Josh Boyer – September 7, 2020
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Monday, September 7, 2020
Defensive Coordinator Josh Boyer
(Going into Week 1 of any season – not specifically this team but any season – what is the level of uncertainty about how good of a defense you have and what are the things you’re particularly interested in finding out about this week? What do you think you’ll really find out the most?) – “I would say yeah, going into any season, I think that’s pretty accurate. You work your way through training camp. You try to do as many things as you can to get players ready, but like I’ve said earlier, the defense will evolve over time and we’re going to try to put them in position to make plays and obviously it’s going to come down to execution and fundamentals. It’s really an unprecedented experience this year because there’s no game action before we go out there. So our focus has really been on fundamentals and I think over time, the chemistry, the camaraderie, the fundamentals, the play; all of it will improve. We don’t look to be playing our best football in September. Week to week, we’re looking for improvement. So I think that there’s going to be a little bit of we’ll see, but our focus is on getting ready to go this week and go up there and get a win. That’s what our focus is, but yeah, there’s definitely some unknown going into it.”
(We were made aware I guess of the DB point system game that was going on in the DB room. I wanted to see if you could update us on the winner of that if you know what’s going on there.) – “Our thing is defensively, we preach about fundamentals. We preach about the takeaways, turnovers and we work pretty hard on that. And really for all the coaches, whatever way they can motivate the players to get better out of them, I’m all for. As far as how those things work and all of that stuff, I don’t really pay attention to it. I just kind of really look at the results on the field and I know our guys are working hard towards those things, so I don’t have an answer for you on that one.”
(I wanted to ask you a question about Offensive Coordinator Chan Gailey. Did you really know him too much before the hire and how has it been like matching wits with him in practice?) – “Personally, I did not know him; but obviously with his history with the Jets and the Bills, going against him for a good chunk of years, I was familiar with how he uses players and I’ve always kind of respected him from afar, and getting to meet him in person has really been awesome. We’ve had some really good conversations about football. He’s a great football coach and more importantly he’s a really good man, so he’s really been a good guy for me to be around. It’s been a great experience that way and that’s kind of been our relationship.”
(The pressure that you’re going to be able to put on quarterbacks. I know a lot of it is scheme-driven, but do you feel like you have defensive ends, pass rushers that can disengage from tackle one-on-one and get after the quarterback?) – “Again, I think pressure, it comes in a variety of forms. Some of it will be individual effort. Some of it will be team-oriented – scheme-oriented – but we’ll take it any way we can get it. Obviously ultimately, I think all defenses are trying to put pressure on the quarterback. I think they’re trying to put pressure on the offensive line. I think sometimes you can do that by disguises, alignments and sometimes you can do it by matchups. And again, we’re working pretty hard to put our guys in a position to succeed and again, we’re excited about Sunday and we’re looking forward to it and we’ll kind of see what the results are there.”
(Head Coach Brian Flores informed us of all the captains; but on defense what do you think it says about the impact that two specifically with LB Elandon Roberts and LB Kyle Van Noy that they’ve made on their teammates in the short amount of time that they’ve been here to not just be voted on that but to be looked on highly with the defense?) – “I would say with all three of our guys – Bobby (McCain), Kyle (Van Noy) and Elandon (Roberts) – I think those are all three great candidates, which obviously you mentioned the players voted for those guys. I think all of our players – all of our coaches – need to exhibit leadership on a daily basis. I think these guys have kind of stood out in some of those roles and again, everything has kind of been – they came in and the guys that were here, it was a welcoming event for them when they were coming in and for the guys that were here. I would say there’s a lot of conversations between our players. They worked hard in the spring when we weren’t able to see them. These guys, they reached out to many players on our defense and tried to develop relationships that way and I think ultimately it’s going to help us as a football team, and it says a lot about those three guys in particular, but there’s many others. You can go – (Davon) Godchaux, Eric Rowe – there’s a lot of guys that took it upon themselves to reach out to guys when everybody’s kind of quarantined off with the pandemic and they’re trying to build those relationships.”
