Mike McDaniel – November 20, 2023
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Monday, November 20, 2023
Head Coach Mike McDaniel
(Over the last four weeks, obviously the offense has been good but not at the level it had been over the first six weeks of the season. Do you think you guys just need to do what you do better and eliminate turnovers? Or do you and your creative mind and creative staff need to come up with more wrinkles, additional things that maybe you haven’t shown teams yet?) – “That’s kind of our starting point is that we don’t totally display – I think there’s some concept consistency for sure in what we do. But generally, for the most part, we’re giving different presentations – outside of a couple concepts that we don’t really care about, we’re giving different presentations. That’s something that I think is part of our job is to give players something that they can be decisive with, but that gives them a competitive advantage, which is why you do different presentations. In coaching, in my opinion, you have to fight the same thing that naturally, every observer would fight is that something is as simple as this. There are a long list of reasons for falling short of execution on every single play. There are different reasons, different players that we’ve had going in and out of the lineup in different situations. I would be worried if I didn’t think guys were in positions to make plays, or if they were incapable, or we’re asking them to do something they weren’t able to do. But just collectively, it’s a group effort. I think you live and learn each and every week with success or failure, and you try to evolve to your players, and coach your players so that they can get mistakes corrected. I think they’re kind of independent games, to be honest. I think that we have had positives in certain games and negatives. I think that the stat lines were healthier probably at the beginning of the season. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to go ahead and retool the toolbox. I think our guys are playing confident. What does the game look like if you don’t turn over the ball three times? That’s kind of how I look at it. If we weren’t able to move the ball, I’d probably feel differently in that particular game. But each individual game is independent of itself and as long as you don’t have overly consistent themes with regard to the plays you’re running or the issues that you’re having, you’re alright and you need to just keep moving forward in the season like we are this week.”
(With everything you just said about the offense, do you generally apply that to the short yardage issues as well? Because last year, the team was almost 32nd in third-and-short and this year you guys are 27th. Do you generally ascribe that previous line of thinking for that as well?) – We do to everything. Honestly. I already know before a call a short-yardage play that there’s a heightened awareness of that situation. I also keep very close to reality, in terms of, we expected to have more gains in those scenarios. There’s been some defensive presentations that have been problematic. There’s been some execution and there’s been some – when they don’t work, another play could work. So you have all of that. That being said, I think there were a couple weeks where we had more of the execution that we’d like. For instance, there were, I think, the last New England game, there was a fourth-and-one in the tight red that we threw to Tyreek (Hill). I think the last play of the game was short-yardage as well. So I take those into account too. But yeah, that is ever-present right now on our minds, because it’s hard to get the nine yards. I wish it was as simple as just get the one. But we’ll continue to work the same way and hold ourselves accountable, and that’s the area of football that we’re still the worst at, relatively, to all the stuff we do. That definitely takes a focus and you don’t run from results. We want every play to work and when it fails, it’s our job to fix it.”
(How is RB De’Von Achane?) – “He was feeling better this morning. We found out that it was the same knee. It’s not going to require surgery or anything. We’re just getting extra feedback and opinions on that and we’ll be taking that day-by-day this week.”
(Is there any chance RB De’Von Achane might play Friday or is that too soon?) – “There’s a chance that he will and he won’t. It’s pretty much day-to-day. I would definitely not rule it out but I would definitely not rule it in either. We’re just fresh off of a game and we have a short week, so it just kind of compounds the variables. But we’ll take it a day at a time and see how it progresses.”
(You had the luxury earlier in the season of time. There’s still obviously – the season’s not over yet, but it’s closer to the end. Would that perhaps change your thinking of – because you said RB De’Von Achane could have braced it up before and could have played. Now that the end of the year is closer, might he play something he wouldn’t otherwise play through earlier in the year?) – “There’s an element too of this is the first kind of injury he’s really gone through, first time with us. Like I’ve explained before, it’s such an important piece of the whole puzzle is the interpersonal relationship between the training staff, the coaching staff and the player, and kind of making sure that we keep people out of harm’s way. All that means is I think in a situation where – there’s an added variable that this is a new process with this player. So we’re kind of trying to feel it out. And that goes for him as well. We’re working together to try to do what’s right and not keep someone from an opportunity but also not put them behind the eight-ball and make matters worse. We were proactively patient this first time and football is football, and you have a guy land on the same knee and in a similar fashion and it’s not abnormal for that to occur. But we’re just going to do what’s right by him. I wouldn’t say we’re adjusting as much for the schedule as we’re adjusting for the player and the situation. You don’t want to put a guy in a situation where his best isn’t up to his own standard as well. You’ve just got to factor in all those, which is why it’s a little complicated.”
(You do have a couple of your guys that didn’t play in yesterday’s game.) – “They’ll all be questionable.”
(All of them?) – “Basically, yeah.”
(Are there any of them that are on the unlikely side to play with the short turnaround?) – “I couldn’t say that either. Everybody that didn’t play had their eyes on this game. So it was kind of a concession for the most part of like, alright, well, we have a short week. So with their eyes on it, they’ll do their best. But it does make it tricky because it’s a couple of days before you usually play, so we’ll see how it plays out. It’s just going to be a lot of moving parts this week for sure. But that that is very norm for – I’ve never played on a Friday but in my brain it’s a Thursday night game. Just the timeline, and in those situations, it’s generally a lot of ‘up in the airs’ for both teams.”
