BB: Good morning. What are you
working on today?
Q: How important is a routine on the
road?
BB: I think it gives everybody a little comfort level. We try to do our
road games kind of like we do the home games from a time standpoint and have
the same Saturday meeting, have the same Saturday morning schedule, and that
type of thing, just so we can stay on course in terms of preparation [and]
so the stuff that we get covered at each meeting, there's some consistency
there. I think most people like to have some kind of routine. It's always a
little bit different when you travel because each place is different, but we
try to have some continuity there from an overall scheduling standpoint.
Q: What are the differences between that routine versus trying to do the
same thing for a home game? Are there many?
BB: Not really. Saturday morning is the same. Saturday afternoon you're
traveling instead of not traveling. Saturday night is basically the same.
Sunday morning, other than we all go to the game together instead of
separately. It's pretty close.
Q: When you look at the team's performance on the road this year versus
their performance at home, do you feel like the games that they have played
with more focus have been on the road?
BB: I don't know. It's hard for me to…each game is kind of a little bit
of its own game. I don't know. I know what our record is on the road and
that's good. That's great. I think there are a lot of factors involved in the
game, so I'd hate to just pin it on one thing.
Q: Is there any explanation for why you guys play so well on the road?
BB: Again, certain games, it's not like we haven't had any mistakes on
the road or any problems. I think the players have, in some of those games,
played well. And played a complementary game in all three phases. It's a
credit to the way they play.
Q: Have you ever been a part of a season, coaching wise, where you've
actually preferred going on the road based on a larger scale of the season
and you broke it down and it looked like the team's better performances were
on the road?
BB: Not right off the top of my head. I can't really remember in a long
time [being] on a team where I felt like going on the road was a problem. I
can think of a couple of teams, but that was a long, long time ago in my
career. I can't think of a reason [or] situation where I felt like the team
felt, 'Boy, I wish we didn't have to go on the road. I wish we could play at
home.' It's always good to play at home because the routine is a little bit
simpler. Any team that really didn't want to go and play on the road, I
can't really think of one. It's been quite a while.
Q: How about looking forward to playing on the road?
BB: It's a little bit different. You're going into a hostile environment.
Crowd noise. You're just kind of getting used to the different surroundings
– the 40-second clock, the wind, the sun, the field conditions, whatever the
elements of that particular environment are. They're a little bit different.
There are times when there's an adjustment you have to make. Like I said,
it's been a while since I would really say that that was something I felt
was a serious problem with the team.
Q: Given your choice, if you could play them all at home, you'd probably
choose that?
BB: That's not much of an option. We have no options in the schedule
really. I don't even worry about it.
Q: What are the roles of the captains in football? Do they have certain
things to do?
BB: Just to simplify it without getting into a lot of detail, I think a
captain's role is to facilitate communication between the head coach or
assistant coaches and the players. I can't go and have individual
conversations with every player everyday or even every week. Realistically
that isn't feasible. There are too many players and not enough time. I do talk
to the team and talk to the captains and I think there is a way that I can
talk to them and have them sometimes carry that communication with the
players and I think it works the other way where players can go to a captain
and say, 'We feel this,' or, 'We feel that. Can we do something about this?'
Whatever the problem or situation is. And the captains will bring it to me
and say, 'There is some concern about this, or that, can we address it one
way or another?' I think the communication link from the players to the
coaches and sometimes organizationally, because we are involved in some
organizational events, there is a flow of information there and then
certainly their leadership within their groups, because each guy represents
a certain segment of the team if you will. Not that they don't represent
everybody, but they are more a part of some groups than others. That
leadership carries over into, or filters down to, those groups as well.
Again, we have a lot of players on the team who are strong leaders who
aren't captains. I don't think leadership just goes with the captain's
title. I think it actually belongs to every player on the team.
Q: Do you meet with them each week at a specific time?
BB: I meet with them regularly and on an as-needed basis.
Q: Do you feel like most of the time it's a positive thing where the
experiences have been more positive than negative with the players who come
to you or is it vice versa?
BB: It's both. No, I think it's definitely positive because it's a
communication flow and it just helps everybody have a better understanding
of whatever the positions are or whatever the situation is and we're all
here for the same reason. Anything that they suggest that I can do to help
the team, I'm for it. Anything that I suggest that they can do to help the
team, they're for it.
Q: What are the perfect attributes for a captain?
BB: Well, I think basically what it comes down to is a player that is
prepared, works hard and puts the team first. I think those are the
attributes that are respected by all of his teammates and all of the people
involved with the football team. So if those were the player's strengths,
then I think he would have a lot of leadership ability pretty much in any
group. I wouldn't just limit it to this team. I would say pretty much any
group that he was involved it. If he was prepared for that group, if he
worked hard within that group and he put the group's interest ahead of his
own personal interests, then I can't imagine that he wouldn't have
leadership in whatever group that was, be it a social group, a church group,
a family, a team, a business or anything.
