Matt Burke – November 16, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke
(I’m sure you’ll get questions today about stopping the run but on a different issue, as far as the pass rush goes, 16 sacks in nine games and 26th in the league. With the quality of defensive line that you have, shouldn’t it be better and why hasn’t it been better?) – “I think it’s the same story every time I come up here. I think situationally, we haven’t had a chance to really cut it loose. I think games haven’t dictated us to truly cut it free and go rush and stuff. We’re always either in 50/50 downs or stuff, so that’s a whole team, a whole defense thing for us to address that. I just don’t feel like we’ve had opportunities, true rush opportunities, where we can just cut it loose and let those guys go actually do work for extended periods of time. No one played well the other night. Let’s not hide that fact, but I think we’ve got to do a better job of giving those guys chances to truly go rush.”
(How difficult has it been to pick up the pieces from that?) – “That’s not an easy game to swallow. Two things: one, I appreciate the schedule Adam (Gase) put together where we actually brought the guys back in on Tuesday afternoon. I didn’t sleep. We got back here (after the game Monday) and I just went right to work. We had a chance to really look at it. As a defense, we watched the entire second half together as a whole group. Again, it wasn’t easy to look at it; but there are things that had to be addressed, so we did that together as a group. Honestly, second-fold, things happen in mysterious ways I guess. Not having the bye week, to me, honestly helps us. If we had to sit two weeks and chew on that for a ‘bye weekend’ and not play for another two weeks … As a coach, it always helps being able to dive back in to ‘We’ve got to go back to work here and we can’t wallow in it. We’ve got to correct what we need to correct and get things adjusted.’ We went right back to it in the morning Tuesday and after the players were gone Tuesday and all day yesterday. We had to start really getting into our game plan for this week. In hindsight, having a game this weekend and having a short week gives us a chance to move on and let’s go play another game and hopefully get things righted.”
(How optimistic are you that will happen?) – “Good. I’m a pretty confident person and pretty positive. I think we have to address some things; but I always tell the guys that to me, the greatest thing about this league is that every week you have another opportunity. Every week is a separate entity and there’s different challenges and different issues. You don’t get a lot of second chances in life but you get 16 chances to keep playing and keep trying to get things right. I’m excited to get back to work and have a chance to get things back on track.”
(Being in nickel as often as you were at Carolina, did that have any impact on the ability to stop the run?) – “I don’t think so. The run game stuff, I felt like we were trying to take the ball out of the quarterback’s hands, especially early on. He had the one long run. The quarterback draws, they were stuff … They didn’t kill us. They broke out a couple and obviously the long run when they were backed up. That was a 70-yard run. The one at the end of the game, we were in 4-minute mode and missed like eight tackles. That’s 150 yards of offense right there in two runs. That’s kind of how it has been all year in terms of being in a sub defense and having to play run against sub defense. I don’t think that really affected anything.”
(Bucs QB Ryan Fitzpatrick instead of QB Jameis Winston, how does that change things for you?) – “From what I’ve seen … I actually coached at Harvard during Ryan’s junior year, so I’ve known Ryan for a long time. I haven’t seen their offense, in terms of schematically, really change drastically. Ryan has always been a – how do I say this – sneaky athlete. He’s underestimated. He’s not afraid to pull it down and he moves around really well in the pocket. He’s somewhat unpredictable in the way that he escapes in those sort of things. There’s still an element of the run game. Even when Winston was playing, they weren’t a huge, truly zone-read quarterback run team. That wasn’t necessarily part of their design. Schematically, it’s the same. Their skill players are still the same and who they’re trying to get the ball to and those sort of things. I don’t think there’s a ton of difference, to be honest with you, in terms of schematically and how we’re preparing.”
