Josh Boyer – December 29, 2022
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Thursday, December 29, 2022
Defensive Coordinator Josh Boyer
(Do you have any sense yet whether LB Bradley Chubb can be an effective edge rusher playing with a huge thing on his hands?) – “Well, I think he’s dealing with a number of issues, and he’s working hard to get to a position where he can help us. So I would say we’re in the day-to-day category there. Obviously there’s things that you can do to help certain situations if you’re limited with one hand, but I know he’s working hard to get back and we’ll kind of see where that falls at the end of the week.”
(A lot has changed since the first time you played the Patriots in Week 1. I remember even before then, I was talking to LB Elandon Roberts saying that the core of our defense is going to be what it is but obviously you have to evolve from year to year. How do you think this unit has evolved, especially given the circumstances of injuries?) – “Yeah, I think there’s a lot of similarities, as far as schematically and game planning – whether the results are what we want or not, I think the similarities have been we’re always trying to game plan opponents, we’re always trying to take something away and attack something. I think that’s always been the case. We’ve had some guys that have gotten more experience as the year’s went on. Obviously Kader (Kohou), Keion (Crossen), (Verone) McKinley, Elijah (Campbell) is out there from time to time. But I would say the majority – and the front shifts a little bit based on people that you lose. And at the end of the day, you look at what you have available to you and what the offense is doing, and again, it goes right back to what can we take away? What can we try to attack? And what’s the best way to try to win the game?”
(I know that you want to stick to your core philosophies. But in a game where you know your starting quarterback probably isn’t going to be playing for you, do you kind of ask more of the defense?) – “No, I think our job is pretty much always the same. I mean, and a lot of times, you’re so focused on your side of the ball and your responsibility that sometimes you have very little idea of what’s going on on the other side. Now, there’s sometimes when score will dictate or time in the game will dictate how you would play. So you’re very aware situationally. But at the end of the day, regardless of what the offense is doing one way or the other, our job is to get off the field and get them the ball. And that is kind of the way we approach it and look at it.”
(When you look at the pass rush trio of LB Bradley Chubb, LB Jaelan Phillips, and LB Melvin Ingram, how do you know whether they’ve been sufficiently disruptive? How do you know when they’ve had a successful game?) – “I think there’s a number of things that go into that. The obvious thing that everybody looks at is usually sacks or quarterback hits in those situations. Sometimes you got to look at what the offense is doing, how quick the ball is coming out. Are there batted balls in those situations? Are we close to that? Are you forcing a quarterback to make a good throw, a good catch. Week in and week out, you’re never 100 percent where every play for you is good. So you got to be able to handle a little bit of adversity, I guess you’d call it. But the reality of it is what you’re trying to do is not give them anything easy. You’re not trying to have guys running wide open in space. You’re not trying to have gaping gaps open in the run game. But when you’re competitive and coverage and they make a good throw and good catch, that happens. When you need to stop them for a three-yard gain and it’s a two-yard gain, and they lean in – they’re good players on the other side of the ball too. They make plays. That’s part of the game. But the reality of it is over the course of a 60-minute game, if you make it tough and difficult, and don’t beat yourself, I think that puts you in the best position to win.”
(When your game plan for a physical runner like from RB Rhamondre Stevenson, what are some of the key teaching points to making sure your players get him down?) – “We’ve faced a lot of good backs all year, whether it’s (Nick) Chubb, (Dalvin) Cook. It’s the same. You got to get all 11 guys involved in the run game. We got to get all 11 guys to the ball. They’re going to do things to try to create angles on our front seven. They’re going to do things to try to stress our overhangs in the C-gap and on the perimeter. So it’s all 11 guys involved and we got to do a good job of tackling, and we got to do a good job of pursuit, so guys can take shots and ultimately get the ball carrier on the ground.”
(It seems that one reason why coaches blitz – there are several reasons. But one reason is if you got to the quarterback with four-man rushes consistently, a team might need to blitz as much. Have you gotten to the quarterback with four-man rushes as much as you would have hoped this season? And if not, beyond DE Emmanuel Ogbah’s injury, is there and sense as to why you haven’t?) – “I would say a lot of times, when you’re running pressures, you’re trying to run pressures to beat protections. You just don’t run them in there and go, ‘Okay, well, we’re sending an extra guy, but he’s going to run into this guy.’ You try to set it up so where you can beat the protection. And then obviously, you have base calls, where you drop more guys in coverage. Traditionally, I would say most teams rush four, and a lot of times, it depends on what the offense is doing. Are they taking a five-, a seven-step drop? Is the quarterback getting the ball out on time? Is he throwing it off a second hitch? I think there’s times when you have good coverage and the quarterback is holding on the ball a little bit and you don’t get there, those are times that you’d be disappointed. There’s other times when you rush and you may win on a rush, and it’s like, ‘okay, the ball is out quick.’ I think there’s so many variables into that. And the reality of it is, you’re trying to create pressure on the offensive line and the quarterback, and you got to do a good job of marrying the coverage with the front. You’re trying to do that over a 60-minute period to ultimately give yourself a chance to win the game. I don’t think you sit there and reflect on the whole season. That’s not how it works. Today, for example, we go out there and we practice. It won’t be perfect. But what’s going to happen is every rep that we take, it’s an opportunity to learn. Right, wrong or indifferent, whatever happened, you’re going to learn from that opportunity. And you’re just gaining information as you go. Ultimately, what you’re trying to do, is put the players in the best position to succeed, and you’re trying to get them to understand things that they can anticipate so they can play faster and play better. I mean, you do that on a daily basis. And that really goes until the clock hits zeros on Sunday. And then once it hits zeros on Sunday, we talked about this before, there’s probably a 10-minute period, and then after that, you’re on to the next opponent. So it’s not like, you sit there and go, ‘ah, this, that.’ You try to learn from it and you move forward. You forge forward. I don’t know if that’s hard to understand, but like that’s really what happens. Like on a daily basis, like yesterday, whether we’re in the meeting room, or we’re in the walkthrough – and it’s not perfect. Sometimes we miss this or we missed that and then you go ‘okay, we correct this.’ And then at the end of the week, you make a decision going, ‘Alright, we didn’t really have this. We probably shouldn’t do that because it doesn’t put us in the best position to succeed.’ Even though on paper, it might schematically be a good thing.”
