Matt Burke – November 29, 2018
Download PDF version
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke
(We’ve seen some good from LB Raekwon McMillan and we’ve seen some when he may have been a step slow – please tell us if that is unfair – but have there been some instances where maybe speed or instincts haven’t been quite what you wanted? I know he’s still young obviously and that’s a factor.) – “I wouldn’t necessarily say that … Honestly, you’re probably going to think I’m crazy here. Sometimes I think he’s too fast in a reactionary sense. Sometimes he reacts to things too quick and I think he gets himself out of position sometimes. I spend a lot of time talking to Raekwon about just slowing down. He sees one thing and he’s gone, so some times he overreacts to the play-action passes or even the run game. He sees a run and starts going 100 miles per hour to get there and then when he cuts back, he overruns things and those sorts of things. I actually a lot of times try to tell him not to slow down in terms of a running factor but just slow down in his reads a little bit to give him that half a step to diagnose and things like that. He was very proud the other day. I know you guys saw the other night the Houston game was on and Lamar Miller broke that 97-yard run and he was talking about he caught him on the one in our game. He was pretty proud of himself for that. (laughter) Some of the stuff … He’s a rookie and I treat him as such and he probably doesn’t like that; but I think with him it’s just some of the stuff I don’t think he’s seen as he’s building that database of plays and things that he’s seeing more and more. Situations that he maybe hasn’t been put into before, as he builds that experience under his belt, I think he’s getting better and better. His production has gone up for us from a tackle standpoint in the last month or so. I think he’s trending in the right direction and I don’t think his physical ability is going to hold him back from doing the things we’re asking him to do.”
(Some players when things don’t go there way, like LB Raekwon McMillan, can get a little down on themselves. He seems very, very uber confident in himself. How much does that help him?) – “Yeah, obviously … He wants to get better and he’s very coachable. I think everything, even if he makes a mistake or something happens, and you get in his ear about it and (Assistant Head Coach/Linebackers) Frank (Bush) is with him all of the time, he takes it as a learning experience. It’s not like ‘I can’t do this.’ It’s like ‘Okay, that’s how you respond to this situation or play or whatever it is.’ I don’t know what his numbers are, but he’s had a decent amount of production for us. We’ve had about … Kiko (Alonso) has had a bunch of tackles. There’s about four or five other guys that have – a group – that has a bunch of tackles together, between T.J. (McDonald), Raekwon, ‘Bake’ (Jerome Baker) and ‘Mink’ (Minkah Fitzpatrick). He’s had some production for us. I don’t see any reason to be discouraged about him and I don’t think he feels that way either.”
(With that third-and-9 scramble play, what happened with Colts QB Andrew Luck?) – “At the end of the game last week? Yeah, we had him in the grasp. He got out. I don’t know what happened.”
(On the back end.) – “Yeah, we were in a zone coverage and we kind of bluffed out into a zone coverage and we had them matched up. We caused him to hold the ball for a little. He didn’t have his first read and he pulled it down. We had a chance to obviously put him on the ground in a sack situation. It’s just sometimes when you’re in zone coverage and the play gets extended and the quarterback gets out of the pocket to some extent, you try to find matchups. Now at that point, you have to matchup with a guy in your zone. When you’re in a zone, you try to hold your area but once the play breaks down and the routes are now converting into other things, everyone has to try to grab on and sometimes … The guy kind of slipped out. We had two guys in the same zone and as Luck broke out, the one guy kind of drifted behind the backside. Obviously with that play, you’re playing a coverage that is designed to … We accomplished what we wanted with the call. We got him to hold it, he didn’t have his first look, the rush had a chance to get there. We’ve got to finish that and get him on the ground. Once it starts becoming a broken play, now you’re in … There’s a little bit of chaos trying to match up and find the bodies in your zone. We had two guys in one zone, so we grabbed one of them and the other guy leaked back through and we weren’t able to latch on to him. It’s frustrating obviously, but we have to get him down when we have the chance to get him down. Obviously they’ve had a lot of success protecting the quarterback and when you have a chance just to put him on the ground, we’ve got to take advantage of them. We did a pretty good job rushing him most of the game and got after him a little bit, but we have to finish that play there.”
