Head Coach Joe Judge October 14, 2020 Opening Statement: Today We
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Head Coach Joe Judge October 14, 2020 Opening Statement: Today we started on Washington. We picked up as a team, we’ve cleaned up the previous game over the last couple days and put that to rest with the team, and now our thoughts and focus are fully on Washington from this point forward. Obviously, this is an explosive team. You talk about them defensively, it really starts up front with the edge players and the interior. They have a number of first round draft picks on their line. They have a lot of very capable players. That, complemented by their corners and their playmaking safeties, really gives them fits for opposing offenses. They do a good job producing pressure up front and capitalizing on the opportunities produced from up front. This is a team that can get after you with just the front four. They can bring pressure, they do a really good job with their movement schemes, and they change up throughout the game. (Jack) Del Rio does a really good job with Ron (Rivera) as far as scheming for the opponent, changing up. The other thing they do is they really keep it simple for their players to play fast and play ahead. Offensively, obviously, (Scott) Turner is doing a really good job of moving the pieces around. That’s a great catch and run team. (Terry) McLaurin is one of the top guys in the league at catching short passes, turning them into basically a punt return, getting into space. This is an elite screen team. Whether it’s running the ball between the tackles or getting us into space, they’re going to get it to the running backs as much as they can and they’re going to get them moving. In the kicking game, it starts with big game specialists. Nate (Kaczor) does a great job of really letting those guys just go ahead and bang away and use their leg strength. They can flip the field every time they do it. You have to be in a position to make sure you play sound in the kicking game, otherwise they can give you trouble with field position. This is an explosive team with a tremendous amount of talent on it. They can make plays in any phase, and we have to make sure that we’re prepared this week. That being said, I’d like to open it up for questions, whatever I can answer. Q: Ron Rivera talks a lot about 5,000 reps for a young player is kind of his arbitrary figure for when a guy sort of starts to get things. Often, the context is quarterback, but other positions as well. Do you kind of have a similar philosophy? Have you developed one? Have you worked with guys who have had philosophies like that? A: I think, overall, you can simplify it to just practicing well prepares you for game execution, and that’s the biggest thing. Whether it’s 5,000 reps, you’ve heard before 10,000 hours makes you an expert, whatever you may want to say. But to me, it’s just repetition obviously makes you better. It gives you an opportunity to see multiple looks. It gives you an opportunity to adjust and learn from your own mistakes, and the mistakes of those next to you so when you get into live action, you can make the correct adjustment on the fly. Q: So far over the course of the season, what have been the biggest takeaways for you about what it’s like for defenses and the challenges they face without crowd noise, home or away? Specifically, have you noticed a big difference in the way quarterbacks are able to use the hard count? A: Yeah, I think you’ve seen that across the league. The quarterbacks this year are doing a good job of using the hard counts. While that shouldn’t be something that impacts defenses across the league, it is, and the quarterbacks have done a great job of that. I think you see a lot of teams changing up their communication on the line of scrimmage because of how much you can hear on TV copies and how much the microphones pick up. That being said, we’ve already noticed a lot of teams that are changing up their verbiage. We’ve made adjustments ourselves along the way to account for what other teams can pick up on us. Q: Is there a different type of challenge getting a defense to the energy level that it needs when the stadiums are quiet? A: No. No, you need to bring your own energy and be ready to play. Q: I’m just wondering, you guys have had a little bit of a slow start here. I’m wondering in particular what parts of your game you think you need more attention to and how are you addressing them right now going into this next one? A: Right now, regardless of the record, we’re coming back to work and we’re working on being an improved team day by day and week by week. Everyone has to coach better, everyone has to play better. There’s not a single aspect of our performance that we don’t want to improve on. No matter how good it may be compared to where it was in Week 1, it has to be much better by Week 16. We have to keep improving as a team. Q: There’s been a lot of talk this week about making progress and that sort of thing. With Daniel (Jones), what’s the area or areas you really want to see him make the next step? A: Look, there are a lot of things right now. But this guy is still a young guy. We’re working on getting him really comfortable within the scheme, handling different situations. He’s made a lot of progress for us. As an entire team, we want to see guys make strides in the running and passing game and defensively and the kicking game as well. But I’ve seen a lot of progress from Daniel. He’s definitely come, he’s a very resilient guy, he’s a fighter. He stands there and plays very aggressive. I’m pleased with the way he’s played for the most part to this point. There are obviously some things that all of us as coaches and players have to clean up and learn from and not repeat mistakes. Q: You weren’t here last year when these two teams met in Week 16, but I’m sure you’ve looked back at the film. I’m wondering two things. One, when you look back at that and you have 40ish guys from that team on your team, does the effort that they were playing with, despite it being a two-win team versus a two-win team, does that stand out to you? Then you were on the winning side of a lot of December games. Did you take note of, when you were playing teams with the Patriots, the losing teams who gave a good effort in December and the teams that mailed it in when their season was over? A: Look, regardless of the record, it’s our job to always expect everybody’s best, and that’s our job as coaches. Our players can’t go into games overconfident because of anybody’s record. We want to make sure we come and we play for 60 complete minutes every week. We play regardless of the situation or circumstance or the score in the game with the same energy that we started the game with. I understand the question you’re saying. Obviously, I’ve watched all of the games from last year. I looked at it from different perspectives in terms of analyzing players individually into what we would have done with this year’s roster. That was really an early part of the process. In terms of the energy that was played with last year, to be honest with you, not to dismiss that part of the question, but I’m really only concerned with what we do this year. Q: You’ve defended Daniel quite a bit in these sessions with us, and Jerry (Schuplinski) has and Jason (Garrett) has as well. I’m curious, do you share those thoughts with him personally? Do you tell him that he’s your guy? A: Daniel? Yeah, absolutely. Look, we have all the confidence in the world in the guys on our roster, and we have a lot of confidence in Daniel as well. Listen, just my personality, the personality of this coaching staff, is we’re very blunt, open and honest. I’m not really sitting here trying to sell you a car. We’re not recruiting you to college. I’m going to tell you the truth every day. You have to be mentally tough to handle that, you have to understand the criticism that we’re giving to you, and you have to be able to take the coaching and move forward with it. I’ll tell you what, Number 8 does that very well for us. He’s a tough-minded dude. He responds to a lot of criticism on the outside. But he blocks that out and he plays for his teammates internally. Those guys respect that about him. Have I had private conversations with every one of our players? Absolutely. Do I say things to them that I’m not going to reveal to the public? Absolutely.