Mike McDaniel – November 4, 2024
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Thursday, November 4, 2024
Head Coach Mike McDaniel
(So if you got just one more defensive play maybe the last two results would be different and DT Zach Sieler and LB Bradley Chubb obviously two impact guys, wanted to try to get a little bit more clarity on both from you. With Sieler, have doctors yet indicated if they think it would be safe for him to play next Monday? That would be a full 12-days or actually 17 days after the injury. And with Chubb are you confident he’s going to play at any point this season?) – “So with (Zach) Sieler, that’s kind of – I’m optimistic about that timeline and you have to take it day-by-day anyway to accumulate information, but that was more safe of a timeline from his injury and so feel optimistic about that. I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I’m optimistic that we’ll see Bradley (Chubb), but I do know that it’s very simple. The time is based on how his body is responding and there’s no – I saw him today outside my window running – he’s working incessantly on it. So there’s hope and optimism, but we’ll see how that plays out. I couldn’t with reason hedge my bet on that, but we’ll continue to see how that progresses.”
(I hate to have anyone speak for you, but Drew Rosenhaus was on the TV last night saying that it was – he had information suggesting that there’s no interest at all in being sellers at the trade deadline. Is that accurate? Have you guys made a decision of when you’re…?) – “I know two things exist and one of which – I think there’s no real label on what we’re doing just because I know one that thing that Chris Grier and I both share a strong conviction and belief in this team and what it looks like if you can find a way to get over the hump which we fully expect to. At the same time, Chris Grier’s job is to field all business and listen and think both in the short and the long term of the best interest of the franchise and then he comes to me with any and all business that’s real and we discuss from there and he hasn’t brought anything that is real to me. But I know first and foremost, we are absolutely convicted in this team being better than the win-loss column right now and believe that it can make a turn and that’s how we’re approaching each and every day.”
(One follow-up if I could, beyond this year long-term, what is the argument for keeping all this together? There are guys – not to name names – but are on one-year deals, things like that. In your mind, what’s the value? Even if maybe the playoffs [are out of reach] at some point to continue to keep this group together?) – “I think the answer to that question is found – you get no greater insight into who people are than times like these, and I think they have each and every day to make the argument for themselves as well as we do. That’s what you fight for in the National Football League, so I think that the only positive in a luster of adversity is that you get clarity into each and every person who is part of the solution and who is part of the problem. And I think that’s the ultimate accountability for the National Football League that we all have to bear and I think there’s a lot of the argument for anybody’s existence is in their hands to a degree with all the football that is left to be played.”
(I have a question about I guess the negative connotations that come with the idea of a game manager quarterback. I think some of the discourse when a quarterback throws a bunch of short passes, they’ll say he was just a game manager and that comes with a negative connotation. How would you push back against game manager being a negative and also kind of how QB Tua Tagovailoa played that game with how he saw things, got the ball out quickly and how beneficial it is for an offense?) – “I think we found the hard way going against a division opponent that is at the top of the class in defensive football for the last couple years, that particularly the Buffalo Bills will force bad things to happen – sack-fumbles, picks – if they want to take something away. And football in general is about maximizing – specifically our offense – is maximizing over-play and if you’re going to over-play with depth, you have to execute in high-percentage completions and yards after the catch that aren’t necessarily the cross-court gigantic plays but are the ‘throw it for four and you get seven.’ And that’s kind of the art of that particular style of defense when they want to play the way they’ve proven to have success against our offense and I thought it was a great display of Tua’s (Tagovailoa) evolution of finding completions and utilizing his accuracy and challenging the areas of the field that weren’t over-populated. And with a team that plays with a bunch of quarterback vision that relies on turnovers, it’s absolutely imperative to be able to pass the ball efficiently and take advantage of the areas where they’re voiding. So I think that’s an art. What you’re saying – managing the game against zone defenses, against really good zone defenses you can’t manage the game in the way of just finding checkdowns because if you go to the checkdown too early in the play, they play deep and will sprint forward and you’ll get a two-yard gain. So you have to play the position appropriately to get the ball to the eligibles in the time of the play and that is an art form that many, many quarterbacks find very difficult particularly against the Buffalo Bills. So I thought yesterday was a great example of aggressively taking what the defense gives you and was able to have some success that we haven’t had in the past based upon his commitment to his craft and being aggressive to all eligibles based upon over-play.”
(This may piggyback on that question, but that 97-yard drive, a lot of different players touched the ball. WR Tyreek Hill, WR Jaylen Waddle didn’t. So what kind of effect do they have on a series like that? Just the throw to them and what they can kind of create for other players?) – “There was like three or four plays where Tyreek (Hill) and Jaylen (Waddle) got two-man, so basically they got doubled which basically your math equals out to you get a lot of three-on-twos or three-on-ones underneath, so dispersing the ball is imperative. Jonnu’s (Smith) screen on that play was based on an overload in coverage to slot two of the other eligibles or to Tyreek and Waddle. There was a couple two-shell run defenses where they were playing two-man and thus late to fit that we were able to exploit on back-to-back plays, I believe it was to Raheem (Mostert), at least backed up on an inside zone and then there was another one in 11-personnel where Malik (Washington) was out in front. So really we’ve been talking about making plays without the ball and the finest orchestration that ‘Reek’ (Tyreek Hill) and (Jaylen) Waddle had I thought with both the releases and challenging the defense every play even when they weren’t getting the ball so they had to give them the prerequisite attention. And then as you saw the game develop once we evened out the playing field a little bit and they started playing true evenly-spaced zone defense, that’s when they got involved as we’ve kind of outlined and they’ve been diligent about. So I was very – we kind of knew going in that we were going to need to do that to have the success where they’ve proven to put over-attention on those guys and I think that’s why we were able to find some success offensively in that game.”
