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Q: What are Rod Smith's
strengths?
BB: Everything. Who has done more
than he has? Nobody that has been undrafted. Take out their media guide.
There's probably about 20 pages on him, a lot of it against us. Every
superlative you want to write down about Rod Smith, put it down
there. He does it all.
Q: From an intangible standpoint, it
seems like he knows how to use his body when and knows the tricks of the
trade. Do you see that?
BB: Absolutely. Everything. Long.
Short. Inside. Outside. Block. Run after the catch. Write it all down. The
guy is good and he's killed us.
Q: When team's know what's coming,
yet he still is productive, what do you attribute that to?
BB: That he's good. Know when what's
coming?
Q: Him.
BB: Yeah. I'm with you. He does
enough things well that no matter what it is, it's a problem. They have
other good receivers too, tight ends. They have a good running game. It's
not like your just defending one thing with Denver. [They have] a
really good coach, a good scheme and they're tough and he's a big part of
it.
Q: Sometimes when a player is
struggling people say he is playing to not lose his job instead of just
letting his talent take over, and I was wondering if that is just a cliché.
BB: I don't know. It's an interesting
question. I think it's a tough one. I think it's always hard to know exactly
what's in somebody else's mind. Unless they actually come out and say, 'This
is exactly what I'm thinking.' I think we have a lot of amateur psychologist
around, 'He's thinking this. He's thinking that. He should do this. He
should do that.' I don't know that you really know for sure on those types
of situations unless the person actually comes out, and he's truthful, and
says, 'This is exactly where I am.' If he says that and he's telling the
truth, I guess that's a case.
Q: Have you ever coached a player who
has said that?
BB: Sure. Sure. I don't think it's
any secret. You can watch players and watch their demeanor and you can see
things that are bothering them. Sometimes they're football-related.
Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're individual things. Sometimes
they're team things. Absolutely. I think that's a big part of it.
Q: How do you handle that?
BB: It depends on what it is. I think
you want to do whatever you can to make the situation better. When you're
dealing with 11 guys, or 53 guys, or however many it is, you can't make
everything perfect for each guy. Football is a team sport so you do what is
best for the team and everybody has to accept that. We all have to. We're
all a part of it. Depending on what the problem is, if there's a way to
improve it and make it better then you do that and that's something that I'd
say, pretty much, everyday, certainly on Friday's, is the day you really
want to make sure that the players...when I talk to the players today,
they've had two days to watch the film, to be in meetings, to be in
practice, to see the game plan, to understand it, and at this point, if they
say, 'You know, I'm a little cloudy on this situation,' or, 'I'm not sure
about when this happens. Here is what we're trying to do. I don't know if we
really have it.' And that's when you want to take care of it. Either you
change it, or throw it out or figure out something so that you're not going
into the game like that. Sometimes you think everything is fine and then you
get into the game and it starts happening and your problems get a little
more exposed in a game situation than they do in practice. Then you have to
make a decision in the game how you want to handle that. Yes, that's what
coaching is, it's doing something and then finding out there's a problem
with it somewhere along the line, whatever that is, and somehow try to
maneuver that problem to minimize it or take it out and still address the
scheme problems that the other team is presenting you. Friday's, that's
really the day for that. It's hard to do it on Wednesdays. The players just
don't have enough experience at that point with the game plan for that
particular game to say, 'I don't feel good about this,' or, 'I'm not sure we
can get that,' or 'I know we can get it.' A lot of times they're not sure
and they don't have that confidence when they ask you go out there and do it
and execute it in a practice setting.
Q: How much does history factor into
this game? How far back do you go to look at film?
BB: When we play a team repetitively
like this, like we have with Denver, there are several different ways
to look at the game. One would be the last couple of games that they've
played—two regular season games, maybe even the
last couple of preseason games—and you can look
at the games at the end of the year last year, which, we were one of those
games, so that doubles it up. So when you see a team at the end of the
season, particularly a team that is 13-3, the things that they're doing well
at that point is probably a big part of the reason that they're 13-3 and why
they were where they were at. You'd have to think that they're going to keep
doing some of those things since they were pretty successful for them. Then
you look at the games that you have played in, which even though a lot of
the players have changed, there are a lot of elements of coaching that are
the same. With myself and Mike [Shanahan], for two, you can go
all the way back to 2000 and see elements of their offense and our defense,
and our offense and not so much their defense, because they changed
defensive coordinators, particularly as it relates to their offense and
defense, what we would do is cut up all of our plays against Denver going
all the way back to 2000. All of the inside runs. All of the outside runs.
