Eric Studesville – September 28, 2021
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Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Co-Offensive Coordinator/Running Backs Eric Studesville
(You’ve been part of some pretty successful running games going back through your career in Denver and also here in 2016 – the RB Jay Ajayi years. What does it take to have one of those forceful rushing attacks?) – “It takes the whole group. It’s not just – there’s one person that gets credit for it a lot of times with the yardage but it’s everybody. It’s the offensive line, it’s the tight ends, it’s the wide receivers blocking force, it’s the quarterbacks making great decisions a lot of times getting us in and out of the right looks and the right plays. It takes everybody on the field for a successful running game.”
(Do you feel like you have the talent and the personnel to get something sustainable where you can average over 100 yards per game?) – “I think the stats are always a nice thing to have but at the end of the day, we are tying to win and if that means that we have to run it and have one of those kind of running days, then we want to do that. But if we need to pass protect to win the game and that sacrifices some of the run possibilities, then that’s what is most important to us. What do we have to do to win the game? We’d love to certainly have a run game that we set a precedent that we are going to run the ball and that we can run it effectively. But at the end of the day, we want to do whatever we have to do to win the game.”
(I wanted to ask about WR Jaylen Waddle and the overall thoughts of the passing game. He had 12 catches for 58 yards. What do you attribute to not seeing so much success downfield? Do you think he needs more diversity in the route running? Just as a whole, what do you see from the passing game and why haven’t you been able to connect on some of those deep plays?) – “We are talking a lot about that, trying to find explosive plays and ways to get explosive plays. Not just to Jaylen but to other people on the team also, whether we are talking about Will Fuller or Mike (Gesicki). We did take some shots at the end of that game the other day in Las Vegas. We’re always trying to find explosive plays. We’re constantly talking about it, we’re trying to put them in, we are trying to get them, but we are limited at times because of what the defense gives us. We have to call them at the right time and we have to be prepared and we have to dial those up when we think we have the best chance to execute those.”
(I know after the game, QB Jacoby Brissett said that the Raiders and Defensive Coordinator Gus Bradley will play a lot of Cover 3 so you are going to get a lot more guys in coverage. Were you pleased, generally, with the way Jacoby handled the looks that he was getting and would you describe it as that give and take of taking what the defense gives you but also trying to force their hand?) – “I think that’s a concept that we go to every week. We game plan and try to come up with things that we think are going to give us the best chance to be successful. We are watching the defense and we are trying to make sure that what we planned for is what we are getting so now we can use our things. We always have to be ready to adjust too because they can do something different, so there is a give and take at all times in every game in different situations, what’s going on and what they feel like our strengths are that they are going to try to take away and what we feel like we want to do to attack their defense. There’s always a give and take in everything that you do and we have to just make sure that we are communicating and that we have things going on in there that give us the chance to adjust and then to execute when we do call our plays.”
(The play call in the end zone that resulted in a safety – could you educate us on how something like that is decided upon? And QB Jacoby Brissett shouldered the blame postgame. Should he have gone elsewhere with the same play call and route patterns?) – “I think what happens is when you’re in the heat of a game, you’re calling plays and that position, especially Jacoby (Brissett), he made a decision. I read what he said about it and I think that’s what happens. He made a decision and right, wrong – if we all went back would we do different things? Probably we would do something different or we could do something different. But we didn’t. That’s what we did in that play so we have to learn and grow from that experience of what happened on that particular play. That’s what happened on that play and that’s what happened.”
(Just to follow up to make sure we’re clear. Did QB Jacoby Brissett make that play call? Or did that come from the coaching staff?) – “No, we called that play into him. That wasn’t an audible or anything of that nature, no.”
(And just to close the loop on that one particular play – was WR Jaylen Waddle in fact an eligible target on that play or was he supposed to just be a decoy that does not get the ball?) – “No, that was an empty formation and we had five eligible receivers in that particular formation.”
(There’s been a lot of talk about taking what the defense gives. What is your opinion on taking what the defense gives versus trying to take what you want?) – “There’s a whole process in there. When we game plan and we put things together that we want to call in the game, we are calling those things based on what we’ve studied and looked at as what we anticipate the defense giving us a certain look for. What we are calling is what we think would be best against those looks. We have to have adjustments and we have to have rules because if they don’t give us the specific look that we want, then we have to have rules and adjustments to be able to execute a play that we call. We can’t just call timeout all the time because they don’t line up exactly how we want. We’re planning our plays to what we think we can do best against a defense. I think to answer the question, what I’m saying is we want to dictate what we think is best for us against what the defense has shown us to do.”
(It seems like you guys have a lot of success when you are up against the clock and area little more urgent on offense. What do you see differently that makes you successful in those situations on offense when you have to go a little bit up-tempo and fight against the clock as well?) – “That may be what is happening in the game but we want to have urgency at all times. We want to be productive, not just at the beginning or at the end of the game. We want to be productive the entire game. We want to have tempo, we want to have urgency the entire game. We are working for that. We have got to get better at it. Obviously that’s something for us to work on going forward. We are talking about that. But we want to have urgency the entire game for 60 minutes. We don’t want to let down and then ramp it up at the end. We don’t want to do that. We want to be consistent throughout and that’s something that we can work on and get better on.”
(I wanted to ask about T Austin Jackson. He had a few moments where he showed some good aggressiveness in the run game but there were still some tough moments in pass protection. What is the coaching staff stressing to Austin right now?) – “To keep working and to continue to buy into what we are doing and our coaching and what we are talking about. He’s a competitive young man, it’s important to him and we feel like he played better. But we are still continually working and he’s going to continue to work and we are going to continue to work with him to get better and improve so that we do get the level of play that not only he expects from himself but that we want from him also.”
(With regards to passing, opening it up and trying to take shots downfield, how much was WR Will Fuller’s first game kind of a feel-it-out game for him early and how much can you add on his plate as he becomes more comfortable in the offense?) – “First of all, I think it was good to have him out there and see him make some plays. We threw the ball to him, tried to take some shots to him. He made a great catch on a two-point play, the route that he had there. It’s just good to have him out there and get him into the offense. The more that he’s in the offense, the more things we will try to do as he gets more and more comfortable with it. We are just going to keep working on that but as long as he’s able to be out there, we are glad to have him out there and we are going to find things to try and do with him.”
(Obviously we have history with RB Myles Gaskin and RB Salvon Ahmed. We know what they bring to the table but RB Malcolm Brown has been a guy that is contributing more than most of us expected. He started last week. What went into that decision not only to start him but to give him an equal share of this backfield?) – “I think Malcolm has done a great job since he’s been here. He’s a very focused, serious and mature-type person – intensely competitive. What we’ve seen is that his preparation and how he does everything, we wanted to create a little bit more of a role for him rather than a couple plays here and there. We wanted to change that up and see what it looked like. We feel like he had some production for us. We will continually evaluate that each week like we do. It’s what we think gives us the best chance to run the ball as well as with protection and things. He did a nice job this past week. He played more than he has but I thought he did a really nice job.”
