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Isaiah Ford – September 11, 2020 Download PDF version

Friday, September 11, 2020

WR Isaiah Ford

(Fourth year in the NFL now and this is going to be your first opening day. I want to just ask a guy that’s gone through so much in your career so far, what does that mean to you?) – “It means a lot. Really the biggest thing is that through all the adversity that I’ve been through, I’ve kept my head down and just kept working, taking each day one day at a time, one rep at a time, one meeting a time and trying to get better and put one foot in front of the other, and just keep going.”

(I wanted to ask you about the process of making that video that you guys released yesterday. What were those discussions like? Where did the poem come from? Who helped author it and what kind of statement do you think it was intended to say?) – “We all as a team – as a whole – we got together and we kind of discussed how we wanted to handle the situation and everything, and I think that the video pretty much portrays everything that we’re asking and what we’re trying to work towards.”

(Racial injustice is a very divisive subject in the country right now. How unified is the locker room on this?) – “I think that we’ve all done a really good job at discussing the things that are going on off the field as a whole and working together to attack that in the ways that we want to and then when it’s time to work, we go out and we get to work.”

(I was curious if you guys discussed whether to have a political component in the video as far as collectively endorsing a candidate or do you feel like that’s just too much of a minefield to go down that road?) – “I think we all talked together as a team as a whole in-house, and we worked together, put the video together and I think that the things that are in the video are what we were trying to portray.”

(Your production kind of took off late in the season last year and that concluded in that Week 17 game up in New England. How can that success late last year kind of be applied to this game as far as how you approach attacking those defensive backs?) – “I think it was just big for me for my confidence individually, kind of having that success towards the back end of the year. I (was) just trying to build on it going into the offseason. We’re going against a really talented group in New England. Their secondary was probably No. 1 in every category last year statistically, so it’s going to be a tough task. I’m excited to go out there.”

(I wanted to ask you, you’re praised so much about your intelligence and the savviness that you have in terms of route running and understanding the offense. Where did that come from?) – “I think it just comes from being a student of the game. I’ve been a fan of tons of receivers that were really good route runners back in their time. So just watching film – whether it was Chad Johnson or even guys that play today like Keenan Allen or Davante Adams – so just watching those guys, watching their game, taking things that I think I could add to my game and then kind of building on and trying to make it my own.”

(With this offense, what’s the biggest challenge about learning it? We hear a lot of times that the coach and even QB Ryan Fitzpatrick says that receivers get an opportunity to adjust their routes in the concept of the offense. What’s the biggest challenge of doing that?) – “I think that really it’s just about being on the same page. Because there’s so much freedom in certain areas, we still have to see the same thing and feel the same thing that ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) is thinking as well, so as long as we can align our creativity with what he’s thinking in the pocket and what he’s seeing on the field, then I think it’ll be a beautiful thing.”

(I wanted to know if you were able to watch the game last night and if there was anything that caught your attention and secondly, on Sunday when you guys get on the field, at what point do you think you forget about everything that is going on and you can only concentrate on football?) – “Usually when I leave the facility when it comes to watching TV, I kind of try to stay away from football just because I’m so consumed with it. So I turned it on, but I tried not to actively watch. When I say ‘actively watch,’ I mean what I would do or what we were expecting to do in those situations and certain things like that, and just try to enjoy the game. So I kind of tried to watch it more like a fan than a student, if that makes sense. And then at the end of the day, our job is to play football, so we have a job to do. Of course there’s things outside in the exterior that are going on in the world that we want to help in. We try to do things in that nature as well, but when it’s time to play football we have to focus on playing football.”

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