Pat Flaherty – May 9, 2019
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Thursday, May 9, 2019
Offensive Line Coach Pat Flaherty
(How excited are you to start working with the two draft picks – OL Michael Deiter and T Isaiah Prince?) – “I’m really fired up. I had a conversation with both of those guys last week just to check and see how they’re doing, working out, make sure that they’re running and things like that to get ready for this weekend. (I am) really looking forward to see how those guys develop, because they’ve both played a lot of football at really good schools – Wisconsin and Ohio State. I’m fired up.”
(What do you look for when you were looking at these college kids? What was the one trait that you needed to have?) – “Any more nowadays, you really want … A lot of college offenses throw the ball, so you want to find some guys that are skilled in run blocking. You never get a lot of guys that (are) overall developed in both areas. We want smart, tough, physical guys and that’s what we were looking for in the draft.”
(You obviously did some work and saw T Jordan Mills I assume. What do you see in him?) – “He’s a veteran. He’s played a lot of football. He was in Buffalo this past season and watching tape from week to week, you have a lot of crossover tape. So, I had an opportunity to see him there. I think he’s a good football player. Still even though he’s been in the league a little bit, he has got a high ceiling and he can get better at a lot of things he’s doing. We’re excited about having him.”
(Obviously, he has to win the job – I’m talking about QB Josh Rosen – but you want a clean pocket for this guy, so you can actually evaluate what you have, I’d assume, right?) – “You do. You have to. That’s the first thing. We must be able to run the football and get 4-plus yards a carry and then we have to be able to keep the pocket clean and protect the quarterback. Pressures are going to happen. Hits and sacks, that’s a bad word, bad words in our room.”
(Do you have a vision for OL Michael Deiter, because he played a lot of spots?) – “He did. We’ll get him settled in one position. Where that is right now, we’ll kind of meet on that tonight and see where we’re going to start him. I would assume it’s going to be one of the guard spots. You don’t want to move a young guy around too quick in too many positons, because he doesn’t learn the one positon. It’s going to be, as we tell them, the volume of the offense is a lot different than what it was in college. It’s still football, but the learning part of it (is bigger). And the techniques that I’ll be teaching – the fundamentals and techniques I’ll be teaching – are going to be different than what he has learned. So, we want him to start at one position. And then as he feels that he knows what he’s doing at one positon, then we’ll work him at other positons and he’ll be versatile. He is a versatile player. As you mentioned, he played a lot of different positons.”
(OL Michael Deiter told us he was pretty left-handed in college, I think at tackle and guard.) – “He did. He played … Did he tell you that?”
(Yeah.) – “Yeah, he did. He played … He brought that to my attention when I talked to him on the phone to congratulate him after we drafted him, just recapping. I watched him. But I said, ‘I took notes you just played left side.’ He said, ‘That’s all I played.’ But to get in a right-hand stance is going to be new to him at first, but he’ll be fine.”
(Do you think you’re going to start OL Michael Deiter out on the right side then?) – “We don’t know. We’re going to put him on the right side at some time and see what he can do, whether he starts there or he moves there after we get a couple weeks under our belt.”
(OL Michael Deiter also told us that he had to play right tackle it’d take him about three days to learn the positon. Does that sound like a characteristic of his that you know?) – “Is that good or bad? I don’t know. (laughter) He’s going to have about three minutes to learn the position is what he’s going to have. That’s part of getting these guys ready to go. As I said, if you start moving them around too soon, too fast, it all jumbles up in their head. They have to learn a new offense and you want them to have a clear mind, get them ready to go with the snap count, the formation of the play. That’s a lot of learning for these guys, especially the short time we have in minicamp.”
(So the challenge for you I guess is you’ve got all these new guys, some play multiple positons, at least they have, and get them in quickly to where you want them so they can…?) – “That’s a good point. Really, you guys over the years have asked me, ‘How long does it take to get guys together to get that chemistry?’ With the way the makeup of the NFL is, when you only have seven active offensive lineman, you have to be able to have some versatility within the positons that they play. And then you also have to move them around a little bit in training camp. You have to try to find that right formula that gives you the opportunity to have success.”
(Do you find yourself now … it’s all new to you here, all of the new guys shuffling mentally, “Okay, I can do this or I could do this?”) – “Yeah, because the guys that we’ve had thus far in phase one and phase two have done a real good job learning in the classroom. We’ve done that. Now, we haven’t blocked anybody, except for the couple days of minicamp, but they’ve been able to go from the right side to left side, from guard to tackle, guards to center, center to guard. There has been some versatility with that.”
(Who do you have at right tackle right now?) – “It’s going to be open. Zach Sterup has done a good job in the offseason program. He’s worked his tail off in the weight room and on the field. Now with Jordan Mills here and drafting Isaiah Prince, you would think that the two veteran guys have a little bit of a step ahead of the rookie, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s hard to evaluate really where you are at the offensive line until you put pads on.”
(We saw about five minutes of C Daniel Kilgore last year before he got hurt. How has he looked?) – “He’s looked very well. He’s looked good. All of his injury is past him. He’s fully healthy from that. (He is) working well in the weight room and on the field.”
(Since we last spoke to you, the team added G/C Chris Reed, a guy you obviously are familiar with. What do you like about him?) – “Chris, he’s the kind of guy what we were looking for the Dolphins. He’s a strong, tough guy with grit. That’s what we’re looking for, for a Miami Dolphins offensive lineman. He fit that mold.”
