Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Head Coach Mike McDaniel
(Is the LB Jaelan Phillips knee injury season-ending or will it keep him out long-term?) – “We’re still acquiring information on that, working through it. He was in good spirits last night. He was in good spirits today so we should have more concrete information moving forward here soon. I don’t think that – I’m pretty comfortable saying that he won’t be available this week on a short week, but the information that’s presented to us will be able to provide clarity on is that a multiple week thing or whatnot.”
(You had a situation where he got injured early in the game. We saw him on the sidelines. I know you probably didn’t pay attention to this, but he was very adamant with the trainers that he could go back in, not an issue. Is that one of the cautionary tales that you worry about where players try to push through pain and things get worse?) – “Absolutely. I think it’s one of the reasons it’s so important for the training staff and the players to have a good relationship. You’re going through the various testing to make sure that there are not the worst-case scenarios involved and then you’re listening to the players and I know with our training staff, they don’t minimize that each and every player, this is their dream. You try not to take football opportunities away from them, but there’s a balance in that and they do a very good job at being able to read between the lines and I think there’s – Jaelan Phillips has been through a lot of watching football and the testing that’s in place is absolutely as good as I’ve been around so you’re making gut decisions based upon how the body is feeling. You’re going through your various tests with the muscles and the joints and then you have to allow guys the opportunity to be honest with you. so his response through adrenaline was what a competitor would be and there thankfully wasn’t enough issues at hand to be able to hold him out with integrity, but that is something that you’re – it’s one of the reasons why we focus on building those relationships so that each party can trust one another.”
(You’ve now played four games which means you have a number of players we haven’t seen up to this point who are now potentially eligible to start practicing. Which of them if any will be practicing this week?) – “So planning on opening the window tomorrow officially for Odell (Beckham Jr.) so that will be a new practice player and we’ll see how that plays out as well as Cam Smith.”
(Has there been any update on guys like WR River Cracraft and LB Bradley Chubb?) – “Only that it has been a positive. There hasn’t been setbacks or really unexpected presentations throughout their rehabilitation. I think Bradley (Chubb) had a pretty severe injury that he’s doing very, very well in his progression and then I think River is right on schedule so no setbacks to really articulate.”
(You’ve talked a lot about the responsibility you feel as head coach of this team, certainly the fan base. There were some boos last night. What do you tell fans that are I guess jumping off the bandwagon and wondering what’s next for this team?) – “I guess it didn’t hit me with surprise. I think people invest and have to go and believe in a team that has bottom-line, the droughts that this organization has incurred. I don’t take that lightly. So I would be dishonest if I told you that I didn’t expect that. The worst part about all of that is you have people that I can relate where weeks are ruined with losses and the worst part about it is you don’t have any control. So that’s not a fun place to be in. I know sporting events where I’m rooting for a team and I’m not coaching in it, I get much more angry when there’s failure than when I’m coaching and I can actually problem solve something. It’s to be expected. This is the big leagues. To feel entitled to blind support; that’s not my cup to tea. I think you have to go to work, problem solve and try to fix things as best you can and I don’t think we’re necessarily owed anything I think people believe when you give them reason to believe and if people jump off the bandwagon – I’m not really villainizing the people who are jumping off the bandwagon; it’s more we gave them reason to. So that’s to be expected. I don’t think people pay what they pay to go to Hard Rock Stadium to watch us lose, so whatever results incurred by our game day failure, we deserve.”
(Now you’ve had a night to sleep on it, if you did sleep at all, and morning to review the tape. What are your big takeaways as to what needs to be corrected in this offense in the immediate future while QB Tua Tagovailoa is out?) – “I think the answers aren’t somewhere in a different orbit. The answers are in-house in terms of there’s some very concrete direct conversations that need to be had and I think it’s fair for me to want to keep those in-house considering just the way I don’t believe the press conferences and the media is where to air out your dirty laundry; however there is across the board from coaching to execution of plays, the bottom line is to play winning football, you have to have 11 people executing their jobs in a tied-together fashion and it’s not happening. So you don’t absolve yourself of responsibility in the least. You really force yourself to have a hard look at everything you’re doing and then once you assess that – and the team wants to know while they’re playing, they just know the results aren’t there. They’re responsible for their jobs, but the team wants to know where are failures are coming from so you have to get ready for the conversations that may be hard in the moment, but you owe it to the football team and to everyone involved to be very, very direct because the bottom line is we have things that we are preparing and have reasons by way of what’s in front of us by the practice tape, we feel certain ways going into a game and then we’re not getting those results through execution so I think it’s not as easy as ‘do something different,’ but you do have to do some things different because clearly there’s a gap in preparation and game day execution. So no shorthand way to do that. You have to diligently look at each and every responsibility and what you’re doing well, what you’re not doing well and hit it right between the eyes.”
