Shaquil Barrett – March 18, 2024
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Monday, March 18, 2024
LB Shaquil Barrett
(First of all, what made Miami an appealing destination for you in free agency?) – “The team that they have here, the potential to get the job done, to go on a run and be hoisting the trophy at the end of the year. And then the group of guys that they’ve got in the outside linebacker room is a great group of guys. I would love to be a part of that and I know they’re hurting and nursing injuries right now, so my role may be just to hold it down until they come back and then become a well-oiled machine when everyone gets back. I’m just ready for whatever my role is and just to help take this team and defense to the next level.”
(I know it was just a couple of seasons ago that you had 19 ½ sacks. Since I didn’t know you then, what was that year like?) – “It was just amazing. Everything just aligned. The stars were aligned and it was just good to be on a team where the coaches pretty much just let me just go out and play football and knowing the scheme, I didn’t have to think too much. I was just able to read and react, so to be able to just have that trust from my coaches, trust from my teammates to go out there and get the job done just made it an amazing year and I’m excited to try to get back to that or get close to that.”
(I was going to say it’s almost impossible to set 19.5 as a goal, but how would you describe the sack goals that you have at this point in your career?) – “Every year I will never reach my goals obviously because my goals are 23 sacks. I want to break the record every year. I want to be the best, one of the best pass rushers to do it and I think getting the sack record would solidify that fact or make you part of the argument for it, so that’s what I be trying to go for every year. But I need to still be happy about not reaching that goal and still having 10 sacks, 12 sacks, or whatever amount of sacks I might have. But yeah, I always set the goals really lofty.”
(You went through an Achilles. Is that right?) – “Yes, sir.”
(What advice, if he would ask for it, could you give to LB Jaelan Phillips who is going through one of his own?) – “For the first maybe three months or two months when you’re in a boot, you’ve got like a little arch in your heel, you’ve got to do all that. Then once you’re done with all that and you’re out of the boot, just start warming it up, loosening it up. You’re going to start walking around on it a little bit. Just trust it, though, because after the months of being in that boot and that cast, it’s pretty much healed, so you’ve just got to start loosening it up. So start loosening it up and trusting in it as soon as you can once you get out of that, because it’s going to hold up. You don’t have to worry about it re-tearing, pulling or anything. So just trust in it. When it’s time to go, just start going and believing that it’s going to hold up.”
(Was there a point last year where you felt like your old self or was it still kind of bothering you for much of the year?) – “It didn’t really bother me at all. It was just from being in a boot. Like the top of my foot right here was what was bothering me a lot. So once that went down a little bit, and I started getting treatment on that, it started feeling a lot better. But honestly, I thought throughout the whole year, I was like, ‘it feels good, it feels good.’ But it wasn’t until the end of the year when you’ve done football and you’re not doing anything for a week or so, you actually feel like, ‘oh, it could feel better.’ So it was still a little sore throughout the whole year, but I thought it was fine because I was feeling that throughout the whole year. But once I took a break, I did feel that it healed up a little bit more and it just felt better.”
(I’m doing something on the importance of the pass rush in today’s NFL and obviously it’s a passing league, so I don’t know what you think are the most important positions – quarterback, wide receiver, corner, edge rusher – but what is the importance and the role of the pass rush? How does it influence the game? How does it change the game? How does it allow the defense to dictate the game to the offense?) – “The pass rush is super important. I think that goes hand-in-hand with the DBs and cornerbacks to give you time to get to the quarterback, so if you’re able to affect the quarterback and get pressure on him, you can get touchdowns off of sacks, strip-sack recoveries, turnovers off of sacks, off of just great pass rushes. So you can affect the game at every aspect off of pass rushing. I think other than quarterbacks – quarterbacks have the hardest job, then maybe cornerbacks because you are on an island and you see they get beat because obviously if it was them or not. And then I think it’s us. You can tell easily if we’re doing our job or not. If a quarterback is back there, just nobody in front of him, nobody in his face; you can see that we’re not doing our job. So I think if we’re doing our job at a good level, high level, we should have a chance to win the game no matter what the offense is doing, special teams is doing. Pass rushers, you can affect the game and pretty much singlehandedly win a game for your team.”
