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BB: Good morning. We're wrapping up
this Lions week. It'll be bombs away on Sunday, I'm sure. [Jon] Kitna is
getting his arm rubbed down right now.
Q: How do you find out and really
judge how important football is to a player? Do you talk to his old coaches?
The grapevine? Research?
BB: I don't think I could give you a
specific answer on that. I think you just kind of look at each case
individually, but it's a combination of all the things that you mentioned
would be indicative of [that] – what he does
and how hard he works. What he's done in other places both with talking to
his peers and his coaches and people who work with him, but also people that
work at his level. I think those are all ways to try to gauge it. I don't
know if you ever really know for sure until you've worked firsthand with the
player. These days you have a lot of crossover and there are a lot of
players on our team that have played on other teams and kind of have
relationships with other players, so sometimes it could be that. Sometimes
it could be other coaches that I've coached with who have had the player.
Anytime you get a guy in one environment and put him into another
environment, you never know exactly how that's going to work out. A guy
might be one way in one particular environment and it might not be exactly
the same in the next one. Sometimes that's a little bit of a projection, but
it's nothing where you could just say, 'It's these three things on the
checklist,' and that's how we do it. It just depends on what your resources
are and how you can assemble the information and then try to make the best
evaluation that you can. Sometimes it's just sitting down and talking with a
player, not that that's the ultimate thing, but it could be a part of it.
Q: After all of that, what are the kinds of things you get from a
face-to-face meeting?
BB: I think the more time you could spend with him, the easier it is to
evaluate him. If you meet with a guy for 10 minutes, that's one thing. If
you're with him for an hour-and-a-half, two hours, three hours…I'm thinking
of some guys that I've sat with for that length of time. Ray Lewis. Lawyer
Milloy. Guys like that. [Tom] Brady. Players that we drafted, Ty Warren,
guys that you can get a sense of how important football is to them and what
they're about and what they want to do. You start talking about things.
Sometimes it's just a feel. Again, I'm not saying it's a scientific
analysis. You just get a feel for it. That's the best way I could put it.
But I think the more opinions that you have, the more people that you know
that you trust, when everybody else is pretty much singing the same tune,
then you probably have a pretty good feeling about how it's going to end up.
Q: Did you have that feeling when you met with Corey [Dillon] a couple of
years ago?
BB: Well, again, it's a combination of a lot of things. Yes, and they
were all positive.
Q: How often does it change? Where football falls down the priority list?
BB: I see it fall down the priority list with a lot of guys.
Q: Does that happen often after a player has had a lot of success?
BB: No, I was talking about at the beginning part of the process, just as
you're going through it. You can kind of tell sometimes as you're going
along that football is maybe fourth or fifth on the list. I'm not saying
that would eliminate anybody. I'm just saying if that's what it is, then you
kind of think that's what you get. There are going to be some other things
that maybe come first.
Q: Does it change often midway through a career?
BB: Sure. I think you see young players…oh, no question. All of us. We
mature [and] as we get older and have other experiences, you see that
sometimes and sometimes it's for the good. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you
get young players that mature and grow into a certain professionalism, I
think would be a good way to put it. Sometimes you get players that as they
go along, they get more comfortable and kind of lose their edge and the
competitiveness that they had at a younger or an earlier point in their
career. I don't think it always necessarily does the same way. Sometimes
there is some variation there.
Q: Do you feel like it's a good way to evaluate guys off the field too,
like they won't do things to put their career in jeopardy?
BB: Again, anytime you look at a person, you get everything that comes
with that person. Their vertical jump. Their 40 speed. Their size. Their
competitiveness. Their intelligence. Their toughness. Their versatility. You
just kind of look at the whole player and see whether or not you think he
can help your football team and how much he can help it relative to other
players that you might have options to either acquire or have on your team.
Maybe they're already here. That's really what it comes down to. If you
weigh one thing too heavily, there are just other things that will offset
it.
Q: Does Chad Jackson's 40-time translate to football speed?
BB: I think he's pretty fast. Yes. He's pretty fast.
Q: The work that Tom Brady and Reche Caldwell did in the offseason, do
you start to see the benefit of that work now and maybe you can do some
things now that you weren't able to do in the beginning because he put in
just an enormous amount of work with Tom?
BB: Reche has worked hard. He's a hard-working kid. There's no doubt
about his work ethic. It's very good. He's done a lot of things all year
really. He's been, all the way through training camp, a playmaker in camp on
the field, whether it be in practice or in games. He's shown up making plays
a lot and I think, obviously, the more that a quarterback and a receiver
work together, the better it is. It isn't like it took months for it to
happen. I can remember seeing it out there in training camp a lot of
practices. We had a hard time defensively covering him.
