Frank Smith – October 26, 2023
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Thursday, October 26, 2023
Offensive Coordinator Frank Smith
(Do you have any family of German descent?) – “Yes, my grandfather, my mom’s dad, who just passed away, his mom was born in Frankfurt. They immigrated from the Black Forest, I think it was during the depression during World War I, that they moved to Indiana. My great-grandma passed away when I think was eight. She barely spoke English and had a fantastic German accent, so the letter J is not a letter – my mom’s name is Julie, so it was ‘Chulie’ and ‘Channy.’ She pronounced it with a ‘ch.’ Things you remember from way back in your childhood.”
(Have you ever been there?) – “Yeah, a couple times. I went over there after college in my 20s traveling with friends. My dad used to bring me on his business trips when I was a little guy. Then my other grandfather was a Captain in the Army and brought me on his company’s reunion tour from when they landed at Utah Beach all the way to when he got hit by the mortar. So I followed it. We got on the bus and went to Utah and then went all the way and saw everything. I’ve been there a couple times. It’s a really cool experience when you get to do it, especially when my grandpa was like, ‘that’s right where I got hit by the mortar’. I’m like, ‘That’s a big hill you guys are trying to go up.’ And he’s like, ‘Tell me about it.’ It was a good experience. I’m excited to go back next week.”
(Since Head Coach Mike McDaniel isn’t here today, are you able to share if WR Tyreek Hill will practice today?) – “Basically, anyone who’s eligible to practice will practice. But when it comes to injury questions and stuff like that, we’re going to leave it to Mike and (General Manager) Chris (Grier) to make those assessments and comments on it.”
(On the depth chart that’s released every week by the media relations department, it has WR Braxton Berrios as WR Tyreek Hill’s backup. Would he be, obviously you can spread snaps across several receivers, but would he be the one who’s playing time would be impacted the most if you don’t have Tyreek?) – “I think ultimately whenever you do lineup changes, we always make sure to spread out things with multiple contingencies with personnel packages and stuff. Going back to training camp when we talked about why we do certain things we do, we try to make sure we have vested options in situations that could occur throughout the season.”
(With the possibility of Tyreek not playing, how does that affect weekly planning? Do you prepare as though you are going to play with him and without him? Or do you do it one way or the other? What do you do?) – “I think we just kind of weigh how we want to attack the defense and use the personnel that we know is going to be available. When it comes to contingencies really throughout the whole season, those are things we weigh in every week. You have an idea early in the week, so we make sure we have options just in case for all the things that could occur.”
(How is prep different this week knowing the Patriots deployed that three-safety plan against you guys in Week 2? Does it change how you play your scheme and gameplan this week?) – “I don’t know if it necessarily changes, but we just had to be aware of, like all things when variables occur during the season that you weren’t expecting, it’s trusting our rules, trusting what we’re doing, you play through what you see, making sure you have options schematically that account for variants and coverages and front. Just all defensive stuff. When you play a good defense like the Patriots that will give a lot of variants, the big thing is we make sure we understand our intent, our purpose, and what each play is trying to do.”
(I know you talked a lot in the past about how you’re trying to make plays and make decisions based on the defense’s rules. How do you teach players to react when the defenses break their own rules as maybe a counter to that?) – “It comes back and conversely when you start your attack of what the defense is trying to do, then in turn you can’t get to that level of conversation sometimes if you don’t know the intent of what you’re trying to do. It’s like when you’re learning in college and all of sudden you didn’t start off with 101 English and you try to jump to 401 English and all of a sudden you’re like, I can’t structure this paragraph the way I want to. Or is that a preposition? Should I end that with a question mark or an exclamation point? You can’t get to those levels, but if you build appropriately, then therefore you’re like ‘Ok, I understand where I fit because I understand my purpose of this play and what this concept is trying to attack.’ Now, we match defenses each week where ok, here’s what we’re trying to attack. That’s how the player can know there’s carry over in some concepts because they can go, ‘they’re like this defense, they’re like that defense.’ There’s certain elements that they can see the carryover of why and the more years you have, the more you can anticipate certain plays because you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m facing this’ or ‘I’m facing that.’ So ultimately, as we attack defenses, that’s why we spend so much time in the offseason understanding why we’re doing what we’re doing. Then you build it to understand the concept of what it’s trying to attack and why, and how you build it with moving pieces. Then when you get that, that’s when you can get guys connected because they are anticipating, and they can handle the variants over coverages.”