(Would it be accurate to say that that’s an essential part of a Super Bowl-winning team?) – “One hundred percent. Like yeah, if you don’t have a pass rush in that Super Bowl game, somebody is going to lose a job that next year, for sure. (laughter)”
(I wanted to ask you, you’ve been a part of two Super Bowl-winning teams, some really strong defenses, and you’re joining a defense that has a lot of talent but as you know, has a lot of fresh faces as well and a new coordinator. What stood out to you from those two Super Bowl-winning defenses maybe in terms of personnel, in terms of scheme, and just the way you guys operated?) – “So we had players at every level who could make plays, literally playmakers throughout the whole entire defense, and we all fed off of that. Like if Von (Miller) wasn’t making a play, it was ‘D. Ware’ (DeMarcus Ware). If it wasn’t ‘D. Ware,’ it was ‘B. Marsh’ (Brandon Marshall). If it wasn’t ‘B. Marsh,’ it was Danny Trevathan. If it wasn’t Danny Trevathan, Chris Harris or Aqib Talib or T.J. Ward. Like during install, everybody could make a play. Then when guys went down and got hurt, the next guy stepped in and was able to be a playmaker as well. So just having them playmakers right there and then having a mindset and mentality of being dawgs, not just coming out there playing football, but playing football like with a mentality that we have to dominate and we ain’t taking nothing from nobody. That’s what we had in Denver. In Tampa, we had the same thing. We had players all everywhere and I don’t think we – we were still dawgs, but it was a different level of dawg between Denver and Tampa. But we still had dawgs out there. But it wasn’t to the extent of in Denver. So if you have them dawgs and you got playmakers all over the field and you got people who can step up and play great football when somebody gets hurt, because injuries are going to happen as y’all can see like last year with us down here last year, like it was a lot of injuries that affected chances of winning the game. But if guys can step up and fill in and do a good job filling in, then we’ll be alright.”
(Your last year in Denver was LB Bradley Chubb’s rookie year. What do you recall from playing with him?) – “We all knew Chubb, from Day 1, that he was going to come in and do his thing. His tools, coming in as a rookie were – I always said coming out, I should have been a draft pick, a first-round pick. But after coming out and seeing a guy who was a first-round pick and the moves that he’s got and the maturity he had coming out of college, Chubb (had it) all. I’m looking at it like yeah, I might not have been a first-round pick if this is what first-round picks look like coming out and play like coming out. I knew Chubb was going to be the man. And we all did, honestly. We’re always rooting for each other. We all compete with each other but we all root for each other. We’re still brothers at the end of the day. It was just nice to be able to see that he’s doing everything that we thought he could do and more.”
(You’re one of the fewer players along with Wide Receivers Coach Wes Welker, who had the privilege of playing with both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady during their careers. What was that like and how fortunate do you feel that you got the chance to do that?) – “I was very fortunate. It was amazing to see those guys ready to work. I know it might be cliché but they literally were in there early before everybody else. They got a lot of film work in, more than everybody else. Then they’re still cool guys, down-to-earth guys, that hang out and joke around with you. As a fan before I got to the NFL, I didn’t know how they would act because they have a persona bigger than life on the football field. Just to see them and meet them in person and see how cool they are and down to earth, it was really cool to see.”
(Can you quantify what is a dawg? A lot of people have a misinterpretation of what a dawg is on a football field.) – “A dawg on a football field, you’re super aggressive. You might talk a lot. You might not even talk at all. But you’re going to let the person know that you are right there play in and play out. You’re going to bring it every single play. It’s a mentality that I’m going to get the job done no matter what it takes. Sometimes it’s like alright, he got me this play. Dang, good job. Nah, he might have gotten you this play but you are going to come back and you’re going to get him the next play, the next play, the next play. You don’t get no good jobs. It’s like there are no friends on the football field when you’re a dawg. I understand we’re boys outside of football. But right now, I’m going at your neck right now. I want you to feel my presence on the football field. It’s hard and easy to describe a dawg because you’re going to keep saying the same stuff over and over again. But you know a dawg out there when you see him. That’s why I’m happy because I know (Bradley) Chubb is a dawg out there. I know (Jaelan) Phillips, I haven’t gotten to meet him but from watching his play, it looks like he’s a dawg out there too. (Jalen) Ramsey is a dawg. I’m glad to be on a defense with those types of guys.”
(With your age at 31, the NFL kind of has this mentality that they think they can put down NFL players once they past 30. How much do you feel like you have left to prove?) – “I still got a lot to prove. Especially getting cut from another team. That adds another whole fuel to the fire right there. The Dolphins are going to be happy they signed me. Tampa is going to be mad they let me go because this year that I’m planning on having and the success that we’re about to have as a team is going to be amazing.”