Q: What benefit do you think that a quarterback and a receiver can get
from that work in the offseason?
BB: The timing of the routes, the execution of the routes. We run a lot
of routes and run up a lot of different coverages and different situations.
Where the ball is going to be and how the receiver is going to signal to the
quarterback that he's about to go into that route, through his body posture
and language. A lot of that is anticipation. It's not waiting to throw the
ball until you see the receiver open, but anticipating where he is going to
go and exactly where he's going to be and what angle he's going to come out
of it at. The receiver, where he would expect the ball, which shoulder,
which ball location. That's what we're trying to do, it's not always perfect
there. But, what we're looking for, as a quarterback, where we're looking to
throw the ball, how to best execute the play, how the quarterback can
communicate with the receiver by what he does with the ball and how the
receiver can communicate with the quarterback with his back to the
quarterback by he's going to do. It's subtle, but a good passing game would
have those elements in it, at all positions, not just receiver, but tight
ends. Backs. All of it.
Q: Do you see that continuing to improve?
BB: Sure. The difference is, now you see a lot of different coverages and
you see the displacement in routes because of the coverage. The receiver is
getting jammed. The corner is rolling up into him. Stuff like that. That
changes the timing of the route. You have a guy standing one foot in front
of you jamming you and rerouting you on the line of scrimmage is not the
same as running a route against a corner who is 10 yards off. It's not the
same route. You might call it the same, but from a practical matter it's not
going to happen the same. Those are all little things that are a part of the
passing game. And part of defending the passing game, depending on which
side of the ball you're on.
Q: What happened with Chad this week? A little setback for him?
BB: Yes, he tightened up a little bit yesterday.
Q: Tom said on Wednesday that you were a little tougher on the team. What
was your message to the team when they came in at the beginning of the week?
BB: I'll let Brady evaluate those. I don't know. I'm just trying to coach
the team and get them ready to play against Detroit. I think we have a lot
of work to do. They're a tough team to get ready for. They have a lot of
problems offensively. They're a good defensive football team, even though
they don't have an enormously exotic scheme, but what they do, they do well
and they're good at it. They're very good in the kicking game. I'm just
trying to get the team ready to go. The same thing I do every week. Like I
said, I'll leave that to Tom to evaluate how hard or soft...I mean everybody
knows I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky, easy-going coach. I guess I must have
really made an impression if I came down hard on them.
Q: Do you see any similarities between the careers of Troy Brown and Kevin Faulk?
BB: Sure. I think there are a lot of similarities between those two
players. They have some similar skills. They have good hands. They're quick.
They're very intelligent players. They have good football instincts. Real,
real good instincts - where to go, how to make adjustments, particularly in
the passing game, but with the ball in his hands, Troy as a punt returner
and Kevin as a running back. They're smart players, they're also very
instinctive players. They have a great work ethic. Both very team oriented,
unselfish guys, very versatile and can do a lot of different things. Some of
the things that they do the same, like return punts and return kicks and
catch the ball and things like that. Yes, there is a lot of similarity is
between those two players.
Q: They probably both have had moments in their career where it looked
like they wouldn't have had this kind of longevity. They've had a lot to
overcome.
BB: I think that's another thing that they both have in common is they
both have a lot of mental toughness. They're both tough, physically tough,
and they're both mentally tough. They are well-prepared. They both work
really hard. Like I said, they're great team players. Nobody supports their
teammates better than those two guys – the other receivers, the other running
backs or just their teammates in general. Those guys are great leaders, both
of them. They're outstanding leaders by the way they perform their job,
approach their job and the way they're supportive of their teammates. They
are two of the best on our team and two of the best that I've been around.
Q: Rod [Marinelli] talked earlier this week about changing the football
culture and changing the way things work in Detroit. When you come in and
take over a new team as a new head coach, how difficult is it to change the
philosophy?
BB: That's a great question. I think it depends a lot on what you believe
in as a coach and then what is in place in that organization or on that team
when you come in. Sometimes it might not be that big of a contrast, other
times sometimes it could be like night and day. Depending on what you're
trying to do and what is established there, that could be a big transition
or it could just be some little differences in the way you do things or
maybe a philosophy, it might not be that fundamental. But, on the other
hand, it could be huge depending on how different those two work.
Q: When you come in I know you have your own scheme and system, but does
it really take patience for something like that to settle? Marinelli said
one of the last things that you see in a successful business is profit. Does
it take you being persistent with players and being able to keep a player's
attention to really get things to settle?