All of the play action passes. All of the third downs. Because those are all
things that they've used against us. Although they may not use those exact
plays, they might use those concepts. When you say how far back do you go, I
think however far back you thinks is relevant. It's not so much studying [Shannon] Sharpe and what they did against certain sets or what they did
against certain situations or how they tried to attack us, there's actually
quite a bit of carryover, believe it or not going all the way back to 2000.
There's certain elements of the game that even though they change from game
to game, the overall concept of what they're trying to do and what we're
trying to do there's some carryover on. A lot of that is done in the
offseason, especially in an early game like this when you're playing a game
this early in the season. You may go back and look at last season and you
can go back and look at those games in the offseason and think that there's
a pretty good chance that some of that would carryover. Whereas if we're
playing a team in December, to go back and spend a lot of time on games like
that and it's 15 games into the regular season, well there's a lot of things
that could change between the end of last year and the end of this year. Not
that you couldn't do, but you might not put as much time into it.
Q: With some of the rookies, is there
a different kind of pressure playing on national television against a team
that was 13-3 last year?
BB: Again, each individual person may
or may not feel that it's different. To me, when you walk out there and the
whistle blows, the field is the same, the lines are the same. The game is
the game and you have to play within that game, whether it's on national TV
or not on national TV. I don't ever think about that. All or the game are on
TV. Everybody is watching. Really, I've never thought about that. Now, maybe
other people see that differently. I don't know. Certainly there's a little
bit of an excitement in playing a night game, I'm not saying that. But in
terms of decisions or game plans, 'Oh, we're going to do this because it's a
night game on TV,' I just never looked at it that way.
Q: But just the reaction of some of
the players…
BB: But again, we've played night
games. We've played games on TV. We've played games when it was loud. It was
loud last week at New York in Giants Stadium. We've been
behind, we've been ahead, it's been tied. We've been in different games
already this year; it's not like they've all gone the same way. After a
while, and I know each game is different, but there's only so many ways a
game can unfold. I'd like to think that our players just prepare for the
game, prepare for all of the different situations in the game and as the
game unfolds, then we play the game as it moves into that situation, either
generally or on a very specific basis. That's what we try to do and it
changes from week-to-week because of what your opponent does and how
specific it is to that opponent, but then there are other general things
like clock management and time and things like that that are basically the
same from game-to-game, even though the specifics play differently, but how
you're going to manage the clock and field position and things like that.
Those things carry over. That's the way I look at it. How each person looks
at it besides me, I'm sure there are a lot of different ways to do it.
Q: You showed some interest in Javon Walker in the offseason. What was it about him?
BB: He's a good player. He's a big
player. He's strong. For a big player he has a lot of quickness. He's had a
lot of production. He's fast. He catches the ball well. He's a very good
player.
Q: How close did you come to bringing
him in?
BB: How close? We had about four
plane reservations, but there was a lot more to it than that. He wasn't a
free agent. How close? I don't know. He was close to being on a plane to
coming here. I think that was close. But how close was anything to
happening? I have no idea. It never got to that point.
Q: Were you disappointed he didn't
get on the plane?
BB: I don't know because I don't know
how it would have turned out. In the end, the trade that Denver made,
because they actually traded higher than we would've been [able to], I don't
even know if that would have been possible for us. I really haven't thought
about it, to be honest with you.
Q: Did Denver ask you about Daniel Graham?
BB: No. I haven't talked to anybody
about him.
Q: When Denver is facing a
team that is running ball successfully, do they still send those kinds of
blitzers or do they kind off back off of them?
BB: They blitz. They're going to
blitz. That's what they do. I don't think that they would not blitz against
anybody. I think that's part of their defense. They move their defensive
line. Anytime you move your defensive line, at some point you have to have
somebody to compensate for that movement to try to balance it off. You have
to have some type of balance on your defense. So, if you never blitz
anybody, if you run them all outside, you have to have somebody inside. If
you run them inside, you have to have somebody outside. Once you move the
line you have to have somebody to compensate for that. It's almost inherent
in the concept, or in the scheme that they run. You can stunt them and not
do it all the time, but somewhere along the line you have to be able to back
those stunters up with either coverage or a blitz or somebody, just to be
sound. But that's what they do. If they didn't blitz, then that means they
wouldn't be stunting, and I just don't think that's the way they want to
play.
Q: Champ Bailey said the other
day, one of the keys for him for tackling in the open field was knowing the
receivers that he was covering and their tendencies. Is that something that
you coach your defensive backs on?
BB: Sure, I think it's important that
you understand who you're facing, who the guy is that your tackling.
