George Godsey – August 8, 2020
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Saturday, August 8, 2020
Tight Ends Coach George Godsey
(I wanted to ask you, you guys made a lot of changes on the coaching staff as a whole – I guess Head Coach Brian Flores did – and you’re one of the people who came back. How have you guys started to try to gel as a staff despite having to have all that separation because of COVID-19?) – “It’s something that every year we have to deal with, but it’s definitely a good observation. The players go through their chemistry. We as coaches go through our chemistry, too, so putting everybody on the same page as far as what day-to-day operations are but also the communication; for example at the tight end position, there’s communication with the line coach. Obviously with the coordinator, how he sees things through his lens. So we’ve had our share of meetings and it’s been good. We can’t high five each other, but we’ve gotten enough information. We’ve taken a lot of notes and we’ve had a lot of good feedback back and forth, so yeah, it’s an obstacle – not being there to maybe go to have a two-minute meeting in the hallway, but we’ve definitely put some time invested throughout the day to get on that same page.”
(I wanted to ask you about TE Adam Shaheen in terms of what was it that you saw from him when he was added to your unit and how do you view him as a potential help for this offense?) – “Adam, we try to evaluate all the tight ends – or at least I have just throughout my career. I was in Detroit for a little bit, so I was able to see him, but also he’s got great range from a length standpoint and size. He’s had his issues trying to stay on the field. I think that’s part of the NFL, so he’s a young prospect that is ascending. He’s very motivated in these meetings. We’ve had some extra time, too, to make sure that he’s getting caught up. Ideally with a new player, we’d go through the spring portion and then now we’re into the fall portion and it’s kind of just maybe the second or third time he’s heard things, so he’s got some work cut out for him mentally, but he’s up for the challenge. The guy’s been productive in the pass game and like I said, his length against NFL defensive ends or outside ‘backers that are on the line of scrimmage, that’s a valuable piece to have; so we can’t coach that part, but we can definitely catch him up to speed and then it’s up to him to get open in the passing game.”
(What has it been like having Offensive Coordinator Chan Gailey coming out of retirement, being away from football? What kind of sense do you get from him about how he’s feeling about being back around football?) – “Football is for all of us – it’s pretty much in our blood. It is what we do. Chan has a lot of experience at all different type of levels – head coach, coordinating, college, pro – so he has an excellent perspective on what everybody’s going through from each position. He’s answered a lot of those questions that maybe come up in our meetings. He’s had a million of those discussions with a bunch of different staffs that he’s been a part of, so it’s a good perspective. I look at it as a huge opportunity for me to kind of get that knowledge to keep growing as a coach. He’s very open to providing his perspective and he wants to know about how we see the players, so that stuff’s been great and I really enjoy the day to day.”
(I wanted to follow up on the question about TE Adam Shaheen. How is he working on the line and do feel comfortable with what you have in the tight end unit in terms of guys who can work on the line in Offensive Coordinator Chan Gailey’s offense?) – “I think there’s going to be a lot of versatility with these guys, not only as a – I call it a ‘point-of-attack tight end’ when you’re actually on the line – but as a move guy. You used to end up being the spot but off the line where now you have multiple things that you can do. (We are) looking for versatility in that and we have a lot of guys in this group, guys returning from Durham (Smythe) to Chris (Myarick) who was on the practice squad last year, and Adam (Shaheen) provides the same thing, so we’re looking to kind of diversify as much as we can and maybe not be one-dimensional with one particular guy; but we’re going to always put the guys that are – what they emphasize as far as positives in their skillset and put them on the field. Now’s the time to really see that. You’d like to have a little bit of a spring background like I said before, but it is what it is and those guys are going to have to perform in maybe one or two reps as opposed to five or six reps that if you kind of add it through the two different phases of the practice formats.”
(I wanted to ask you about TE Mike Gesicki real quick. When you look at his first half of last year on tape versus the way he dominated in the latter portion of the season, what was the change?) – “I know we spoke about this to a degree – a small degree – last year. He put an emphasis on his practice habits. We say practice execution is more game reality, so if you can get out there and practice at a high level and go against high-level competition so going against that first-team defense, maybe taking a show team rep – I would say ‘dropping the shield,’ so to say as a pro, like get out there and be a show team guy and go against good competition. And he put time into that, got some extra time with ‘Fitzy’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) as far as seeing, running routes so that he could see it the same way as a quarterback. That’s a hard thing to do, too, especially where he is in his career. Every quarterback sees things differently and so making sure you’re on the same page with them, it’s not necessarily the same thing as just running a route, ‘hey, I caught it.’ That may still not be the correct way that he’s looking at it or the actual detailed way. He became more of a communicator with the quarterbacks and I think that was part of his production increase – how to look at it that way from a passing game standpoint.”
(Just wanted to ask you about two of the young guys – with TE Chris Myarick what skills did you see last year that intrigued you and what about TE Bryce Sterk was it that made you want to make him your defensive end to tight end project?) – “First with Chris – Chris is a very good pro. He comes in to work and is prepared. He’s a physical player. He’s worked to maintain a higher weight to be more productive as a point-of-attack tight end, but he also has some of those off-the-line characteristics to be able to do some two-back stuff whether it’s slicing back on a defensive end or insert for a ‘backer or even pass protection. He runs through his mistakes, but he corrects them and moves on so we like how Chris practiced last year and he practiced with good effort and those are the things that we look for. Then on Bryce – from Bryce’s standpoint, this is a physical guy. He’s a strong, heavy-handed guy that obviously there’s some technique things that we’re working on and we’re trying to have the attitude of improve every day. We know that no spring for a rookie that’s transitioning is a very difficult position to be in, but he’s open to learning. Being an offensive player that played defense, there’s a good perspective there just like from a coaching standpoint if you coached defense, coaching on offense. Those things can help him with his blocks – knowing exactly ‘hey, this defensive end is not going to rip inside. He’s going to be a contain player.’ So those are subtle things that can help him and like I said, he’s a bigger tight end that we’re going to have the size technique especially starting with the blocking first.”