BB: I think those are good points that he made. I would
definitely agree with all of them. A lot of times what most people try to do
is they try to measure progress by the win-loss record. If you win more
games the second year than the first year, more the third than the second,
then everything is great and it's not always that way. You can make a lot of
progress on a football team and sometimes the record doesn't reflect it in
either direction. Sometimes you're kind of artificially good, or sometimes
your record is really below what the quality of the team is and the quality
of improvement that you've made relative to where you started. I think you
have to try to be as a coach, and as an organization, objective about that
and it's hard sometimes because you get so swayed by the final score. If we
win, everything is great; if we lose, everything is terrible. But that's
really not the way it is. So it does take some patience, especially if
you're not getting the kind of results in the win-loss column that everybody
would like to see. That's the hardest part is when you really feel like
you're really making progress with your football team and you're getting
better, but the win-loss record doesn't reflect that. Then it takes some
patience, it takes some perseverance, not just by a coach, but the entire
team, all the players and the organization and everybody, to continue making
steps to improve your team, kind of as Rod said, to see the profit at the
end. When it's not there, you're not necessarily seeing higher profits each
quarter, but eventually at some point when things come around, you have a
good football team. Yes, that's a process. It definitely is a process.
Sometimes you get better at one position and simultaneously you lose ground
somewhere else for one reason or another, whether it be injuries or some
players come, some players leave, unbalanced, you're improving but in
certain positions, there might be a slight regression in talent or
performance or whatever it is. Sometimes that can kind of get skewed a
little bit too when, as a total team, you're moving ahead, but maybe in one
or two spots you're actually maybe not as good as you were at another point
in time for whatever the reasons are. You kind of have to look at the whole
picture.
Q: Can you feel for what Romeo [Crennel] is going through in Cleveland a
little bit?
BB: I think that's a good example of a team that's a lot better than it
was a couple of years ago, from what I can see, in a lot of areas. Their
record may not necessarily reflect that. Absolutely.
Q: You talked yesterday about how Dante Scarnecchia comes in at four in
the morning and the NFL is so competitive and you guys work so many hours at
your job. Are you ever envious of the guy down the street who has a weekend
off and has time to enjoy his life a little bit or is football just so much
in your blood?
BB: It's a
good change of pace, like the bye week, that's great to be able to have a
few days where it's not quite at the same pace as the normal regular season
whether it be the weekend, just kind of the pace of a two week game instead
of a one week game. I enjoy it, I really do. I enjoy
coming in here, I enjoy the preparation and the competition of the game.
We're going up against a great team every week, another great coach every
week, teams that I know work just as hard as we do – or harder – and we have
to try to find some way to be a little bit better than they are on that one
day that we compete against them. And that's invigorating, it's very
challenging, and it's a rush. It's a huge rush, the whole preparation thing,
because you
just can't wait until Sunday to say, 'Okay, well now let's start competing
on Sunday.' With football, it just doesn't work that way. There's
competition today for us to do more on Friday than they're doing. For us to
be better prepared for the game based on what we do in the meetings and
practice today than what they're doing with the same time that they have
allotted to them. That's the kind of competition there is every week from a
preparation standpoint. And then, of course, that carries over into the
game. There are a
lot of games that are really won and lost during the week as much as they
are on Sunday. That's the final picture, that's what everybody sees, and
that's what they should see, but a lot of times the things that lead up to those things that happen on Sunday are in some part connected
to what happened on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, or even Tuesday, from a gameplanning standpoint.
But I enjoy it. It's not like I come in here in the
morning and say, 'Oh, man. I can't wait for this day to be over with.' I'm
excited to get going. I'm looking forward to whatever we're doing, whether
it's third down or red area or first down or punt returns or wrapping it
all up, trying to pull everything together and get it ready for the game, all of that. I enjoy every part of that. I enjoy watching film and studying
it, preparing a plan, working with the other coaches, giving it to the
players, seeing it on the field, coaching and teaching the players on the
field, and then seeing it happen on Sunday. I think that's like a lot of people,
if [you] love their job then you don't really think about the time or the work that
you're putting in. You think about the enjoyment that you get from doing it
and the satisfaction that you get from doing it. Now, if you don't like
it then, you know, some of the classes I took in college, if you don't like the class,
you don't like what you're working on, every minute seems like an hour in
that class. We've all sat through those.
Q: So this is something that you plan to be doing for a long time?
BB: Right now, I'm thinking about Detroit. I'm planning on being there on
Sunday. I would like to be at the game. |
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