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Jakeem Grant – November 5, 2020 Download PDF version

Thursday, November 5, 2020

WR Jakeem Grant

(With WR Isaiah Ford traded, have you done any more work in the slot this week than you typically have for the first six weeks of the season?) – “I’ve been working at receiver and just doing exactly what the coaches have planned for me. That’s about it.”

(We had a chance to talk to Cardinals Head Coach Kliff Kingsbury the other day. He talked about how you’re the most dynamic player he’s seen with the ball in his hands. He also talked about how at the end of your time at Texas Tech you had a little bit of a falling out, maybe a suspension or something. Can you just talk about what you know about Kliff Kingsbury and sort of the course of your relationship?) – “He’s a great guy on and off the field. Yeah, I did go through a little suspension or whatever, but he was there with me every step of the way, just telling me, ‘hey, we need you back, we need you to do this and do whatever you can to get back.’ And that just speaks volumes about what type of guy he is. I still talk to him to this day. We have a great relationship and he always asks me how my family is doing and I ask him how he’s doing and everything – what’s going on in his life. So like I said, he’s an all-around great guy.”

(I have another question I’d like to ask you about WR Preston Williams after this, but Cardinals Head Coach Kliff Kingsbury was also complimentary about how you were able to handle school, football, your family life all in college as well. Just what was that experience like for you?) – “It was great actually. It was tough at the beginning, I’m not going to lie. That’s what caused the suspension – the birth of my twins. When you’re a college student and you find out you’re having twins, it’s going to be hard for anybody, especially as a college student. But like I said, I worked my butt off and I was going through and I was the type of guy that didn’t ask for help and ‘Coach King’ (Kliff Kingsbury) was like, ‘hey man, you can ask for help and go get tutoring, do this and do that; we’ve got people in the academics part that’ll help you out.’ So what I did is I went and did that and passed all my classes so I could get back on the field.”

(I wanted to ask you about WR Preston Williams. We kind of – and I know fans out there, too – we ride the highs when he makes good catches and ride the lows when he has a couple drops there. What can you say about a player like him who’s still developing, still really young, has a lot to improve but also seems to have a bright future?) – “The ‘Unicorn’ (Preston Williams) – he’s good. He’s all-around a great receiver. It’s the NFL. You’re going to drop balls, you’re going to do this; it’s about making the next one and you might have two drops in there. If he went and had 150 yards, nobody would have looked at those drops. So like I said, if you’re a receiver, receivers are going to drop balls from time to time. You’ve just got to make sure it’s not all the time that you’re dropping balls so all it is is focus. Like I said, he’s a young receiver and he’s doing good. He’s got a great chance in the future to be a dominant – one of the best receivers in this league.”

(First, congrats on the Player of the Week Award. I wanted to ask you about the offense in general. Given that you’re going against a high-powered offense in the Cardinals and you know what’s happening with your running back position having lost RB Myles Gaskin, how important is it for you and QB Tua Tagovailoa to get the passing game in gear this week?) – “We know it’s going to be – the Cardinals put up numbers and we know that we’ve got to go out there and execute to the tee. We stayed after practice. We got our timing right. All of us as receivers, we stayed after practice with Tua (Tagovailoa) just to get our timing right, so we know that we’ve got to go out there and dominate. We can’t have a game like we had last week.”

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