(I want to talk about the onside punt. I don’t really know how else to describe it. Do you feel like the team and players were prepared to execute that last night?) – “So that was our first live-action of it. It’s a new rule this year. You have a landing zone and generally just like all punts, all field goals; you’re trying to be accurate when you’re kicking a football from your foot and the target zone is small. It’s a difficult kick to hit, but it’s also very difficult. It’s a higher percentage theoretically to get the ball back on what is – onsides are typically like at 4 percent conversion rate anyway – so it’s not something that guys were just out there seeing what would happen; this is something that is coordinated and something that we’ve worked on, but unfortunately with the lights on, we didn’t execute. You’re never shying away from trying to do whatever you have to do to win the game. We thought that gave us the best chance and clearly on that rep we were mistaken. You try to avoid onside situations for the reason of it being low percentage, but then you’re trying to give yourself the best chance to win and we felt good about that going into the game and we’re going to have to clean that up as well.”
(Are QB Tua Tagovailoa, T Terron Armstead and CB Kendall Fuller – are any of them out of protocol or are all of them still in protocol?) – “I think (Kendall) Fuller and (Terron) Armstead are doing better. I’m anticipating tomorrow to get an uptick in participation and hopes of getting cleared this week. And quite honestly where Tua is at in his protocol, I think it’s important for me that we did right by him from a health perspective and for the organization from a health perspective. So before the bye week I hadn’t planned on checking on that process at all considering he’s on IR, but he’s doing well and very active. So we’ll know more after the bye week.”
(Given that QB Skylar Thompson was at least dressed last night. Are you hoping that you might have him for the New England game? Are you going QB Tyler Huntley for sure or where do you stand on that?) – “As it stands right now, the injury that he sustained, it’s been kind of (laborious) getting back so we’re planning on going with Tyler (Huntley) and I think after reviewing the tape, there’s reasons for guys to be excited about that because while the output wasn’t nearly what we wanted offensively, there were some things to build upon that we’ll keep working through and excited to do that tomorrow.”
(I wanted to get an update on OL Isaiah Wynn and then also S Jordan Poyer left the game with I believe it was a shin injury and where is his status in terms of this week’s preparation?) – “Same story. Nothing to report on Isaiah Wynn besides the fact that he’s diligently working and (Jordan) Poyer, we’ll find out more in the next coming days. I wouldn’t rule him out or in for this game. He’s a warrior that I know will play through anything that he’s able to play through so we’ll give his body a little time and he’ll be diligently in the training room trying to be a part of this New England game.”
(Another weird special teams play after the blocked punt or deflected punt that LB Duke Riley nearly touched before a Titans player did. What was the conversation on the sideline with him after that? Did he think he had to go grab it because of a deflection?) – “I think you don’t need to go any further than live speed. You could see his teammates were eagerly trying to figure out what was going on. It’s a bang-bang play and we have verbal communication for guys to stay away from the football in that situation if it goes past the line of scrimmage on a partial block. It’s no different than a shanked punt. I think that was something that was uncharacteristic, but things like that happen in football games. The bottom line is the No. 1 thing relative to winning and losing is preventing or creating turnovers, takeaways, those types of things and that was a misstep for Duke (Riley) that’s generally very, very, very reliable in those phases. So it was unfortunate that we even made it close and another opportunity to re-emphasize all those things to kicking, defense, offense. You just need to be aware of possession and how important it is.”
(At any point over the past couple weeks, has it felt like this offense is being run by players it wasn’t built for? It seems like it’s tailored around QB Tua Tagovailoa’s specific skillset. Has it ever felt like maybe QB Skylar Thompson and QB Tyler Huntley I guess need a little bit of adjustment to it?) – “It just feels like an offense that’s not good enough generally and whether that’s coaching or playing, we’re all in it together. It’s a bottom-line business. I think there’s strengths and weaknesses that everybody provides, but realistically from my history within the offense my entire coaching career; there’s tools and mechanisms that allow it to adjust. Really half the time you could say the plays don’t matter – what I call – until we have 11 people executing something in one direction. I think there’s perfectly capable players to do the things that we’re asking them to do going into the game. We all feel good about it. We’re not getting that on game day so I wouldn’t say that it’s not tailored to; when you have injuries, when you have adjustments in the lineup, people have to step up and if they’re executing their jobs at 90 percent generally, it needs to be 95 to 98 and we’re not getting that right now so bottom line is that it’s definitely not one person and there’s a lot of things that are going on in the pass game that have to do with line of scrimmage. A lot of things on the line of scrimmage that have to do with the receivers and the eligibles getting open in the timing of the play so collectively we just need to do a much better job.”
(I ask this question knowing that if the alternative happens, a player got hurt in the preseason or training camp, it would have been how and why did you put him at risk; but do you feel like this team could have benefitted more from practice, more time together in preseason games?) – “Yeah, I mean everything that wasn’t the case – you’re factoring those things in. I think that you do the best that you can with the hand dealt and if you are unable to participate in a group activity for whatever reason, there needs to be an uptick in urgency in every single rep that you do thereafter. So I know there’s a lot of teams that are going through things that are similar to us and there’s a lot of teams that are able to execute and a higher degree so I don’t spend much time in hindsight. That is very calculated. Everything that we tried to do, adjusting to whatever scenario that’s presented to us and we’re professional football players and coaches and so it’s our job to put forth a better product and if you’re grasping at straws to figure out why it’s okay; that’s not the answer. The answer is to diligently really maximize accountability across the board and collectively come up with a solution.”