(So it’s not been the case this year where you said, ‘Damn our four-man rush is just not getting to the quarterback enough.’ That hasn’t been something that’s irked you this year?) – “No. I’m not wired that way. That’s what I’m trying to explain. Say maybe we’re a hair off on our technique or on our coverage, you don’t go, ‘oh, man, if we’d have done this, this would have been that.’ You’d be like, ‘okay, can we teach this better, can we coach it better, and how do we get better for the next week?’ And that process doesn’t stop until the clock hits zero of that given week. And then you move on. And then obviously each week, you’re trying to do what you can to win the game and put yourself in position to keep playing. And, stats, this, that – ultimately, you’re just trying to find things that the players feel comfortable with, that we feel comfortable with against the opponent, and that we feel like gives us the best chance to win. All that other stuff, to me, that would be a waste of time. I mean I heard a long time ago probably a pretty good saying. ‘If you’re always living in the past, okay, that’s guilt or depression. And if you’re living in the future, that’s anxiety or worry. And anywhere in the future or the past is insanity, if you’re staying in those.’ So I think I think to be in the present, you learn from the past, you see how you can get it better and you just take it day by day. And I think that’s how we look at it. I don’t look at like, ‘Okay, this is that, this is this.’ I mean, you look at ways you can improve everything, whether it’s four-man rush, whether it’s a pressure, how can we beat schemes, how can we play the best base techniques better versus the run? I think you look at all those things. But again, to me, that’d be guilt or depression if you’re sitting there looking at all that other stuff. And then if you’re worried about the future, then that’s anxiety. And I don’t think that’s any way to live.”
(Having said that, and living in the moment, are your heads spinning a little bit as coaches because you are on a four-game losing streak and you were 8-3 and life was better at that moment. What is the mentality of the coaching staff right now?) – “I think we’re excited for the opportunity in front of us. Does losing suck? Yes. One-hundred percent. Does playing on Christmas and having to leave early Christmas morning, leaving your daughter there and then going to play a game and losing the game, does that suck? Yeah. One-hundred percent. Like that isn’t good. Losing – the coaching staff puts 18 hours in a day trying to make sure that we get things right. Yeah, it doesn’t feel good. It’s a gut punch. If you sit there – and I guess that’s the point I’m trying to get across. If you sit there and dwell on those things, I really think that’s a losing mentality – probably not just for football coaching, probably life in general. We’re excited for the opportunity this week, and I mean, we are working hard. Our focus is going to be to have a good – we’ve already had one meeting. We got another meeting coming up. We’re going to have a good meeting there. We’re going to have a good walkthrough. Then we’re going to have a good practice. And the reality of it is we’re striving for perfection, which we know we’re going to fall short. But the reality of it is we can learn from whatever mistakes we make. And then ultimately, as a coaching staff, you just got to make decisions going, okay, these calls, this structure puts us in the best position to win these ones even though maybe, schematically on paper, it looks good. Maybe we don’t have it. I think that’s how you approach it. Whether you’re winning or losing, we literally had that conversation – it’s the same week in and week out. It is. And then the reality of it is, I understand you guys have a job to do and stories to write and things like that. But when you’re in it, that’s part of your job is to block all that out. And it really doesn’t matter at the task at hand. I couldn’t be any happier with the opportunity we have this week.”
(As the opposing DC, what stands out to you by QB Mac Jones?) – “He’s a competitive player. Obviously, I think there’s a lot of things that you see on film that they’re well-schooled in, and they’re looking for certain opportunities. Obviously, the Vegas game comes to mind. Vegas was showing a max blitz look, which you knew that they were going to pop out of that blitz, based on the safety, so he saw the safety, he checked the play. It happened twice in the game. One time they hit him for a big play, the other time they missed the throw. Both plays should have been touchdowns. His awareness and understanding of things that are going on in the game, I think are at a high level, I think he has some escape ability in the pocket. He keeps his eyes downfield. I think they have guys that have made plays all year. I think he’s willing to throw the ball to all of them. And, then he has the ability – you show pressure one side, he’ll check the play. He usually gets them in the right plays. You don’t see them running into a down safety very often. I think the things that they’re doing over there schematically, you got to be very careful of showing them something that you’ve done over and over again, because they’ll probably have something schemed up for it. And I think Vegas, that game was a perfect example of it. I know they got one big gain out of it but the reality of it is they probably should have scored on it both times.”
