Matt Burke – October 18, 2018
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke
(With CB Bobby McCain, obviously you guys hung in there without him, but having him back, the impact it’ll have on your defense?) – “If Bobby plays, obviously having one of your starting corners back is always helpful. Beyond that, Bobby … I think he brings a lot of other things to the table also. He’s one of our more competitive, fiery players. He’s also one of our problem solvers just from a communication stand point, too. He helps elevate the game of the other guys around him. Hopefully he keeps working through this process and we can get him back on the field soon.”
(What went into the decision to go with CB Cordrea Tankersley late on Sunday?) – “Obviously, we had some things going on, on the field and just felt like it was time for a different look. They were going at Torry a little bit. We were trying to work some different coverages to help him out. Torry was battling, so it wasn’t any of that, but it felt like it was time to put something else out there, something different look, a little different body type, a little different skillset for ‘Tank’, just try to change some pitches up to give them a different look.”
(What does CB Cordrea Tankersley have to do to regain coaching staff’s confidence?) – “I wouldn’t say he doesn’t have our confidence. I think it’s like any of the rest of them. Any of our guys that are in sort of backup type roles at this point, they just have to keep competing, keep working in practice. I think actually ‘Tank’ has had two … His probably last week and a half … The last two weeks of practice has probably been the best I’ve seen him really working in practice on the look team, but we’re playing some teams that play some similar technique on defense and things so he’s able to work some of our stuff. Just like the rest of those guys, they just have to keep competing and then when they do have an opportunity – which obviously he got an opportunity to perform when he has a chance to perform – and to keep doing that. All we ask those guys – any of those backup guys right now that are in a backup role – we tell them all, ‘Hey, look.’ … Obviously, all of them have to be ready to play, so we tell them keep working. Keep doing what we’re asking them to do and when they have the opportunity to perform. I wouldn’t say he doesn’t have our confidence. We felt like we had some other guys that were performing better at those spots at the time we made those decisions. He’s just got to keep himself ready and keep working to get back to where he needs to be.”
(When you see WR Albert Wilson on the offense – you’ve obviously faced him quite a bit on the practice field – when you see his elusiveness on the field, is there any opponent that you think of that’s in that caliber of guys that you have to deal with during the season?) – “I go week to week. You want to talk about this week?”
(Is there anyone on the Lions?) – “I think it’s a pretty fair comparison to (Golden) Tate. They’re probably fairly similar in size. I’ve actually never gone against Golden Tate. Obviously, (Defensive Backs Coach) Tony (Oden) and some of the guys on the staff have been around him a lot more. But just the run-after-catch stuff, the elusiveness, the ball in their hands and the things they can do. We went against Albert last year. I remember when we were playing Kansas City, or prepping for Kansas City, and obviously most of their offense was going through – forget the running back part – but 10 (Tyreek Hill) and 87 (Travis Kelce) were getting the majority of their offense last year in Kansas City. I remember watching tape and being like this guy, we can’t sleep on this dude just watching – it was Albert – but just watching him do some of the things he was doing. I remember saying that in the thing like I know everyone’s focusing on 10 and 87, but this number 12 is the real deal. I remember having that feeling about watching him, prepping for him last year. Looking to this week, they do a lot of similar things. Again, they’re moving Tate around trying to get him the ball in different spots like we do with Albert. Probably the best aspect of both their games is with the ball in their hands and what they can do with it. That’s a challenge for us this week, for sure.”
(What would you like to see happen on that 29-yard touchdown? There was a blitz and LB Raekwon McMillan got back and you had S T.J. McDonald in the back, too. What’s supposed to happen?) – “I’m probably supposed to make a better call right there, so we’ll start there. I knew what the play was going to be. I kind of made an inelegant call. I don’t know if that’s the right word. Ball was on the 30-yard line, 29-yard line. Obviously, about three minutes left in the game. I was part thinking from everything they’ve shown they were going to max protect and take a shot there. That was what they were going to do, it was pretty evident. They changed their max protection scheme. I don’t want to get into too much detail stuff, but they changed the max protection scheme. Basically, I tried to throw numbers at it just tried to bring more. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t like a schemed up thing where I thought we could attack it. I just tried to bring enough numbers to try to muddy it up. That’s not really my style. To be honest with you, it didn’t really work very well. I was in a tough situation. I thought he played coverage there even if it’s incomplete, they’re in field goal range. Again, with three minutes left, we’re trying to keep points off the board there as best as possible. They’re right in the fringe. They’re trying to make it harder on the field goal kick. It wasn’t the right call. I don’t want to say it was a bad call necessarily. It wasn’t the right call in hindsight. ‘Bake’ (Jerome Baker) had gotten taken off, because his contact came out. The stuff that people don’t see all the time. They thought it was … He was playing with his eye. They thought … The spotter called him down for a concussion check, because they saw ‘Bake’ playing with … His contact fell out. So, he got taken off the field. There was just a lot of stuff going on in real time. I just tried to throw numbers at the situation and it was probably not the right call at that time. I like to see myself make a better call, how’s that?”
