Eric Rowe – October 5, 2020
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Monday, October 5, 2020
S Eric Rowe
(CB Noah Igbinoghene is such a young kid. He’s 20-years-old or something. What have you said or what would you say to kind of steer him in the right direction?) – “Really, what I’ve kind of been telling him really this past season is it’s part of being a rookie. It’s part of the pains of growing, especially as a corner. I have comparable situations to kind of what he’s going through mentally and everything, and really I’m just trying to keep his spirits up because I remember in my second or third year where I had a couple games that were just rough, and you feel like everyone on the outside is kind of bearing down on you. It kind of gets you mentally, so really just for me to pick him up, keep playing because we’re going to need him. We’re going to need him. It’s a long season. We’ve got 12 more games to go at least, so really to keep his spirits up.”
(I was curious if you guys watched the film today. Down in and down out, the defense hung in there. It was again the big plays that seemed to get you. What on those deep throws to Seahawks WR DK Metcalf, etc. really stood out to you? When you watched the film what were the breakdowns on the big plays that you gave up?) – “Yeah, the big plays were – really, it was nothing of what kind of they had schematically or kind of talent-wise. Obviously they’re talented, but it was plays that we as a defense just had a mental breakdown. Just kind of a breakdown in coverage, a breakdown in our communication. That leads to them having big plays and ultimately that’s kind of what hurt us in the game.”
(I wanted to look ahead quickly to the matchup next Sunday. You guys are going to be facing TE George Kittle. He came back into action after missing a couple games. He had like 15 catches, 183 yards. So I guess the question is how big of a challenge is he and what makes him so good as a tight end?) – “It’s a huge challenge. He’s one of the, if not the best, tight ends right now in the league. Obviously as we can see, they target him a lot each game. So obviously he’s going to be a big challenge for us this week. What makes him good is he’s not just a receiving tight end. He blocks. So he’ll get in and he’ll block the nine or block the linebacker and not on some like, ‘oh, I really don’t want to hit you.’ So really he can play both ways, so we’ve definitely got our hands full this week.”
(Another 49ers question for you. QB Jimmy Garoppolo is coming off an ankle injury. It’s unsure whether he will play and the 49ers played two quarterbacks last night – QB Nick Mullens and QB CJ Beathard. How do you guys kind of go into this week knowing that you might have to prepare for three quarterbacks instead of maybe one or two?) – “That’s definitely different. Usually you kind of prepare for one, maybe two; but three – that’s different. Obviously all three of them, they’ve shown that all three of them can play. So it’s not like, ‘okay, the third string is coming in – we’re going to tee off on him.’ I think when Beathard got in, he went like 7-for-7 and scored a touchdown on a drive, and I was like, ‘wow, this dude’s good, too.’ So again, him, (Nick) Mullens, Jimmy (Garoppolo) – it don’t matter who’s playing. We’ve got to play our best ball.”
(I wanted to go back to what you mentioned before about breakdowns in communication. Is that a matter of guys getting confused over whether you’re in man or zone and how do you solve that? What steps are you going to take to make sure that such breakdowns don’t occur moving forward?) – “It’s really the call within the call. So whatever call that we have lined up against the opponent, and there’s always checks based on whatever they do. So we as in safeties, corners – everybody – we all have to be on the same page on motion, shift, kind of whatever they do. So when I mean ‘breakdown in communication,’ if the offense, they did some sort of motion and then whatever call that we have to give out, we have to give it out clean, faster, crisp so we can execute. Obviously that didn’t happen last game. There were a couple calls kind of within the call where not everybody was on the same page just at the end of the day. The only thing we can do is shoot, when we get back to practice on – it really starts today. Today, we watch the film and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it’s just being overly-communicative, loud, before and in the meeting room.”
(I know you guys wanted to be or have been a heavy man team and then you guys have done a little bit more zone since CB Byron Jones has been out; but how have you seen offenses attack you guys with that? I know we’ve seen a lot more crossing routes. You talked about some of the communication things. Have you seen teams try to get you guys in position where they can exploit your tendency to play a lot more man?) – “Yeah. Every offense, whether you’re in man or zone, they’re always going to have some sort of plays to beat the coverage whether we’re in Cover 4, 3, 2; there’s always some sort of scheme, schematic they have to beat the coverage. So our thing is to try to obviously keep them off balance by mixing different types of zones and then throwing in man, so the offensive coordinator won’t just have a whole playbook of just, ‘okay, we’re going to run all these man-beaters because we know they’re going to run man all game.’ So that’s why we’ve just got to mix it up, kind of balance it out.”
(I wanted to ask you, now that you’ve settled into this I guess role where I don’t know exactly what they call you position covering the tight ends. What makes it fit your skillset as well as it does or seems to?) – “I would say that I’m a bigger-body cover guy and I can move. I’m pretty agile. So with tight ends, obviously these dudes are tall, they’re big. Maybe – I wouldn’t say all of them, but some aren’t as agile and just kind of just schematically, the way that the coaches, how they use me – they move me all around from safety and I’m in the box, I’m in the back, sometimes I play like a linebacker role – it kind of fits me. Or maybe I would say I fit their scheme; and so shoot, when they put me in there last year, I kind of excelled and I’m trying to get the same results this year.”
