Miami Dolphins Quotes - Head Coach Joe Philbin - June 21, 2012
(On his plans for the break before training camp begins) – “Me personally? We’re working tomorrow. We have to work tomorrow. It’s funny you brought that up, because we talked to the team about a mentality that you can have today when you’ve already turned in your textbooks and kind of survived the practice. We asked them to give us their best effort and have the best practice of the year today. We wanted to transition from period to period as fast as we ever have, and I thought for the most part it was a really good practice. Obviously the defense took the ball away a bunch in the two minute drill, which is good for the defense but not good for the offense. I think they have done the things since April 10th, we’ve asked a lot of them, and they’ve answered the call. Not always perfect, we have a long way to go and have a ton of work to do, but I thought it was a good practice.”
(On his impressions of Ryan Tannehill’s work with the first team offense today) – “I thought he threw a couple real nice balls, specifically a vertical ball down the middle of the field where I thought he had good location and velocity on it. I thought he made a couple of good adjustments in the protection in terms of good recognition of the pressure and where it was coming from, getting the line and backs squared away in terms of identification. I thought there were a lot of good things. Obviously there were some things; we can’t throw an interception in a two minute drill, so we have to have better awareness on that and the route running as well. There was a little too much double catching out there, and I didn’t think our awareness in the passing game from an offensive standpoint was very good.”
(On Tannehill’s progression since joining the Dolphins) – “Well, I don’t know that it’s been unlike any other player. There’s a system in place that we have conceptually and schematically that we want to implement, and obviously we’re still in the mode of learning more about our players, what they can and can’t do well. Like I’ve said many times, it’s not a matter of plopping the Texas A&M playbook down on the table, or the Green Bay playbook for that matter. We want to teach the guys the system that we plan on using and it’s as important as the fundamentals of the position. Drop mechanics, throwing mechanics, decision making, and then the team aspect of it is that we want to establish how we operate in the training room, weight room, meeting room, on the practice room etc… So he’s like any other rookie in that development. He’s made a lot of progress, and we’ll identify some things that need to be worked on during this off program the next four and a half weeks. Obviously, we’re relying on the integrity of these guys, because to be a professional, you can’t take four and a half weeks off and be great at something. It’s all voluntary and we’re not going to be here coaching them up, but we hope that these guys stay at their task and work at their profession.”
(On the evaluation process of the quarterbacks thus far) – “Again, tomorrow we have a staff meeting at 9:30 in the morning and we’re going to rank these 1-45 on each side of the ball. We’re going to rank each position 1-12, or however many players there are at each position. We’re going to do all that stuff and I would caution to say that we haven’t been in pads yet and we are still learning, but we obviously have a body of work now to make some evaluations. How accurate we can be remains to be seen. We’ll have better information with pads and games, but we certainly have a sense and we are going to do our diligence. It’s going to be fun. We did that after the first minicamp when we had five practices with these guys. We ranked the whole team by positions and on special teams, and we’ll do the same thing now. It’s kind of the fun part, because it’s interesting to see what guys have made progress and what guys have slipped a little bit, where we are strong personnel wise and where we may need a booster shot here and there. That’s all part of the evaluation process. We’ll study the tape here in a little bit with the players. We haven’t let them go yet, because we are believers in practice and correction, practice and correction, so that’s what we’re doing today.”
(On Reshad Jones as a leader and playmaker for the defense) – “His play speed has been good, and his decisiveness has been good back there. Obviously I think that the vocal element is part of the whole communication factor. You have to be strong down the middle in football. Your center and quarterback have to be great communicators, as well as your inside backer who usually has some responsibilities with the front four, or three in the back end. And then your safeties have to do a great job of communicating, so it’s really part of the job description. We can’t sit here and, with any degree of certainty, evaluate how good or not good of a communicator he was a year ago, but we know that in our scheme and in our system, we are going to have good communicators. So I think that’s probably been the emphasis and I think he is making progress in that area.”
(On Vontae Davis’ play during the minicamp) – “We like what we saw. I’m not necessarily a believer in playing press every snap, nor do I think we should play off every snap. I think there is merit in lining up off and then stepping up at the snap of the ball and giving them some press. I think press and bail is good, and I think you have to give some curveballs to the offense so they can’t use their route tree like that (snap of fingers) based on how you line up on defense. So I think he’s adjusting to all that. I don’t know how much of that he has done in the past, but I think he is making good progress. I like his play speed, I like his physicality at the position, so it’s good to have him out there. He’s got some energy and he’s got some juice, he likes to practice, and I think those are all good things for the football team.”