(I’m working on something on the AAF guys that you guys have. G Michael Dunn is one of them. You had him in Jacksonville. What can you tell me about him as a player and as a personality?) – “The Alliance league helped Michael because he was able to go play. When any young player asked me about other leagues in the offseason, the number one (thing) young guys have got to do is they got to learn, they’ve got to play. Now you’re on the practice squad, you’re practicing, but you’re not actually in a game situation. That really helps those guys. It probably compares to (something) that I’m a little bit familiar with – the European league – and those type of leagues like that. But that helped Michael. He’s versatile. He’s never played center in a game, but he’s done some snapping. He’s done some snapping in the Alliance league and he’s done some snapping here for us.”
(Would you say that AAF guys have a better shot with the Dolphins, because this is kind of s stripped down roster or football is football and opportunity is opportunity?) – “Probably football is football. But the roster is lean right now and we’re looking for guys to step up and they’ll have an opportunity to step up and be the guy.”
(What would a guy have to do to get your attention? Is it classroom, is it little things, details on the field?) – “First of all, it’s details because you need to be detailed to be a good offensive lineman. And then it’s taking the classroom to the football field, taking the drill work to the teamwork, that type of emphasis. We really won’t find out until we get to training camp and we put the pads on. Guys are different now. There are many stories about guys that look good in gym shorts and then you get them out there in pads. They know. These guys have been in pads before. They know what it takes to be a physical group. That’s what we’re looking for.”
(How much AAF film have you seen and what would you say the quality was?) – “It’s funny you ask that. I’ve probably watched more as a fan when it was on TV, whenever I could find the channel it was on. And I have some friends that were coaching in it, not that I ever saw them. But it was kind of interesting as a fan and it interested me to watch it. Once their season was over and the evaluation process started, our personnel people did a nice job and said, ‘Hey, look at this guy, look at that guy.’ So when they gave me a guy to look at, I looked at him.”
(There’s no downside for those guys. Like you said experience, right? There is no downside.) – “It’s totally an upside in my opinion. I think it can do nothing but help players like that.”
(What’s your challenge this year? Everything is new. Like you said, it’s kind of lean. There are not a lot of settled positons, especially on the o-line I guess.) – “It’s not really any different than any other year I’ve been in the league. This is my 20th (year). It’s exciting because the room I have – the guys in my room – I really enjoy coaching those guys because they come in, they listen, they pay attention to detail. I’m really excited about … As I talked to them about phase one, phase two, this is what the objective of that is and then we go to OTAs, and here is the objective of that, then you work out on your own until we come back in training camp. When we get to training camp, now, it’s true football day in and day out, now.”
(I read somewhere you get goosebumps on the first day of training camp.) – “I do. I’ve been coaching a little bit as you can tell. My black hair is turning gray. Now it’s turned to nothing. (laughter) Anyhow, I do. As an athlete – I’m not telling you guys I was an athlete, but I played sports – but you had that competition and this is the closest thing to it. If I ever – the first day of training camp or the 20th day of training camp – don’t have those goosebumps, game day don’t have those goosebumps, I guess it’s time to go and sit in a rocking chair and smoke a cigar.”
(A two-part question on T Laremy Tunsil: this is your first time working with him. Any early impressions? Obviously, you haven’t practice. And two, because of his standing as an elite or almost elite left tackle, would you look for him to be a leader?) – “I’m looking for Laremy to be … We’ve laid everything out. We talked to him about, ‘Here’s what you need to do to reach the goal that you want to be.’ And he set high goals for himself. As a coach, I’m trying to help him attain those goals. Thus far, he’s done everything everybody (has asked) – the weight room, what they’ve asked him to do on the field. He’s pushed himself through everything and he’s gotten better at his techniques.”
(Tell us a little bit about OL Michael Deiter and what you’ve noticed about his personality?) – “He’s a football guy. He has a passion for the game. What’s interesting is when I talked to him and I said, ‘How did you get to Wisconsin,’ he said, ‘Because of their offensive line tradition. They play power football and I wanted to go.’ He had opportunities to go to other schools. He said, ‘That’s what I wanted to do.’ That mentality fit in. It put a smile on my face.”
(Have you had a lot of Wisconsin players through the years?) – “A few. Not as many. But I’ve always studied those guys.”
(Is there a common trait with them?) – “You see guys like that, an offense like that, and they run the ball. They’re not in the spread offense. They get in the (shot)gun like everybody else does on third down, but they’re not consistently in the (shot)gun like a lot of teams are. So, you see more of their run blocking ability.”
(One thing I read about OL Michael Deiter was that he’s sneaky funny and one of the o-line coaches at Wisconsin was saying that he worried about Deiter when he first got there because he’d see the offensive lineman standing in a circle and everybody is laughing and Deiter had a straight face and he said somebody later explained, “He’s not laughing because he just told the joke.” Have you seen that? I know you haven’t been around him that much.) – “No. He won’t have too may jokes as a rookie, I’ll tell you that. (laughter) I’ll tell him the first thing I hear a veteran offensive lineman say is, ‘As a rookie, the motto is be seen, not heard.’”
(Isn’t that the motto for all offensive lineman?) – “It pretty much is, especially for rookies.”
(How did you become an offensive line coach?) – “My dad was a high school coach. I was an offensive and defensive lineman in high school. I played offensive line. I really started in … Like I said, I coached 19 years as an offensive line coach in college, one year as a defensive line coach. My first four years in the league, I was a tight end coach. So, it was really neat. But I always had a passion to be an offensive line coach. How? I don’t know. That was the last seat in the room, I guess. I don’t know. (laughter)”
(Is G/T Jesse Davis staying at guard?) – “Right now, yeah, he’s staying at guard. But we’ll move him around a little bit. You’ll see that.”