(Are you expecting the linebacker to run back there?) – “Maybe. I shouldn’t have made that call. It was the wrong call. That’s on me. I’d like to make a better call on that spot. I always try to review myself and what I do. I think the … I wasn’t questioning my philosophy in terms of trying to be aggressive and try to knock them back a little bit and challenge the field goal spot, but it wasn’t the right pressure to do in that moment.”
(You guys are ranked I think 25th in defensive snaps.) – “What is that, like number of snaps?”
(Yeah. I think it’s 67 or 68 a game or something like that. Is that too high and is that … How do you manage the course of the season if you’re playing more snaps than everybody else?) – “We’re going to play as many snaps as they tell us to. Hopefully we’re not playing full 70-minute games. I’m sure that doesn’t help. I think it’s well documented our third down … We kind of been struggling a little bit on third down in some situations. Again, same as last week, I don’t know how many third-and-1s we had. I couldn’t get off the third-and-1s; it was driving me crazy. That’s partly our fault in terms of that stuff. Again, I don’t necessarily worry about that in the moment. We’re going to play as many snaps as we need to play to win a ball game. Last week felt like more. Last week didn’t actually play 70 snaps maybe or something like that not including the penalties, you take those off and we’re actually in the 60s, which I would expect. I also expect to play in sort of the mid-60s. That’s to me not an unusual number of games. Again, we try to keep our guys fresh. We try to do things during the course of the week in practice and recovery stuff to keep them ready to go. That’s not totally out of our hands in terms of trying to get stops and getting off the field a bit quicker and getting some more three-and-outs. I don’t know. We don’t really worry about … I couldn’t have told you that stat if you asked me a million times. We’re just trying to play as many plays as we can.”
(Speaking of stats, what’s your thoughts, I guess, on total defense as a stat like yardage?) – “I don’t really care about it to be honest with you. Again, our job is to keep points off the board, period. That’s our only goal. Now, again, you can argue or debate about what stats you think lead more directly to keeping points off the board. For us, it’s all about getting stops. I think we’ve been pretty good, obviously, in terms of takeaways and then red zone defense has been pretty good. Third downs is another way to get stops, which is where we’re kind of … We’re not up to snuff there. Total yards, again, I’m not saying we want to be giving up 500 yards every game, but that’s not really a stat that we try to measure ourselves by. We’re trying to keep the scoring down, so however we have to do that is what we’re going to do.”
(So that’s changes I guess as offenses have evolved and picking up easy yardage versus maybe how it was 10, 15 years ago?) – “Obviously, everything’s evolving, offenses are changing. Again, I don’t really look statistically around the league, but I’m sure offensive numbers and total yardage is going up. It’s getting hard to play defense sometimes. But again, that’s not something we focus on like we have to hold them under 300 yards here. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to get off the field. We’re trying to keep the score down. The things that we think lead to lower scoring games are what we’re going to focus on. Yards isn’t necessarily one of them.”
(Obviously, everything seems to be slanted towards the offense in terms of the new rules. This is just the reality of the situation.) – “It is.”
(But as a defensive guy, as a defensive coach, if you can advocate for one thing to help the defense – maybe no cut blocking, for whatever reason, safety issues – what would it be?) – “I don’t know. There’s always those debates.”
(You’re just taking the default?) – “No one’s going to listen to me anyways. I don’t know about that. It’s frustrating sometimes, it is. That’s just the way it is. I try to take that approach with our guys. We can complain about landing on the quarterback, illegal hits with the head, all that stuff they’re trying to change and you can say it’s slanted, some of it’s player safety issues, but honestly I really try to take the approach like at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what I think. As a defensive coach, my NFL might look a little different than the NFL we have today. But that’s the state of the union. Those are facts. For me, it’s more about how can we coach within this world? How can we play defense or be better within the context of the new world order we’re facing essentially? I can come up with a lot of rules that says we can grab guys downfield, even obviously college football contact rules and things like that.”
(But even now it has to bother you when…) – “Nothing bothers me. (laughter)”
(Where running backs can lower their heads and run.) – “They’re not supposed to.”