(On the next four and a half weeks before training camp) – “Well we have some messages to deliver to the team this afternoon, but obviously we already have a plan in place. We know exactly how many practices we are going to have in training camp. We know exactly how many snaps we’re devoting to each situation as of right now. But we’re going to evaluate everything from the offseason. Every coach on the staff gets a form to evaluate mandatory minicamp. I’ve gotten forms from each coach with their suggestions on what we did in the voluntary minicamp, and what we did in the OTAs. So for me, it’s a chance, we are going to be back here next year, and so it’s just a way to evaluate the program. I think we did a lot of good things from a coaching and a player standpoint, but there are a lot of areas we can improve on for next year. So I’ll take some time and look at all that stuff and jot down some notes so we do a better job and have a better offseason program next year, which I fully expect we will. But there has to be some balance. The players need some time away and need to reconnect with their families. But at the same time we anticipate that every player to report back. Every guy on the roster is going to have a card and we give them a packet when they leave the building today detailing when to report to training camp and what their weight is. They’ve signed it, and we’ve communicated it directly to them in one-on-one fashion, so we don’t expect any surprises. Our intention is that these guys are serious, this is their profession and they want to be a member of the Dolphins, so we expect 90 guys to show up in great condition.”
(On his personal plans for the time off) – “Well my son has been deployed for a year overseas as a first lieutenant in the Army, and it just works out perfectly that he is scheduled to return from Kuwait to Ft. Hood Texas on Tuesday. We’re all going to be there, and I guess they do that ‘move that bus’ deal like they do on that show (Extreme Home Makeover), so that’s obviously going to be a great time for our family, and an emotional time. My mom and dad, as I’ve said my dad is in his 90s, so I’ll zip up to the Northeast and get out of the heat for a little bit. But nothing special really, I’m not a hunter, not a fisher and not a golfer. I love my profession and love my family, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
(On how long it will take a rookie quarterback to adjust to the speed of the NFL game) – “That’s a good question. I think it’s hard to say a guy can’t be ready for ‘X’ amount of time, to use an analogy. It’s not fair to Ryan Tannehill to say that you’re not going to be ready this year and then, one injury if he’s the number two, or two injuries if he’s the number three occur and he starting, what are you going to tell him then? So I think every case is different, but we like his maturity, we like his poise and we like his intelligence. It’s a good question and a fair question to ask, but I think that sitting in a meeting room and discussing pressures that he is going to encounter, he will pick that stuff up easy. Now, when the clock is rolling and guys are moving around, that’s a good question. That’s part of what we are going to evaluate, and that’s why we tried to do some of that stuff today like turning up the crowd noise. You know we don’t game plan so Kevin (Coyle) can call any blitz he wants if he is inclined, or he can drop eight guys is he is inclined to drop eight, so there are some things. Yesterday he threw a bad ball into traffic with three or four guys, he threw a bad ball, and you can’t do that. That’s part of the fun part though. I don’t think anybody knows those answers. I like the development he has made, but I don’t think we really know yet.
(On the separation between the play of Matt Moore and David Garrard) – “I think it has been close. Tomorrow we will look at everything and assess it, but I’m not a huge stat guy. There are some good things about statistics, and we will look at them tomorrow, but I think I’m more of a guy that coaches on instinct, and what you gut tells you, what your eyes tell you. You can look at the paper and computer printouts all you want, but you have to watch the film to get a sense for how the team responds to the individual guys. My sense is that Matt Moore, David Garrard, Ryan Tannehill and Pat Devlin for that matter, the guys in the huddle respect those guys. I mean those guys are professional. They’re workers and they put in an honest day’s work. It’s important to them, they care, they want to do well, and I think their teammates feel that. So if there’s respect, that’s a great place to start. We’ll sort through who throws the vertical better and who throws the deep out better, or who sees the blitzes better, and that is all part of it. But from a chemistry and leadership standpoint, and the respect of their teammates, all those guys have earned it at this point.”
(On how you can assess interior defensive line play without contact or pads) – “Well, I mean, you are still looking at some form of fundamentals. Especially because the thing that is impressive about a guy like Paul (Soliai) is, having coached for awhile as an offensive line coach and competed against those guys that are 340 pounds, their moving skill. You can still see moving skill, and that’s impressive. He has some unique skill for a man his size. And Jared Odrick, at 300 plus pounds has some quickness and ability to bend and play with pretty good leverage, so you can see some of that. Now, how well you can play off of a double team in full pads when you’re scooping on an outside zone for Jared, yeah we have to evaluate that a little bit more. How much he can win on a one-on-one pass rush, on a consistent basis, we need to see that a little bit more. But you get a good sense of what a guy is to a certain degree.”
—DOLPHINS—