(How often do you watch the game back as a group and what do you hope to accomplish?) – “It’s kind of a fine line. Usually I will pull out some plays that I feel like we need to hit. I’m always conscientious of giving the coaches … It’s hard, especially on defense. There are different issues that have to be corrected a lot of times at the different levels. Usually I’ll pull out either good or bad plays that I want to make sure we all see and hit, and then I’ll break it up and let the coaches really kind of get into the details of their position groups. To be honest with you, I felt that one of our issues – Monday night and possibly in the last couple weeks – there’s been a little disconnect I felt between the different levels of the defense. I felt it was important for everybody to be in there together and talking it out. I just didn’t feel the communication was there. I didn’t feel the understanding of how the front fits with the linebackers and how the coverage in the back end fits the linebackers and that sort of thing. I felt it was important this week to really take most of the meeting together. I’ll sit in the room. Again, we all own that. I told those guys. I put all of the stats up on the board. None of them are pretty. Not a single one. I said ‘We own this together. Every man in this room has a piece of this and we’ve got to get it sorted out because I feel like we’re not playing together as a unit, which we were better at earlier in the year.’ Normally I don’t spend a ton of time, because I like those guys to be able to hone in on the details of their position groups and there are coaching points that have to be made on a micro scale; but I just felt that this was time for us to really sit in there and everyone needed to understand how all of the pieces are fitting together or how they haven’t been fitting together. We pretty much spent the whole meeting together as a defense this week.”
(You had high praise for your young cornerbacks about a month ago. The last month, at least to our eyes, they haven’t played as well as they were at the beginning of the season. Is that in your eyes as well?) – “I think nobody has played well. There is no positive to take out of last week, so let’s dig in and start there. I don’t want to blame specific players. I think it’s two-fold. ‘Tank’ (Cordrea Tankersley) is a rookie and he’s going to have his ups and downs. That’s kind of built in. Then ‘X’ (Xavien Howard), it’s funny. ‘X’s’ next step for me has to be locating the ball and getting the ball out, because if you actually pause the film, it’s not like you look at what ‘X’ is doing and saying ‘Man, he’s just getting roasted all over the place.’ He’s in good coverage, he’s just having trouble locating and getting balls out. I think that’s sort of his next step. A little bit schematically, I put a lot on those guys. We put them in some spots to play coverage and some of the challenges last week of the multifaceted run game, we kind of left those guys isolated a little bit. Part of that is schematic that I can help those guys a little bit more and just take some of the straight burden off those guys of just being isolated as much. I don’t think it’s been better or worse in terms of specifically to (Tankersley and Howard) in terms of the last week or two. I think it’s just every week we’re aware there are challenges that every guy has to face and those guys are going to have their ups and downs and we’ll keep working through them.”
(On the screen touchdown to Panthers WR Devin Funchess, our understanding is the quarterback is at the line, he obviously knows a blitz is coming, he’s making a change. Is there time for players on the field to back out of that blitz?) – “There is. We didn’t have that call up in that specific play. That was a good call against the blitz we had run. We do have audibles where we can check out if we feel something like that, but that wasn’t a play that we had that option in. There are cases when we show pressure and we have the ability to bail out of it if we feel like they’re checking to something to beat the pressure; but we didn’t have that up in that instance. It was a good call for them (and) a bad call for me.”
(You only have three interceptions. Is that part of what you were talking about before? You just haven’t been able to cut loose?) – “A little bit. I think that ties in. Again, I think interceptions, part of it comes from those sort of situations that are the same situations you’re going to get sacks in. When you know the team has to throw, whether they’re down or whatnot, or they’re trying to force throws in to tighter coverage because they have to get back in the game or whatever the situation is – 2-minute modes and all of those sort of things. So that’s part of it. Again, some of the last couple weeks we played matchup coverage stuff. A lot of times your interceptions come more from vision defenses, where you can see the ball being thrown and break on things, and we haven’t been in that as much the last couple of weeks, just some of the stuff schematically that’s been dictated. Part of it is scheme, part of it is a game situation. Again, we had two more chances last week. I know I said it in here last week but T.J. (McDonald) would have made a hell of a play on that if he gets his hands underneath it and the first drive of the second half, Bobby (McCain) kind of distracts it and it tips right back to Reshad (Jones) and hits off his chest too. We’re having chances when we get them. You’re going to get … Even a good quarterback is going to give you a couple of chances a game, and we’ve got to make them. We haven’t been doing that.”
