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Eric Studesville – December 15, 2020 Download PDF version

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Running Backs Coach Eric Studesville

(What was your reaction when you learned that RB Myles Gaskin would be unavailable? I think it was just the day before the game?) – “My first reaction was concern for him and making sure that he was all right and that everything was going to be fine with him. Any time you go through this, these relationships with these guys – that was my first concern. Then the second thing obviously was what we were going to do next and who we had to get ready next and what we had to do to move forward because there was still going to be a game being played, so we had to get ready.”

(Obviously you guys have been struggling with the run game this season and it’s been an execution issue. I know it’s not all on the backs and you’ve got a number of issues and absences to deal with, but how do you help this offense from a run game standpoint become more efficient?) – “I think the answer is right there within the question. It’s execution and it’s all of us that are involved in it. We all have a hand in it and we all have to do the right things and keep working for it, but it’s execution at the end of the day. There’s no easy fix. We all have to do our part.”

(Unless I was seeing incorrectly, it appeared to me that RB Patrick Laird was on the field most third downs and obvious passing situations. Can you just speak to what it is he does well in the passing game?) – “I think all these guys are prepared for whatever we need to have done. Patrick (Laird) can play on first and second down, too; but we started kind of defining some roles and some things that he can do well and the third-down package, he spends a lot of time getting ready for that – the pressure packages, the things we’re doing. He knows our empty formations and things as all the guys do. But I just think we try to define a role for him where he can contribute because we have him up and we want to use him when we can. I thought he did a really nice job. He had four runs the other day. Three of them were really good efficient runs for us, moved the sticks and then he did some things in the passing game for us that really helped, so I thought he did a nice job.”

(Last year I never thought I would see a team go through as many running backs as you did and you might have topped that this year. What has this experience been like knowing week-to-week you have a different featured back?) – “I’d love to be able to tell you that I haven’t been through this before, but I have in – I forget what year it was – but when we played in Kansas City one year in Denver and I lost, I went through three backs in the first half. So it’s happened before and that comes to how we set up the room, which is everybody’s got to be prepared for everything all the time. You never know when your opportunity is going to come up and that’s how we talk about it, that’s how they’re coached, that’s how they talk about them preparing and getting ready so that no matter when that time is, you’re ready to go in the game and perform and do what the team needs you to do to give us the best chance to be successful.”

(I was curious about WR Lynn Bowden Jr. and WR/RB Malcolm Perry. Obviously they have special plays that they can do and they can also be emergency running backs. Have they at any point spent time with you, with the running back room? How does that work in terms of if they actually had to be the lead back in a game suddenly?) – “I don’t know that – would they be a lead back – I don’t know. Fortunately, we haven’t gotten to that situation yet where we’ve run out of backs. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. There’s lots of roles for different guys and we try to keep things as variable as we can – running backs that can run routes and things of that nature – so you’re always changing things up and I think that’s to our advantage and we do whatever we think gives us the best chance to win from week to week.”

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