Q: Is there a rule or an understanding where the referee is supposed to
communicate with the captains on penalties?
BB: They've kind of reformatted that so that the referee communicates
more with the head coach in terms of options, because we have things now
where you add five yards on to returns as opposed to re-kicking it and
things like that. I think the idea of it, in the end, the head coach makes
the decision anyway, but I don't think anybody – the league or the team,
wants a situation where the captain kind of misunderstands the situation or
the coach and then somehow the decision is made that isn't really what the
team wanted. With all that being said, and in mind, I think that the league
has kind of set it up, and the officials have set it up, so that if there's
a question on the call and it's not an obvious decision – a 50-yard pass and
offensive holding, you're obviously going to take the holding. But if it's
not an obvious decision, they try to explain that to the to the coach and
let the coach make the decision, kind of what they do on timeouts where now
the coaches can call the timeouts and that type of thing. I think that's the
spirit of it.
Q: At this point in his career, how much more prepared is Matt Light to
deal with someone like Jason Taylor than when he came into the league?
BB: I think experience is a great teacher and Matt has played against Jason a number of times and I'm sure that he's learned from every one of
those games and individually some of those plays. It's not just how to block
a guy, but how to block them on a particular play, whatever the backfield
action is, and what the design of the play is, and how to handle that. I'm
sure Matt has learned a lot.
Q: I know guys like Jason give everybody some trouble, but guys like
Jason and Dwight Freeney, speed rushers, seemed to be the guys they gave
Matt the most problems. Are there adjustments that he's made over the course
of his career to be better equipped to deal with those guys?
BB: Like you said, I really can't think of a player that Jason Taylor hasn't given problems to. I think he's one of the hardest guys to block in
the league. Guys that have great upfield speed and quickness and explosive
power, speed is one of Taylor's assets, but it's certainly not the only one.
He has plenty of other things that are a function, or a compliment, to the
skill that he has, or that move that he has. I think if you take that away,
that's why he's such a good player, because if you take one thing away, he
has other things that he can complement that with. I think that other
players that have the same attributes that Taylor, or Freeney, or [John] Abraham, or guys like that, have speed but speed only, I think you can
neutralize that or certainly you have a better chance of neutralizing that
than you do if it's that plus three or four other things. That's what makes
Taylor, to me, as good a player on defense as I've seen this year.
Q: How were you able to do so well against him the first time around?
BB: I think he gave us problems. He gave us plenty of problems. Again,
first of all you have to block him. That's the most important thing. You try
to set up things that minimize his strengths and try to attack what you
perceive are, I'm not saying weaknesses, but there are some points of his
game that aren't quite as strong as some others. I wouldn't say they're
really weaknesses. He's great at some things and very good at some other
things and so you try to get the very good range more than the great. But
that's kind of how you have to deal with him and try to utilize things that
your team is comfortable with and schemes that you're familiar with that you
know you can execute against him. He's hard. He's a great player and it's
hard to find him. You don't always know where he's going to be. They move
him around a lot. He's equally adept at playing a number of different spots
and they use him enough as a decoy where you kind of load things up for him
and then they bomb you from the other side. They do a good job of keeping
you off balance and Jason does a good job of keeping you on balance because
he has a number of different techniques in his repertoire to deal with
different problems so you don't always know exactly what he's going to give
you.
Q: Are they still standing him up some and dropping him into coverage?
BB: He does drop into coverage. He's not up on his feet much. Very, very
little. But, that doesn't mean he won't drop. You have to treat him as a
down lineman. At times he'll play as a linebacker, so then you have to make
that adjustment once that happens. I don't think you'll know too often until
after the ball is snapped because they don't really give it away.
Q: Do they move him around before the snap? Will they shift him inside
before the snap or anything like that?
BB: I don't know exactly how they organize it, but he has some degree of
freedom as to where…he can line up pretty much anywhere. I'm sure it's
organized in their mind, but from an offensive standpoint, he could be in
any one of three or four spots and is lined up in those spots at various
times. There's other times where he'll line up in a spot, but it's not
always the same spot. Sometimes it's the tight end. Sometimes it's the open
side. Sometimes it's the right side. Sometimes it's the left side. It's just
a question of how they call it. There's other times where he just kind of
floats back there and could end up in a lot of different places and I think
anytime you have a player like that, I went through a similar situation with
[Lawrence] Taylor in New York. Sometimes he was strong. Sometimes he was
weak. Sometimes he was left. Sometimes he was right. Sometimes he was tight
end. Sometimes it was the open side. However you want to solve the rules for
that particular game and that particular opponent, but you have a lot of
variety in you can get into the game and say, 'Well they're doing this, so
we'll just do that,' and you're comfortable doing that. With a player like
Taylor – Jason or Lawrence, or whoever, you could make those kinds of moves
and I'm sure that it's not a problem. Your team can handle it.