(I wanted to ask you about how OL Connor Williams helps expand your playbook with his skill set. Like the touchdown to RB Salvon Ahmed, I’m not sure I’ve seen a Texas route that had a center climb and peel back on that block like that. What does his skill set do that affords you maybe more pages of your playbook that maybe other centers across the league wouldn’t allow you to get to?) – “A lot of times a center’s weapon is his ability to get the guys around him with conviction to spots and to cover you in the A-gaps. Connor, the one thing that’s different with him is that you can use him as a weapon with his athletic skill set and the power and strength that he has. So you can do some stuff with him in space. You can have him pull a little bit. You can have him kind of displace defenders in the typical fashion that you do with guards and tackles. He does open up our playbook to a degree just because it’s not every day that you have that athletic skill set at that position, which is one of the reasons it makes him a strong fit for us. We depend on him to do a lot of things. There’s a lot of times that we depend on him to do stuff that we wouldn’t ask every center to do. It’s crazy that he just started playing center last year, because you wouldn’t know that and he’s had a tremendous offseason. He’s really taken a step forward from last year to this year.”
(With RB Chris Brooks, I know it’s a weird practice week, but he’s technically eligible to return to practice this week. Is he at the point where he’s healthy enough to return to practice? Is that something that will be under consideration given that you guys only have two player designation returns left?) – “It’s coming up for sure, whether this week, next week or the following. He’s a player that was contributing in a multitude of ways before he got hurt. So we look forward to when it makes the most sense for him and the football team to be able to have him come back, but I look forward to seeing him. I know he’s been hungry and locked in. Yeah, there will probably be some juggling that has to do with the other guys that are injured as well. The good news is I don’t forecast being bored this week. That’s the good news.”
(We saw some special things from WR Tyreek Hill and CB Jalen Ramsey yesterday. How does having both of those guys change the game for you guys mentally and physically? The mentality, plays you call, everything like that.”) – “I think some of the biggest influence that those two players have in particular are there’s a calming nature that they bring to big moments because it’s hard enough to make plays in this league when you’re at that level. The reason they are at that level is because they have made the biggest plays in the biggest moments in the biggest games. And that’s something that they both in particular share a common trait of the desire to do that. And the moment is when you’ll probably get their most competitive greatness shine through. I think that has a substantial effect on your entire phase but also all the players that are playing with them alongside. When you see a guy like Jalen Ramsey make a couple of those plays with the mindset that he had with the ball in the air, to aggressively go get it, I think that has an impact on other players. When you see how both of those guys compete in practice, that sets the standard. I attribute one of the reasons we have such a strong practicing group is because of those two individuals. The list goes on and on. The obvious things are the plays that they make that other people can’t. The two picks were a great example or Tyreek’s touchdown, his catch and run is an example. It’s littered all over. But I think the not spoken about as much factor that really makes them invaluable to the team is how they really uplift their teammates in games and practice.”
(I wanted to ask about RB Jeff Wilson Jr. Of course, he was inactive. From the human side, is it more difficult or is it tough at all for you to make an active player that you’ve had a long history with, who is not used to it? And then from an on-field standpoint, is he still the same guy as last year physically because of the injuries? Can he still give you the same physical productive running he did last year?) – “I’m pretty cold and calculated when it comes to matters of the team, for as far as emotional and how interwoven I am with the players and their individual stories. When it comes down to decision for the team, I definitely flip and it becomes very easy to make those decisions. Jeff was a tough one yesterday. It wasn’t because I didn’t want him up. I definitely did. There was kind of a numbers crunch and we’re dealing with certain things at different positions. And honestly, in this particular situation, historically a fifth receiver has played more than a third running back for us since we’ve been here. That doesn’t mean you carry five – there’s a bunch of variables. So that this particular week, S.A. (Salvon Ahmed) offered some added value on special teams. Jeff Wilson still adds value, but for our plan, it was a little more of a feature, so that’s why Jeff was inactive. He understands that. It’s not something that he plans on getting used to and that’s why you love him. It’s not something that I hope to do. Really it just depends on how things play out with the rest of your football team. There’s multiple things that go into it. I see the same spirit, the same athlete and he’s a guy that I know will contribute for us this season and has been patient as he’s waited for that opportunity.”
(I wanted to ask you. WR Jaylen Waddle said one thing you could improve on is when they play two-deep, the explosives. As a coach, are you seeing more two-deeps then you have in the past? How do you scheme around that when they’re determined not to get beat deep?) – “Yeah, I think we see a ton. We saw the second-most two shell defenses in the National Football League at like 51 percent of the snaps last year and I don’t think that’s subsided. I think that’s something that I’m always looking at. A lot of our offense’s success has come against two-deep because we get a lot of it. There’s a lot of different variables. It’s not as black and white as that. But in this particular game, they adjusted their two-deep in a smart fashion. And that, on top of the way the defense was playing, we didn’t really take that many shots down the field. Then once you start to get behind the eight-ball with turnovers and know that you’re moving the ball, it just kind changes the game and how you call it. But I think that’s something that we always have to be prepared for. Really, the default against our offense has really been all the various forms of two-shell. I think that’s more the norm for us. That’s the challenge presented to us each and every game. From a generic standpoint, I think teams try to make us earn everything we get because they see on tape we have some explosive capabilities. The idea is that whatever they’re taking away, make them pay for it. You always have to be explosive and move the ball and score points regardless of what defense they present. So that’s something that each and every week we’re challenged with. Some weeks I guess we do a better job than others, but that won’t change what we’re trying to do and how we have to try to find the solutions.”