(How do you think Patriots QB Cam Newton is going to look in Patriots Offensive Coordinator Josh McDaniels’ offense?) – “I will say this: Cam Newton is an extremely talented player. Obviously we’ve seen that for a decade in the NFL. He’s very talented. He’s got a big arm. He can make all the throws. He can run if he needs to run and I would say Josh McDaniels for – you call it almost two decades – he’s been a solid play caller in this league. So I know this: I know that Cam is a good player and I know Josh is a good coach, so I’m sure there will be a good marriage there and like New England will do, they’re going to try to get the best out of their players and put them in position to succeed, and Josh has shown the ability to do that year after year. So I think it will probably be a good marriage and be smooth for them, and we’ll just have to see what it is. There’s no film on it. There’s no tape on it, and again it’s going to have to go back for us, we need to focus on our fundamentals and what we’re trying to do; but we know we’re facing a really good quarterback and a really good coordinator.”
(When we spoke to Offensive Coordinator Chan Gailey a few minutes ago, he had mentioned that he’s going to be working games from upstairs. I’m guessing you’re going to be downstairs, but I’d like you to confirm that; and also in terms of getting ready to call plays what have you done to prepare yourself or are there drills that you’ve done or how are you getting ready to call plays in such a short amount of time?) – “Yeah, I’ll be down on the field. And I would say I probably have got as good a ‘school’ as anybody because for I don’t know, the past – whether it was (Lions Head Coach) Matt Patricia or ‘Flo’ (Head Coach Brian Flores) – I was basically up in the box and I was kind of going through the game with them as games were going on. I would say from getting ready to call plays in the game – like you sit and you watch a lot of film and you go through, okay, there’s a lot of things that you can manipulate the film to just give you down-and-distance, personnel. You can create games, which we’ve obviously done. I’ve sat through there. There’s guys on our defensive staff that have put those together and we go through it. We call that way with what you think New England’s going to do this week and stuff. And it’s not all right, it’s not all wrong; but it’s just a way to prepare and all the guys that I’ve been around over the years, I know they’ve done that and that’s just how we kind of prepare. You’ll go on film, you’ll make the calls and then you’ll be like, ‘okay, well this is something they can do in this situation.’ But again like I said, they have a new quarterback. There could be a lot of unknowns out there, but we’ll be prepared and ready to go and make sure that we’re fundamentally sound on stuff. And like I said earlier when I was talking with you guys, there’s not going to be a lot of surprises in the calls that are coming out there. Our players are going to know what’s getting called in certain situations and give them the ability to go out there and play fast, and again, it’s going to go down to fundamentals – getting off blocks and tackling, good eye discipline in coverage – all those things are going to show up huge, I would say, the first month of the season.”
(You mentioned how things might not be sort of perfect in the first game. We would like perfection, but I’m wondering how much patience you might have for what I think we’ll see, which is maybe a few extra missed tackles?) – “Again, I think this is why you try to put your team together with mentally and physically tough people. The mental aspect of it is defensively, we’re going to face some adversity this year. There’s a lot of good players in the league. There’s a lot of good coaches. They’re going to make plays, too, and the key is how do you handle that when those things happen? We try to simulate it in practice. We try to put our players in situations that are tough for them and we try to set them up with every drill possible; but until you get out in the game situation and those things happen – but you’ve got to move on to the next play. If it’s good, bad or indifferent, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to move onto the next play until the clock says zero because we’ve all seen strange things happen in games. You’ve always got a chance and you could have a lead or you could be behind, and it could go either way. We’ve all seen that, so I don’t think you – you don’t hit the panic button. You know things are going to happen. You try to address it and you go to the next play, and that’s kind of the approach that we take with our players whether it’s good, bad or indifferent. If you get a sack on second down, okay, that’s great. If you go out there on third down and you have a mental error, that’s not a very good set of downs for you. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s good or bad. You just really, you move onto the next play and kind of train our guys that way and our guys are kind of built that way, so that’s kind of how we approach that.”
