, so I think the transition from not playing to playing will be a lot faster than a guy that hasn’t played. He’s experienced a lot. I don’t know how it will change our lineup. Based on the last eight weeks, it’ll probably change our lineup somewhere, somehow at some time. We’re putting a lot of the guys, especially the tackles are taking a lot of reps and it would be good to have an opportunity to play some other guys there as well, but we’ll see. That’s kind of a speculation and I don’t know when he’ll be ready to go. They haven’t told me that I get the thumbs up yet. When they give me that – I think it’s like everything else. These things take time. That’s all. When he’s ready, he’s ready. When he’s not – same with (Daniel) Kilgore – when he’s ready, he’s ready. When he’s not, he’s not. We’ve got to play to Sunday regardless.”