Q: Moving him around a lot, could that be the other team's effort to
avoid the other team getting a double-team or a key on him?
BB: He's a player that you have to account for and if you don't know
where he is, it's harder to account for him. It's harder to scheme for him
if you want to run to him and you don't know where he is. If you want to run
away from him and you don't know where is. You don't know exactly where he
is. It is. It's hard to set up a play. Sometimes you can set up a play,
because you know where a player is going to be, and say, 'Okay this is what
we want to try to do to this player. We want to screen him or we want to run
away from him or we want to double-team him,' or whatever, and you know he's
there and you can set that up. In this situation, it's harder to do. You can
say, 'Well, we want to run a screen to him.' He might be to the side of the
screen, he might not be to the side of the screen. He might be somewhere in
the middle. Or you might want to run away from him and just try to run the
play away from him, but he might not be away from the play. So then the only
way you can do that would be to check the play at the line of scrimmage,
come up and say, 'Okay, we're going to do this or that depending on where he
is,' and there's a place for that, too. If you want to absolutely be right,
then that's what it forces you to do. It forces you to identify the
defensive line of scrimmage and then try to figure out what you want to do.
Q: You let yourself be mic'd up for Inside the NFL for the Lions game. How much of that was because of your family's long history with the Lions
and being able to share that with your kids now?
BB: Yes, it was just for that. That part of the story, that aspect of it.
The three generations – two
generations of Lions and then the third generation, the kids, at the Lions game. That's where it came from.
Q: Did you enjoy the experience?
BB: What? Being mic'd up?
[Laughter]
Q: Well, just having a record of it.
BB: I thought it was an interesting...and
you know, I get a million requests to do this, do
that, and this story and that story. I thought that was a very unique one. The Lions tie-in
obviously is something that's...when do we play them, once every three years?
So it's
not the kind of thing that you really have another shot at in a while. Just
given what the kids had done in relation to this team and their involvement
with it – to a small degree, but to some degree – it seemed like an appropriate thing to do.
So I was
okay with it.
Q: Did you ask for the unedited version?
BB: Was it edited?
Q: I'm sure they left out some.
BB: You think so?
[Laughter]
Q: A Saturday road game, does that take on more of a role as opposed to
playing here?
BB: We try to make it pretty much the same. The difference being on
Saturday afternoons we travel and at home we don't. The rest of the day
really is basically the same. Now if you have time changes and stuff like
that, you'd have to modified the schedule and account for that. It's
essentially the same schedule. The Monday night games and Sunday night games
and those types of odd times, then you adjust those, but it's not really not
any different than if you were playing at home at four o'clock or away at
four o'clock. The schedule of that day is essentially the same other than
for home games we all come to the stadium separately and on the away games
we go together on the bus. Otherwise it's basically the same.
Q: When a player has a tendency to catch the ball with his body, how hard
is that to break and coach him up and get him to catch the ball with their
hands instead?
BB: I've coached a lot of receivers in my career and I think that
there are
a lot of different ways to catch the ball. There's the way you teach it, but
not everybody does it exactly that way. Just like there's a lot of different
golf swings on the tour, a lot of them score well, but maybe they're not all
the classic swings, but some of them are. I think the most important thing
is for the receiver to catch the ball, and some guys, no matter how you
teach them, they do it better in their own way, or style, than the way you
classically teach it, for whatever reason. I think you have to adjust to a
player's individual skills. Basically catching the ball is a skill that you
can improve on and learn through repetition. The more balls you catch,
provided your concentration level is the same, now any player who has great
hands could still drop a ball. It's not because he doesn't have good hands,
it's probably because of concentration. So assuming the concentration level
is there, then the skill of catching the ball is one that definitely can be
improved with repetition and using, what I would say is, proper technique.
I've seen a lot of guys that I would say have outstanding hands that really
use their body to catch the ball in a lot of cases and in a lot of cases
it's good because they use their body to protect the catch. I wouldn't say
that one way of catching it is good or not good. The question comes when you
have to extend your hands away from your body and then you have no choice.
You can't body catch the ball. You have to catch it with your hands. Then it
comes down to a question of how well the receiver catches the ball.
Q: So you'll take some of the problems with body catching maybe if a
player feels a little more comfortable catching the ball with his body? If
he's better that way?
BB: In some cases, it's the most preferable way to catch it. There are
certain positions in your body where it's hard to get your hands in a
position where you can cleanly catch the ball, where if the ball is up above
your shoulders, that's relatively easy, but when it's in the frame of your
body, it's hard to get your hands in, sometimes what you would say is, an
ideal position to make that catch. It's easier to use your body to secure
the catch than it is to try to get your hands down here so you can catch it
with your thumbs together and the nose of the ball and all of that.
Sometimes that's harder to do. |