(We know QB Tua Tagovailoa is amazingly accurate. He’s got six interceptions in seven games. Last year it was eight in 13. Is there a reason for the increase? And is there any concern or is that just football?) – “No concern. There’s never really one reason you can sit there and say it’s this. I think ultimately through the course of the season, it’s at the end is when you make the ultimate assessment of how each week – because you can have games where some things we can sit there and scrutinize it, but at the end of the year, you can look back and reflect on where and why certain things happen. That’s where you can see in the back half of the season a drastic improvement. Ultimately, this part of the season is you’re really learning who your team is and how to utilize them, how to put them in the best positions possible. They’re learning their communication with each other, expectations of each other. That’s where you’re building so the back half of the season you’re working to play your best football as you get near the end.”
(If OL Connor Williams is healthy to play center, do you still view as OL Liam Eichenberg as an option to play left guard or do you solely viewing him as a backup center now?) – “Well I think that’s why we train the group the way we do with the versatility in it, so we give ourselves options. We don’t limit ourselves to, ‘Hey, he’s either this position, or this position only’. We make sure we allow ourselves versatility in our training so we can use the best available to allow them to play their best when we need them on Sundays.”
(WR Cedrick Wilson Jr. had a couple big catches. What are your thoughts on his play and his outlook?) – “I think like everything, each week and the growth and the little things he can improve on. Obviously each guy is always working on something each week, and you’re working for that improvement. When you look at the way the season goes, it’s that focus on the daily process and getting better. I think ultimately, that’s just one thing he’s embraced, and all the guys have embraced, is just the commitment to get better. There’s a lot of things in the game that we know we can get better at, but there are a lot of good things too that we saw that were growth for where we want to go long term.”
(How is WR Chase Claypool doing?) – “Great. Great guy. Just understanding his level of knowledge for football and his love for football, and just getting him indoctrinated into our system, he’s been great. I enjoy having him around.”
(Mike McDaniel said there was a package of plays he considered using that ultimately didn’t get to because of game flow. Are you comfortable seeing him get some more action, get some touches?) – “Yeah, ultimately everyone who’s active on gameday, we’re trying to make sure we’re able to use them in some role as far as helping the football team win. Yeah, so packages of plays that we use for guys, we have up each week. Just the way the flow of the game goes really allows us to be able to implement certain things. Some things we just weren’t able to get to. Each week as he grows within his knowledge of the offense and how we’re going to use him, the variants of what we’re trying to attack each week is also the thing that we have to weigh. We’ve been very pleased with what he’s done so far though.”
(Along the same lines, RB Jeff Wilson Jr. only got seven snaps last week. Was that an issue or ramping him up a little bit or game flow?) – “Game flow. One thing we came out of the game, you could see in the second half, we started to get to a couple things in the run game that we were meaning to get to, but just hadn’t yet. You’re attacking for certain reasons and then when we got to the stuff later on that we felt really good about, and you could see we were starting to make headway. But it was just ultimately the way the game went. We weren’t able to do certain things and that stuff that we looked at after the game, making sure we can run the ball effectively and get our players touches so they can get in the flow.”
(You guys had done a really good job of pre-snap penalties earlier this season. This week you had a few false starts and delay of games. Was the crowd more of a factor there? Or backup center? What do you equate that to?) – “Ultimately, all those things start with us as coaches. We have to make sure that we’re always mindful of what are we asking them to do? How are we asking them to do it? I think ultimately as we look into our execution, it’s making sure that we’re putting the guys in the best position as possible to execute. That’s something that Mike (McDaniel) and I came out of the game that we’re very mindful of, but at the same time it’s great learning. It’s the middle of the season as we come to it. When you get these two environments that we’ve had in Buffalo and Philadelphia, they’re going to be fantastic for us as long as we use them for what we need to get to our end goal. The good thing as we learn about the football team is these environments, we’re really learning from. The mindset of the guys has been awesome. It’s really going to help us the rest of the season is how we really feel.”