(DE Andre Branch said that he’s been held all year. Is that a fair representation?) – “(laughter) Branchie. He’s a colorful man. I don’t know, probably. You get frustrated. Again obviously, we put a lot on our front and having those guys rush. I think it’s probably a little frustration from the production total from the sack point of view setting in a bit. Everyone gets held. I’m sure he’s been held a bunch, but that’s just a part of the game. There is no use complaining about it. Everyone get held. It can get frustrating for him. I know he’s been working hard. Branch has been doing everything we’ve been asking him to do. I thought he’s rushed a lot better this year than he did last year. He’s been very productive in terms of just performing as a rusher. He just hasn’t been able to finish things, so I’m sure there is a little frustration with that. I try not to spend a lot of time worrying about penalty calls.”
(If I told you that you’d have 18 sacks at this point of the season, your response would be what?) – “I wouldn’t have a response. I try not to get hung up on that stuff. Every statistic is situational. There’s a lot of stats I’d like to look different right now than they do.”
(That’s a unit where you have a lot of accomplished players and salary.) – “I don’t pay salaries. (laughter) But yeah, we’re built for that. I’m not trying to make excuses. Those guys get a lot of attention and probably one of the most underrated injuries for us this year has been Will Hayes. Having such an effective interior pass rusher to take some of that attention off the edge … A lot of our pass rush is on the edge. They’re getting chipped. I mean Cam (Wake) gets chipped every play. We just kind of account for it now and build in stuff to help him deal with those things. I try not to get caught up in sack totals. If you interviewed (Defensive Line Coach Kris) Kocurek, he probably gets more frustrated with that than I do. For us, the pass rush is about affecting the passer, affecting the play. We feel that if teams are focusing attention on chipping guys and keeping guys in to protect, that’s cutting down on players that are out in the route and those sort of things. We try to look at it as how it affects that game more than worried about focusing on straight sack totals. I think those guys have been effective, I really do. Especially the last probably three or four weeks, production has gone up. Cam had one last week and Robert (Quinn) had one that was taken away with a penalty and Robert had a couple of sacks against Green Bay and Cam had a couple of sacks the week before against New York. The production has been stating to show a little bit, so I think that’s been positive. I think they’ve all been affecting the passing game the way we need them to. We’ve just got to keep going that way with it.”
(DE Robert Quinn, for the season, from the beginning – meeting expectations? Has to do better to meet expectations? Where is he at?) – “I think he’s about what we expected. I think he started out pretty hot and kind of hit a little lull. They all get banged up. I’ve noticed just a difference in him physically in the last probably three weeks. The bye week obviously, and even the week before that – just coming back – I think he’s been kind of healthier the last three weeks or so. I see him just kind of moving around lately like he was earlier in the season. That’s been encouraging. Like I said, the production has been coming. He had the one (sack) taken away. He should have had four or five sacks in the last … He’s had three-and a-half sacks in the last couple of weeks or something like that, and he had one taken away last week. I think he was a little slowed down kind of in the middle part of the season and I think he’s kind of coming back to where we want him to be, moving around. I’m excited to see him kind of move forward these next four or five weeks so we can get him going. He’s a guy that’s always gotten sacks in bunches. He’s always gotten sacks where he gets on a roll and he gets three a game and he gets two the next game, gets three a game and you look up at your numbers and you go ‘he had a great season.’ He’s always been that guy. He gets shut out for three weeks and all of a sudden he goes on a tear and he’s unstoppable. Again, I’m hoping we’re facing down that as we get toward the end of the season here, because I think physically he’s getting back to where he was in moving the way and bending the way he was earlier in the year. He’s a guy that’s capable of wrecking a game at any moment, so we’re hoping that maybe this is the week for it.”
(Two-part question regarding takeaways. Your numbers are up. What do you attribute that to? Does it go back to a philosophy you instilled in the summer or whatever brought that about? Secondly, I wanted to ask you about CB Xavien Howard and his ability to get not just opportunities at interceptions, but to get those to translate to actual interceptions and not just balls that fly off his fingertips?) – “You have to catch the ones that come to you. That’s a start. Overall, it is obviously something that we didn’t do a great job of last year – the turnovers and getting our hands on balls. We’ve obviously been emphasizing it. Again, for us it just starts with getting to the ball. Population to the ball. We want hats around the ball. Good things happen when that occurs. We had the forced fumble last week where ‘Bake’ (Jerome Baker) and Raekwon (McMillan) had the nice vice tackle and were physical and then the ball pops out, and T.J. (McDonald) is there getting to the ball to recover it. We had another one on the ground on Cam’s (Wake) sack that we didn’t get to that we had a chance and it kind of squirted out. You can talk about whether it’s randomness or anything else; but for us, the more people we get to the ball, the more times we’re attacking it. If the ball is in the air, we have more chances to get on it. If the ball is on the ground, we have more guys around to do it and all of those sort of things. I think it’s a philosophy, part of just getting to the ball and having 11 guys around the ball at all times and everyone turning and running. Good things are going to happen when you do that. Just from a philosophical standpoint, I think that’s probably as close as you can get. Again, if they don’t throw us the ball, they don’t throw us the ball. It’s tough to some extent. ‘X’ (Xavien Howard) has been putting himself in a good spot. The final part of turnovers is catching the ball when it’s thrown to you. He made two pretty nice catches. He has good ball skills. It’s not unusual for him. It was cool for me to see him use different techniques. We were in man on the first one. The second one, he was kind of overlapping in a zone – something we worked a little bit on during the week. It was kind of cool for me to see him get those two with two different techniques, two different calls, and execute them both. He has good ball skills. When he is in position, when he does play good technique, when he puts himself in a good position and the ball is thrown, he has a pretty good chance to come down with it because he has pretty good hands and pretty good ball skills. I wouldn’t say it’s the finishing part with him as much as getting in the right spot and playing the right technique so if he’s there and the ball comes his way, he has a pretty good shot to finish that play usually.”
