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Mike Pouncey – November 2, 2016 Download PDF version

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Center Mike Pouncey

(Can the success in the past two games boost everyone?) – “I think so. I think when you find your identity as a football team, you can start working on those things a lot more during practice. That is what we’ve been doing as of late. We’ll see how it goes on Sunday. We’re excited to go back out there in front of our home crowd once again, and we’re looking for a great environment. They have a really good defense. This team is like number one in the NFL in stopping the run, so it’s going to be a really tough task for our offense.”

(When you do look at their defensive front, do you feel like you’ll still be able to execute and do the same type of things you’ve been doing?) – “We’ll see. Like I said before, they play the run really well. They put a lot of guys in the box. We’re not going to shy away from it. We’re going to see how it goes throughout the game, but we’re going to do whatever it takes to win the football game.”

(Are you challenging RB Jay Ajayi to get 200 yards this week?) – “Of course. We’re trying to be a part of the history books. But our main focus is to win this game, whether we rush for 200 yards or 1 yard. Our main goal at the end of the day is to win the football game, and it’s something we’re looking forward to.”

(You came in and the offensive line is now blocking real well – run blocking well, protecting QB Ryan Tannehill. What did you try to instill in the rest of the lineman when you stepped in here?) – “I never make it all about me. I feel like we’ve got all five of our starters back – the guys that we worked on all offseason going into training camp – and I think all five of us play really well together. If you noticed the last two games, we’ve had all five starters out there, and we’ve been running the ball really well. So, we’ll see how it goes, but we’re looking for a really good game. This team travels really well as far as fans, and they’re going to play us really, really tough.”

(Personnel-wise, what’s kind of scary about the Jets?) – “They got one of the best defensive fronts in the NFL. They’re trying to trade guys, (because) they can’t pay them so much. (laughter) These guys, they’re really good, really active. They’re (a) strong, big front. And they’ve got a really good coach that was here before.”

(In the past you guys have played really great for two weeks and backslid. Why is this year going to be different?) – “I guess we’ll see. You thought last week we were going to lose and the week before, so your prediction hasn’t been too good. (laughter)  We’ll see how it goes. We’re just looking forward to it. I feel like our offense is really clicking right now. We kind of found our identity, and we’re going to see how it works on Sunday.”

(Everyone talks about DL Muhammad Wilkerson and DL Sheldon Richardson, but it seems like DL Leonard Williams has developed. What are his strengths?)  – “I think he’s a really good player, one of their best players on their defense. He’s a guy that really comes off the ball hard, he plays with his hands and he’s a young guy. He’s really active. He makes a lot of plays on their defensive front. You can’t count that guy out, because all four, five of those guys are really, really good.”

(The run game, what has that done for QB Ryan Tannehill and the passing game?) – “I think our run game has opened up the rest of our offense. We’ve had big plays off the pass game from the run. I think Ryan has been playing great. He’s a guy that goes up there and has a lot of freedom of checking plays and getting us into the right runs or right passes. For the past two weeks, it has been awesome.”

(They announced the game in London next year. Having been through that, what are some of the pros and challenges?) – “We’re excited about it. It’s always fun to go to another country and play. It’s something that a lot of guys don’t have the opportunity to do. The only bad part about it is we lose a home game. But over there it feels like both teams are the home team, because the crowds are so into it. We’re excited about it. It’s something our team likes to do is play in London. We’ll go over there next year, and we’ll be ready to play.”

(Are you the official team of London do you think?) – “I think it’s the Jaguars, isn’t it?” (laughter)

(With so much success in the run game, what are some of the things that you guys can do to kind of keep opposing defenses honest?) – “I think what we’ve got to do is stay on schedule with the sticks. We can’t get ourselves in second-and-long and third-and-long, because our offense isn’t effective that way. We’ve got to do a great job on first downs getting positive yards and on second down getting positive yards, and putting ourselves in situations on third down where we can have a third-and-short and try to complete it.”

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