(Do you think S Jordan Poyer’s hit on the final, their drive there, was a finable offense and also if you believe was it the right call?) – “I try to stay out of the things that – either way I’ve seen things not get fined and seen things get fined. I don’t really have any idea. I just know that you leave yourself vulnerable any time you leave the strike zone. I have no question in my mind that Jordan (Poyer) had the right intent and then it’s a skill to be able to identify a moving target and then adjust your strike zone based upon if they’re jumping or not in a millisecond. So I think his intent was correct; it didn’t surprise me that it got called because there was contact there and I’ll leave it to the league to assess if that’s finable or not. I don’t really know. That’s out of my expertise, I would say.”
(The refs permitting Bills WR Mack Hollins to spot the ball without the refs touching it – the ball themselves to spot it – did that irk you or the staff and do you think it was costly at all on Buffalo’s final drive?) – “Based upon on how I understand the rules, if you were able to spot things on your own, it does save you time. Time was of the essence in that period of the game, but that’s not the reason why we lost the game. We had plenty of controllables that are in our hands. I’ll just kind of leave it at that. I think that if we’re focused on – the gripe is one thing. Another thing is how I want the team and the players to look at it and officials have pluses and minuses every game. We’ve got to focus on defending the field and not getting into the range of a field goal kicker with a strong leg.”
(You opened this by talking about yours and General Manager Chris Grier’s faith in the team and how you believe you’re much better than the record, but the record is what it is. You have as many losses now as you had last year and the playoff thing, we know how difficult that will be. What keeps them in the locker room confident and still thinking they can do what you believe they can do?) – “I think because the most powerful thing that we have in coaching and playing is tape and understanding what our jobs are and how we can do them better. So I think the team overall thought that we should be in a better position to perform based upon our work week and how we attack that and what we focused on and what we thought about. And as a result I think we played our best version until this point of football in a lot of ways and I think the guys – how much they’ve kind of bought into what we are trying to do – see areas where they can tighten up the game and in a game like that where it comes down to a 61-yard field goal, every little thing does matter. And regardless how difficult the circumstances may be, they are our circumstances. I think guys are really just trying to do right by their teammates and the organization for something they believe in. We went into the game having full confidence that we could win and we knew we were the only people that would hold that confidence. And we got close, but close doesn’t really count, so it was a tough pill to swallow but not the type of pill that tells you to take your foot off the gas. Albeit it was a heartbreak, it was more validation that we are much better than our record is. But our record is what it is, so you have one choice if you really feel that way. You have to dictate change and closer only counts if it’s on the path to fixing it. So I think guys will be hungry to go attack business for a Monday night outing against the Rams and make some of these failures purposeful. We’ve scratched and clawed to get closer, but I definitely don’t think anybody in the locker room is satisfied with closer. That was a tough pill to swallow that we have to apply all the tough part of it to the Rams and nothing else.”
(You mentioned how important the little things are. It seems like especially over the last three weeks like little things have really prevented you guys from winning games that you probably should’ve won. How do you correct those little things?) – “You try to identify and patternize and take care of something without something else popping up. Sometimes you’re able to execute that. I think that we did get better in our preparation and as a result had some success in the game that we’d otherwise had failures in that environment. But at the same time you’re depending on the accountability of all people across the board and then letting the game tape speak for itself when we get together and talk about the realities of what our football is. And each and every week you just try to knock stuff out so that you don’t have that lesson learned in vain where you’re losing a game and you don’t get better from it. The idea is if you’re going to lose the game, you better get better from it in some way shape or form. To chase the accomplishment of succeeding where there is a lot of reasons to continue on a path of losing. So trying to find our team’s performance to be the best team in the stadium that day, it’s been kind of challenging at times for us this year, but I haven’t seen people relent and that is because they believe that we are a better representation of what it is. Valiant effort, but we got beat so what are you going to do about that? I know the Rams don’t care and nor will any other team, so we have to get ourselves prepared for those next challenges and completely immerse yourself into that if you’re going to try to expect a different result.”
(You guys have had leads in the second half each of the last three weeks. Has there been a common thread as to why you weren’t able to hang onto them?) – “I thought this past game going against a really good quarterback that has been able to find some success in that second half. I thought the team did have more resolve and there was a couple of plays offensively that maybe a field goal was a touchdown a couple of plays defensively where we get off the field in critical situations that we kind of shot ourselves in the foot. But the resolve was an improvement. The week before you have a situation where I think both sides of the ball had a chance to win it and they didn’t. Not the same formula even though it was the same result, and the week before that, I think the offense was on the field. The common denominator is winning those last couple drives. I think there’s been several different reasons why that hasn’t occurred. But there is an absolute fixation. We kind of talked about it most of the week that chances are this is going to come down to a final possession or be a one-score game, so we have to be ready to execute. I thought we were close to that on defense with a third-and-14. Shot ourselves in the foot, got to a third-and-9. And you’re looking at getting off the field until you get that penalty. Then there was a couple of throws that were five or six-yard throws into the boundary that I think we could’ve been tighter in coverage. So that wasn’t the same formula from the week before and you have to be clear with that with the player so it’s just not like, woe is us. No, let’s correct something and make sure we’re not victims of the same circumstance in the same way. So it hasn’t been in the same way, but the tonality now that we have a three-game pattern is definitely a focus on how we finish collectively as a group, not just offense, defense or special teams; but collectively finishing an opponent that you’re able to gain a lead on.”