(I heard you talking about Denver and I wanted to ask you, in Denver you were sort of the understudy for Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware, a lot of those guys. Now you’re the vet. Maybe what did you learn from that experience as you maybe take that role to some of the younger guys here?) – “Being in Denver just taught me that no matter who you were, no matter what level of success you had, you can still be an open book and you can still be willing to give game to people in your room and on your team. Even Von (Miller) with the Pass Rush Summit, like game to people in the position in general. So that’s what I learned. Whatever moves I wanted to learn, they were willing to teach. Whatever moves – I had moves that he was like, ‘Shaq, how do you do that?’ And they wanted to learn so we were all just like brothers in there trying to get better with each other and trying to help elevate each other. So that’s what I want to do down here. If there’s something that I do that they like, I will try to teach it to them. If it’s something they do that I like, try to get them to show me how to do it as well. So it’s just that camaraderie that we have and that willingness to want to learn and to want to share was amazing. And ‘D. Ware’ (DeMarcus Ware) was very technical, so I learned some stuff from him, but I got a lot from Von because Von, his moves are more similar to mine. But ‘D. Ware’ was really good with his hands. Yhey were always willing to teach whenever we would ask.”
(I believe you had a daughter, Allanah. What has the last year been like for you and then having Allanah for your family?) – “This last year was a lot, like a whole lot. Good, bad, ugly and it just helped me figure out how strong of a person I can be, how to go through trials and tribulations and still be able to get through to the other side when it it’s something that unfathomable to face. But then the bright side out of it was having Allanah and getting to be a parent to a baby newborn and just welcoming a new addition to our family, which the kids love, we love. And there’s no second that goes by where we’re not appreciating her and appreciating having her in our family. No matter what’s going on – like, we had a hard night with her last night, but I don’t care. I’m smiling. I’m laughing. I’m going to take this. I don’t care. Whatever it is, I’m on board for.”
(Very briefly, I love that 2015 Denver team because you guys won a Super Bowl with quarterbacks throwing, I believe it was 19 touchdowns and 23 interceptions that season. So my question to you is, could a team like that win a Super Bowl once again? I know that was fairly recent, about eight or nine years ago, but could a defensive-heavy team win a Super Bowl again like that?) – “Yes, I think a defensive-heavy team could win a Super Bowl like that, but you’ve got to have that type of defense and you’ve still got to have a smart quarterback back there, because we had Peyton (Manning) back there. He might not have been playing his prime time Peyton football, but he still had the mindset and the mentality to be able to get the right checks and to be able to make the right calls in certain situations to get us into stuff like when a defense was showing something. So having that mind out there, not just any quarterback, like you’ve got to have that mind and the mentality to be able to do it as well. Because Peyton, he was very smart. He was able to get us into a lot of good situations when maybe the play call was something different and he was able to read the defense and change it. So having that and along with the playmaking ability, like we had C.J. (Anderson) making plays and then Peyton still was making plays and ‘D.T.’ (DeMaryius Thomas), ‘E’ (Emmanuel Sanders). We still had playmakers over there, but yeah, I think it can be done still.”
(And did the defense have to take a bigger role when Brock Osweiler was in there? How did you guys handle that?) – “It was the same business as usual because Brock (Osweiler) came in and he came in doing his thing. I think he led us to a 5-2 record or something like that, 5-1 record. And then the game when he got subbed out, I remember, it was like five picks, but it was like, three tipped or dropped passes or something, like four dropped passes to picks. So he wasn’t even playing bad that game, but bringing Peyton back in after that just gave us a little, lit the team on fire and we were able to come back and win that game. But yeah, everybody who had the opportunity to come in and help the team, they came in and helped the team.”
(How difficult was the free agency process for you, leaving a team that you won a Super Bowl with and coming to a new team? This is your third team, looking to win a third Super Bowl ring for you?) – “It wasn’t too difficult because I honestly, like depending on the season I had coming into last year, I knew that it was one of those times. Depending on if we’re going to be a Super Bowl contender and I played good, then there was a chance I was going to stay, but if I played like the season I had, I knew they had to pay people and I was going to be a potential cut, so I was preparing my family for pretty much the whole year, honestly. And then like once it happened, it wasn’t a surprise at all because I was making the money I was making then, but then my numbers weren’t supporting the fee that I was being paid, so I understood that part of the business, so it wasn’t too hard. But moving my family, that’s usually the hard part. But only going down the road, we’re going to be able to keep our house in Tampa and then they’re going to come travel down here every other week, so we’re going to make it work. That’s the best part about it, not having to really relocate the whole family.”