(They’re not supposed to, but they do it. Receivers can push off, quarterbacks can’t touch them.) – “For me, when we have penalties or plays that happen within a game that we turn in say for example to the league, for me it’s never about punitive, ‘You guys screwed up. Tell everybody that you’re wrong.’ It’s more like, ‘Am I coaching the right thing? Are we telling our players … Is this what you want?’ For me, it’s more about just informational. That’s all sour grapes stuff. That’s fine. Again, that’s the way of the world. They’re going to call more DPI than OPI. That’s just how it is. They’re going to call more defensive players for striking with the helmet or leading with the helmet than offensive players. That’s just facts. That’s okay. That’s what the league wants or that’s what the owners want or whatever it is, whoever wants those changes. For us as a coaching staff, it’s about, ‘Okay, how do we coach within the context of that world?’ I just want to know, ‘This is what we’re telling our guys. We’re telling them to do this. So this happens in a game and you call this penalty or don’t call this penalty, was that right or wrong so I can keep coaching it that way or no, I have to readjust what we’re telling our players?’ Again, because our job to me is not to worry about what the rules are. I’m not that high up in the world. Our job is to tell me what I can coach our players to do to be successful, as successful as we can be within the context of what’s going on in the league. I try not to bother myself too much with that, because you can drive yourself crazy, you really can. Maybe in the offseason when I have more time I float around, I go, ‘This would be cool if they changed this or if they did this.’ But right now, really, honestly, it’s more about information gathering and saying, ‘Hey, look, I want to make sure this is how I’m coaching this guy. Is that right?’ or ‘You told me you were going to call a penalty this way, but you didn’t. Not like you screwed up, but hey are we on the right path here in terms of what we’re telling our guys?’ We just have to take what the rules are at this point and try to coach as best we can within them.”
(One stat that you will like is sixth in red zone defense?) – “You’re like my PR guy. (laughter)”
(That’s a good one though.) – “It’s not bad.”
(The turnovers seems to be pretty rare.) – “That helps.”
(What’s going on there?) – “We’re getting turnovers in the red zone.”
(I know we talked about in the offseason a concerted effort to get more turnovers.) – “Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. In terms of our red zone defense, it’s been helping. We’ve been opportunistic as a defense. We have a pretty high number of takeaways in general but they’ve kind of come at good spots in sort of fortunate instances. Obviously, having a bunch down as teams are close in the red zone and completely taking points off the board even, forget holding teams to field goals and stuff like that once they get down there. Again, our philosophy is we’re trying to get population to ball. The more hats around the ball, the more guys are getting around, getting their hands on balls, guys are getting tips off and guys that that are running to it. If you look at the second fumble at the end of the game where Kiko (Alonso) knocked the one out that X (Xavien Howard) recovered, we got about eight guys in the picture right there. It’s the 60th-whatever play, whatever your other stat was, and it’s late in the game and we’ve got eight or nine guys running to the ball. If you look at both our fumble recoveries from the last game, the first guy in didn’t recover them. Both times, the first guy in kind of had it in his hands and it bobbled out, and the next guy in kind of fell on the ball or scooped it up. Some of that’s random, but again, just the emphasis on getting hats to the ball in terms of attacking it and punching it and popping it up in the air and also population to run to the ball. Again, trying to help our tackling. If one guy misses, we’ve got guys there. And if a ball does pop out, we’ve got multiple opportunities to try to recover it. Hopefully, some of those things that we’re coaching are starting to show up a little bit.”
(Did you say get population to the ball?) – “Population to the ball. Get hats to the ball.”
(I’ve never heard that before.) – “Yes, that’s what we tell them.”
(It seems like with CB Xavien Howard, teams are avoiding throwing him the ball the last couple of weeks. What role have you seen him still play even though he might not be getting the action?) – “I thought ‘X’ played his most physical game of the year on Sunday. If you look at the fourth-and-1 play early in the game that 20 (Reshad Jones) makes, ‘X’ sets the edge. They’re playing a little flip play on the toss and the tackle is pulling out, and ‘X’ goes and knifes the offensive tackle and sets the edge at the numbers and allows 20 to run the alley and and make that play. He obviously had a big play on the screen, was getting his hands on some guys. That was cool for me to see. I thought he took a big step. That was his most physical game by far. He was really helping in some ways like that that maybe weren’t available to the public eye.”
(There are pros and cons of having CB Xavien Howard shadow. Now when you have him shadow, the other guy became a target. Is there a balancing act?) – “There is. There always is. Sometimes, you shadow a guy, and so for ‘X’, say I’m covering Omar, so I study him, I know his ins and outs, I know what’s going on, while the other guy has to study three different receivers, because it may not be the same guy he’s matched up on across the ball. Sometimes that’s even harder for the other guy to say ‘You’re locked in on this guy and you know his tendencies and you see his nuances,’ but the other guy, there might be two or three other receivers that he’s faced up against or he may have him in different spots and those sort of things. So, there’s always that balance that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. All of that goes into making that decision. It’s not just put him on the best guy and that’s cool, we’re done. There’s sort of a ripple effect on everything else that’s going on, for sure.”
