Eric Studesville – December 21, 2021
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Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Co-Offensive Coordinator/Running Backs Eric Studesville
(I know who starts isn’t a big deal to coaches. It’s more of a thing of interest to fans and us. But with the approach now at running back after RB Duke Johnson’s excellent game, is Duke your starting running back? Is RB Myles Gaskin your starting running back or do you guys go into this week with an open mind and a competition on that particular issue?) – “Hopefully we’re always creating competition with things. I get the concept of the starting running back position, but we are going to determine more by the gameplan and how we want to start things and what we do and what we thinks gives us the best chance. All those guys are going to play and participate hopefully as we put things together and it will all work itself out. We’re talking about one play at the beginning of the game as opposed to we’re going to need all the plays in the game to be successful.”
(One unrelated question, how do you think G/T Austin Jackson has played in recent weeks? He’s now been at left guard for more than two months.) – “I think he’s continuing to work and develop at that position. Obviously it’s a new experience for him going from tackle to guard but he’s committed to it, he’s working at it all the time and constantly working to get better. I think we’re seeing improvement in all areas with that. All of us have to do (that) in every position – we have to keep getting better and keep working to improve all the time.”
(I wanted to ask about trusting DT Christian Wilkins at fullback there who provided one of the most fun moments of the game. Tied game in the fourth quarter and throwing to him, just the trust that the team has offensively in making that call to Christian Wilkins, a defensive tackle?) – “I think with all plays, we are going to call the plays that we think are going to give us the best chance. It wasn’t trying to call one necessarily for Christian. We thought that was the best play at the time that we had on our call sheet for that situation being down on the goal line. We had scored previously – Duke (Johnson) had scored earlier in the game on a goal-line package play and that was our next play up that we had listed and so we went with that. We had great confidence in all the execution – the line selling it, the tight end route, the fullback route with Christian and then the back in protection and then obviously Tua (Tagovailoa) making the throw.”
(What was it like going through the uncertainty in the running back room the past week and then you end up having your best rushing performance of the season? Has the team found something in the ground game that it can take through this final stretch?) – “I hope we have but every week is brand new so we’ve got to re-focus ourselves to make sure that we lock in on the run game that we want to put together this week for the Saints because it’s going to be a big task for us. This is a good defense and ‘DA’ (Dennis Allen) will have these guys ready to go. The environment in New Orleans is always loud and involved. We’re going to have to stay focused and continue. We can’t just rest on what happened last week and think that’s going to happen in the current week. We still have to focus in and we’ve got a lot of work to do this week. Part one of your question, as far as who the running backs are, I’m happy to have them all and figure out who’s going to contribute and do what on a week-to-week basis. They’re all competitive, they’re all focused, they’re all intensely prepared to contribute in whatever way they can.”
(Re-watching the game, it looked like a lot of the big runs came behind double teams with T Liam Eichenberg and G/T Austin Jackson, I just wanted to get your take on how they executed those combo blocks and also how those combo blocks benefit both of their games?) – “There’s a lot of different runs in there and they hit different places where it’s not always dependent on a certain tandem. We need everybody. Everybody has got to do that. There was a lot of line movement that happened in the game against the Jets so we had to shut line movement off. Obviously we did run good behind some double teams. We had a number of good double teams where we moved people off the ball. Those big runs and things that happen, those are involved in a lot of different things. It starts with the offensive line. Certainly the back gets all the credit for the yards but it starts with the offensive line. It starts with the wide receivers coming in and blocking for us and pushing people by to get extra yardage downfield. It’s a group effort with everybody involved in it. There was some good double teams in there but there’s a lot of good things that happened in there too with everybody on the offense trying to contribute to the run.”
(You guys lose WR Jaylen Waddle late in the week. I was just curious the process of having to adapt your gameplan when you had him in the beginning of the week to not having him later in the week?) – “Unfortunately, those situations happen where your personnel changes. When that does happen, they’re not going to stop playing the game on Sunday so we’ve got to have an opportunity to get somebody else ready to go. Somebody else has got to take advantage of that opportunity to be ready to go and then we’ve got the expectation for everybody – coaches and players – that we have to perform at a high level when that opportunity comes up. Does it change your plans? To a certain extent, certainly it does with a good player that you’re missing in there. But we’ve got to be ready to go and someone has got to step up there because they’re going to put a ball down on Sunday.”
(The process of the week when you start creating a gameplan Monday and Tuesday and begin implementing it on Wednesday, at what point do you work it and then see it and say, ‘eh I’m not liking it, don’t feel it,’ and sort of move along? Or is that something that you just continue to work at? What’s the thought process as coordinator when you have an idea and then it doesn’t practice out the way that you want it to?) – “We usually throw it out. (laughter)”
(That’s it? It’s just thrown out?) – “We look at it and we talk about. We say, ‘Can we fix it? Can we get it? Do we need to use a different technique? Do we need to change a scheme? Do we need to do something if we like the concept?’ But if it comes to a point where we don’t feel like that play has a chance to be successful, then we don’t want to call that play. Just because the play drew up good on paper on Monday or Tuesday, it’s got to be a play that we all feel comfortable about – coaches and players – and we feel like we have a high level of execution for on Sunday. That’s the dominant decision-making factor in there is do we think this has a chance to be successful on Sunday?”
(Is this when you are running it against the scout team? So, if the scout team just sniffs it out then it’s just like ‘ehh, it’s not good,’ or just the level of speed that they’re playing? What are you guys looking for when you say this isn’t going to cut it?) – “It’s all those things. Obviously we are repping it against a scout-team look that we think is simulating what the opponent is going to do. Sometimes it’s angles, sometimes we’re trying to anticipate how the defense will react on gameday, what their potential adjustments would be to something. We look at a lot of different things on that. But again, we’re talking through, ‘Do we have good angles? Is the scheme right? Is whatever happens in there?’ That’s all things that we are constantly talking about throughout the week. That’s on every play. That’s run plays, protections, pass routes. It’s every part of the offense. That’s what we call running a string through.”
(When we talked to Head Coach Brian Flores yesterday about G Robert Jones and his 10 offensive snaps, he referred to him as a tight end on those plays. How long has he been working at that position in your heavy packages and what made you guys think he would thrive at that spot? He seemed to play well.) – “It’s something that we’ve talked about and have the capability of doing. You can utilize an extra player in a number of different ways and it was an opportunity to get Rob in there. We felt that it was something that would give us an advantage and again, we thought that it was something that would give us productive plays potentially. We do those things on different personnel groups at different times and different plays, whatever that is. We have the capability of using different players much like we used Christian (Wilkins) as the fullback in the goal line package. A very similar sort of concept.”
(Had DT Christian Wilkins over the last two months good naturedly reminded you or Co-Offensive Coordinator/Tight Ends George Godsey to use him or was this something you and George had always been thinking about just waiting for the right time?) – “Regularly he reminds us. (laughter)”
(I wanted to get your perspective on that final drive to go ahead late in the game. What’s your message to the offense after they go down off the interception and the message to come back and say, ‘Hey, we have to go out there and put a drive together right now?’) – “I think the message is consistent and it starts coming from Coach (Brian Flores) all the time that ‘hey, we’ve got to play for 60 minutes.’ This game is going to be 60 minutes and we are going to have to play right down to the end. We don’t know how it’s going to end up but we know if we’re in it at the end, we believe that we’re going to play hard enough and find a way, so we’ve got to play for the full 60 minutes. When adversity happened, our players responded really well in that situation and gave us a chance to win the football game. We’ve got to play the whole game for 60 minutes and Coach preaches that all the time.”