(Head Coach Adam Gase earlier this week said he kind of felt it was an (expletive) feeling knowing that you could’ve had the Colts game, you could’ve had the Bengals game and what the record would be if you had those two games. For you, how do you feel about those two games and the results from them?) – “There’s a lot of what-ifs. You can’t play that game. Obviously, most recently – Cincinnati feels like a long time ago – it was a disappointing loss. You have a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter. You feel like you should win that game, and the way it went down, we had opportunities – I’ll speak for our side of the ball – to make some of those plays. It’s crazy. We went through the film on Monday and just talked about how our margin for error is not very big on all those things. Obviously, everyone sees the last play on the third-and-9, but the drive before that, we had about two or three opportunities to end a drive. It’s one guy is in a technique that’s just a little bit off or takes a bad angle and stuff like that. That’s obviously frustrating and it is disappointing. I felt like we had a pretty good game plan and that was a pretty hot offense coming into things. Guys played hard and got after it and there was good energy. (We) accomplished a lot of good things, so it was kind of frustrating to feel like we had a good thing going and let it slip away. I’ll have time for that after the season. We have another game coming up here in (a few) days and we have to move on to Buffalo. We’ll feel worse if we don’t get this one done. It’s frustrating obviously from a big picture standpoint, but usually kind of in the moment and in season, you don’t have time to reflect too much. You come in Monday and you feel like crap and you watch the tape and figure out what happened, fix it and move on and try to get the next one. That’s where we’re at.”
(You guys have had success against rookie quarterbacks. They’re all in your division. I don’t want to get into game plan, but with rookie quarterbacks, is it about showing them something early and then switching it on them or just making them think overall?) – “It depends. They’re all different, not just rookies. Every quarterback has different strengths and skill sets. Just like our rookies – we talked about Raekwon (McMillan) earlier with the stuff he hasn’t seen or just gone through it and it’s a new experience for him, a new visual thing he hasn’t done or matched up or whatever. (It’s the) same thing with rookie quarterbacks. I think you try to maybe give him some stuff that you haven’t shown or give different looks or try to switch the picture on him at the last minute. Obviously, in our division you have a guy like (Tom) Brady who it’s kind of hard to do some stuff with. If you change the picture, he sees it.”
(What happens if you switch the picture on Patriots QB Tom Brady?) – “It depends. Every now and then, maybe you get him, but usually he goes ‘okay, that’s what you’re doing,’ or it takes him one time and he sees it and then he registers it for the next time you try to do that. There’s part of that element of trying to show him different things, whether it’s different things that we’ve shown before in the past and now it’s a different twist to it or disguise one thing and move last minute and try to just slow that clock down. Josh (Allen) – he has a big arm and he can make all the throws, so if you let him sit back there and get comfortable, he can drive the ball. He’s pretty impressive from a physical standpoint, and then obviously getting outside of the pocket. It ties in with some of the questions about our rush. Sometimes with the coverage elements and disguising those sort of things, you’re trying to just make him hold it for that half second extra longer to try to get that rush there. If he has a clear picture and can pipe it in there, obviously he can make some throws, but now all of a sudden he’s not sure about it and he has to pull it down, now we get some pressure there and those sort of things. In general, that’s obviously what you try to do with anybody, but you try to test a rookie quarterback out and kind of see where his capacity is for reading coverages and reading defenses and reading pressures and kind of see how he can handle that. We’ll try to do the same this week.”