Sometimes you have more time than others to react to that. A lot of times
the guy catches the ball and you're just running and catching him. But as
much as you can be aware of who that person is, absolutely. There are
different learning styles. Runners have different ways of breaking tackles.
As much as possible, you want to be aware of that. No doubt.
Q: How detailed will you be?
BB: As detailed as you can get.
Watching the guy on film, you have examples of the guy's running style and
what he's going to try to do to break tackles. Some guys try to outrun him
and use his speed. Some guys want to stop and go. Some guys are stiff-arm
guys. Some guys are cut-back guys. Other guys are going to lower their
shoulder. Some guys are going to spin. Players have different running styles
and there's not a lot of them that can do all of those. Barry Sanders.
Maybe you have four or five, but most runners have a basic running style,
and when they're really in a one-on-one situation they're going to probably
do one of two things.
Q: Do defensive backs literally keep
a book on receivers like pitchers do?
BB: On receivers? Yes. Those aren't
the only guys they have to tackle, now. But yes, absolutely. When you play
against a player, you want to do your preparation on him, keep it on record.
The next time you go against that guy, whether it's with that team or
somebody else, there's going to be certain things that are going to carry
over. The scheme might be different, but the player is still going to have
his basic physical strengths and weaknesses and he'll probably use some of
the same techniques on his routes, whether it's head-faking or stuttering,
uppercut release or swim release, whatever their techniques are. I think
that's across the board, whether it's linemen against linemen, or wide
receivers against DBs, tight ends against outside linebackers. I think
that's what a good football team and good football players do. I think they
should all do that.
Q: How different is Wesley Britt playing this year compared to last year?
BB: He's improved tremendously. Last
year he came in and didn't really have a lot of experience in our system and
needed to get a lot better from a technique standpoint and also improve his
overall body strength. He's done that. He's worked hard. Again, gotten good
coaching and been out there on a consistent basis and he's gotten better
day-by-day, week-by-week. We've seen that with several offensive linemen
through the years. It's pretty much the same thing. There's no real magic
wand or shortcut to it. It comes from a lot of hard work, both physical
development, mental understanding of the plays and techniques and practice
repetitions over and over and over again, improving our footwork and
position and hand placement and all of that, as well as just recognizing
what the defense is doing so that you can react to it quicker and anticipate
it as opposed to always having to react to it. I think all of the above.
Q: Has he been working more on the
left side?
BB: He's done both. He played left
tackle in college. He's kind of, in a way, similar to Nick [Kaczur's]
situation, where he has probably more of a physical makeup to play on the
right side, but played so much left tackle in college that he's pretty
comfortable there and so can play both. Again, that's kind of how it worked
out with Nick. Even though he played left tackle in college, he got a lot of
work on the right side in training camp and in preseason last year and then
ended up going back to the left side. He has played both and can play both.
It's a little bit of the same thing with [Matt] Light too,
going all the way back to him. He played left tackle at Purdue and
then in a brilliant personnel move, I put him at right tackle, and then by
the time the regular season started we had him back at left tackle and
that's where he's been.
Q: When a quarterback and a wide
receiver have good chemistry, what makes them hard to defend?
BB: Well, there are just so many
situations when you're throwing the ball. First of all, there are a lot of
different routes that the receivers run, and then there are so many
different situations that the quarterback and the receiver have to adjust
to. You can talk about it, and you certainly have rules and concepts that
you have to follow depending on what the rest of the route is—how
much latitude a receiver has to do something different—but
there are so many different things that can happen within the timing, and
the more two guys can work together, theoretically, the better their timing
should be. And, I mean, that's true of a lot of positions, but it's
certainly true of throwing and catching.
Q: Can a quarterback know a
receiver's body movement and know exactly what he's going to do?
BB: That's what a good receiver should do. A good receiver should, with his body movement, basically be
telling the quarterback, 'I'm getting ready to make my break. Now is when
you want to throw me the ball.' Without anybody saying a word, that's kind
of what the quarterback should see and that's what the receiver should do.
He should give some type of an indication to the quarterback, 'Get ready
because this is where I'm going to make my break. This is where I'm going to
make my move.' That's what the passing game is. It's really hard when you're
a quarterback to not really know when the guy is going to go into his route.
