Patrick Graham – September 24, 2019
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Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Defensive Coordinator Patrick Graham
(One of the areas that defense has done really well in is the penalties. Just 17 – third-fewest in the league. What have you guys done from the preseason to now to really improve in that area?) – “I think it started when ‘Flo’ (Head Coach Brian Flores) put together his vision of the team. We said ‘smart, tough, disciplined football team.’ Part of being smart and disciplined is not being penalized and not beating yourself. We talk it about it all the time, especially early on in the year. More games are lost because guys – whether it’s penalties – you end up beating yourself, and we’re trying to avoid that just by harping on that. The stuff that takes no talent, that’s the stuff we’ve got to make sure we get done.”
(How would you say your defense hung in there in the first half? I know it was different for the second.) – “Right now, I’m thinking so much about Los Angeles right now. There were some positives from the game last week that we can build on. I think the fundamentals – we were seeing some improvement in that, and we’ve just got to keep going with that. That’s what’s going to carry us into this week against the Chargers because we’ve got a pretty good offensive team coming in here. They’ve got a head coach who has familiarity with the system. He knows us pretty well in terms of just having been in our division for a while. I know it’s been a while for him. This is his third year. The quarterback, the o-line – the o-line is probably one of the more athletic o-lines in the league, and they do a good job of getting to people and the first and second level. Then the skill players – the backs – these guys are dynamic. They’re dynamic skill players. They can run the ball. They can catch passes, and I think the receiver (Keenan Allen) – obviously he’s been targeted 200 million times. (laughter) This guy’s a good (player). They’ve got good players out there, and they’ve got explosive players with (Travis) Benjamin. There are a lot of good players out there to worry about.”
(Three games, four sacks – where is the heat going to come from?) – “The heat’s going to come from the guys on the field. We’ve got to pressure – however you define it – and the main goal is to affect the quarterback. We’ve got to find ways to improve that. It starts with me. We’ve got to do a good job of that. We’re constantly just evaluating it week-to-week. The main thing though is not necessarily the sack numbers or the pressures. It’s affecting the quarterback, whether that’s disrupting his passing windows, getting our hands up and making sure that it ties together with the coverage and the rush tied together. We’re working towards that, and we’re working to improve that.”
(Is the run defense a concern right now?) – “I think overall, we’re looking to improve in all facets of the game whether it’s the pass game or pass coverage, pass rush, run defense. We’re trying to improve all of them. We’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to set the edge, especially against the Chargers. If we don’t set the edge, these guys can get out there. We’ve got to do a good job with that. We’ve got to play with power inside, play with extension; but it’s all a process. We’re looking to improve and it starts really today – guys getting in, getting an understanding of who the Chargers are as a run team, what they do in the run game and in the pass game. For us, once we get to practice, working on the fundamentals that are going to help us improve there.”
(You’ve twice now in the second half been on the field a lot during the game, and players may be worn down a little bit. I don’t know if that’s a fair criticism or not. How do you guard against that when you’re not – when it’s three-and-out on offense and you’ve got to come right back out and you have all those snaps for your defense?) – “Our job is to play defense, and that’s what we’re going to do. When we go against the Chargers this weekend, whenever they have the ball, we’re going to go out there and we’re going to play and we’re going to do our best to limit the points and limit how many snaps they have and we’ve got to get off the field on third down. That’s our job. That’s our job, so we don’t worry about other stuff. We’ve just go to make sure that we’re doing our job. That’s what I’m worried about most.”
(Where can you improve on your third-down defense?) – “We’ve got to do a good job – a better job of – it starts with me doing a better job of preparing the players. Obviously, that’s always the case. I’ve always got to do a good job of coaching if it’s not getting done. I think that we’ve got to do a good job of just some basic fundamental stuff that we’ve got to keep working on, but we’re making strides in it and we’ll keep working towards that.”
(I know turnovers are a real quirky thing. Sometimes it’s the right place at the right time, but how do you guys go about trying to force more and trying to always get the ball back?) – “Turnovers – part of it is, are they a turnover team? Like a team that is prone to give up turnovers? That’s one thing. Then it’s just putting pressure on the ball. Putting the pressure on the ball whether in the running game, passing game – just putting pressure on the ball and then usually good things happen with the turnovers. That’s the main focus on that: putting pressure on the ball and the people that have the ball and just attacking that.”