You always have depths of routes—you're going to
run this route at 15, you're going to run this route at 18, you're going to
run this route at 12—and that's okay, but it
doesn't always work that way because there are other factors in play,
particularly if you're dealing with any type of press coverage where the
corners are up there, that affects, a lot of time, the depth of the timing
of the route. So what's important is timing. It's not necessarily that
important that if you're supposed to go to 18 you go to 18 as it is that you
make your brake at the same time that you would if you normally went to 18
on clean release. So let's say you get jammed and you end up running that
route at 15, well that's when the quarterback wants to throw you the ball,
on that timing, not wait there and hold it and hold it until you get the
extra two or three yards. The body clock for the receiver of knowing when to
make those breaks, and again, sometimes giving the quarterback an indicator
that, 'Okay, it's coming. Here's what I'm going to do,' then that just
improves the—it's actually a communication
method—the anticipation of what's going
to happen. That's what any good quarterback and any good receiver, that's
the point they want to get to. But again, there's a big variety of routes.
It's not just, 'Well, on this one route, here's what's going to happen.' You
have one route and there are 10 things that could happen. Then you have
another route and there are 10 things that could happen on that, too. But
that's what the passing game, that's what it is.
Q: The quarterback can also give the
receiver velocity on his ball? Like he'll put it in a tighter spot.
BB: I think the quarterback throws
the ball wherever he can get it in. I think it's more ball placement,
particularly when the receiver can't see the defender. So if I have a
defender behind me, the quarterback should place the ball...because
the quarterback can see with the defender is, whether he's inside or
outside, or right over the top of me, he can see where he is and he should
place the ball accordingly. So if the guy is right on top of me, he should
throw the ball low. If the defender is back here on the other side of me,
then he should place the ball here, so that when I catch it I'm going to
naturally catch the ball and be turning away from the defender, as opposed
to throwing it back in here and letting the guy come in and blow you up. If
I'm standing here catching the ball and the quarterback throws to one side
or the other, that kind of tells me where the defenders are, if it is done
properly.
Q: That takes time to develop?
BB: Well, it takes time, but also
it's just fundamental football. If you can't see the guy that's covering
you, and I throw the ball away from that guy, you should just know that I'm
not trying to throw the ball into where the defense is, I'm trying to throw
it away from them. That means when you catch it, you want to continue to run
that way. That would be on a stationary route. Now, if the receiver was
running, say, across the field on an in-cut or a crossing route, that's a
little bit of a different story. The receiver can see where the defense is
because he has his eyes upfield and he's trying to find an open area there.
So it's a different type of a route. But each route is different.
That's what coaching is and that's what the communication is between the
thrower and the catcher. No matter what level you are at or what coverage
they're in or what route you run, there's some element of that if you
want to be good in the passing game.
Q: Do you have a specific example of
a move that a wide receiver might make?
BB: A head fake.
Q: Head fake? Just like that? The
quarterback is going to know?
BB: Well, the guy is running down the
field and he's going to breakout, so how do you know when the guy is going
to break out? If he head-fakes, then he's telling the quarterback. And he's also trying to beat the defender by, 'Okay this is his move. He's going
to head-fake.' That's telling the quarterback, 'Okay, be ready to throw. I'm
getting ready to stick it and go,' versus just running out and rounding into
it, well then the quarterback doesn't really know that he's going to break
out ... Now he's kind of holding the ball, and then a lot of times what
happens is the guy ends up running out of bounds, or he runs too far, as opposed to hitting him coming right out of the break. Now, if that's what
the route is...if the route is, 'Look, you run down eight yards and then run
to the sideline. I'm going to throw it to you right now. There's no
indicator. Either I'm giving it to you or I'm not, based on the coverage.'
Like if the corner is playing way off and you just run a fast speed route
and the quarterback just gives it to him, great. But if there's any type of
tight coverage there, he's probably not throwing to that guy, he probably
has another part of the pattern that he's going to work. But if I know I'm
throwing to you, I want to know when you're going to come out of your break
so I can get the ball to you and you don't have to wait for it. But if you
don't tell me when you're going to break, it's hard for me to see whether
you are nine yards downfield or 11 yards downfield. That's part of the
reason why backs and receivers and tight ends, when they come to the top of
the route, they give a little movement. Part of it is to beat the defensive
back, but just as much a part of it is for the quarterback to see that he's
going to go into his break and [snap] get ready and let him have it.
Sometimes it's a weave. If you're running a certain type of route and
instead of a straight stem, when the receiver weaves, then he's telling the
quarterback, 'Okay I'm getting ready to accelerate,' maybe in the opposite direction of the weave, or into the weave, depending on
which route you have called. But, again, sometimes that weave at the
top of the route indicates to the quarterback, okay he's two steps in and
now he's going to come out of it, depending on what you have called. Things
like that. |
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