Coach Joe Philbin today shared a wealth of knowledge about the team's quick pace at practice, about having multiple units run plays at the same time, about Ryan Tannehill and other topics.
This is what he said:
(On having quarterback Ryan Tannehill at practice today) – “Again, as I think I said the other day, you plan a practice for a football team, not just for one individual. I think every coach at every level would love to have all players available for every single practice that they have. It was good to have him out there, glad he’s with us.”
(On how Tannehill practiced today) – “I thought he threw the ball pretty well. I haven’t seen the stats of the practice. I’m going to go watch the practice tape here when I’m done, but my first impression is that he threw the ball pretty well. I know early on in the inside portion of practice, he threw a nice movement pass, 15-yard comeback or so (that) he hit pretty nicely. I thought his awareness for the first day and I was a little bit concerned because it was third-down and sometimes third-down I know, I sat in the defensive meeting yesterday, (defensive coordinator) Kevin (Coyle) has got 20 different blitzes going in, so I was a little bit concerned that he was walking into a buzz-saw so to speak. But I thought he did pretty well.”
(On if Tannehill appears to be making faster decisions) – “I thought a couple times today. Again, I still think in general that’s something that we need to improve upon. It’s going to be a big focus as we move forward at all the guys, not just him, not just Dave (Garrard) or Matt (Moore) or Pat (Devlin). It showed sometimes in the first time in live pads today. Again, it’s not always, remember they kind of have to have a place to go with the ball too, so I don’t want to put it all on the quarterbacks if they’re not playing fast enough. That’s easy to stand up here and say, but obviously the receivers have something to do with that. The protection has something to do with that. Like anything else, it’s all interconnected, but I do think that’s an area that, as we move forward, we’re really going to have to emphasize.”
On if he could tell that Tannehill wanted to make up for lost time in practice) – “Yes, I mean, I think I saw him at 11:15 last night, so he was excited, he was upbeat, said it had felt like an eternity that he had been away because I mean we had seen him every day in the facility up until that point. The guy’s a worker, the guy likes football. That’s one of those real positive qualities that we like about him. Certainly, I think he was eager to get out there.”
(On wide receiver Legedu Naanee playing with the starters) – “Well, I thought he had a good offseason. As I mentioned yesterday I think or the first day, we kind of evaluated it after the spring, kind of where everybody was and how we’ve stacked the positions. We thought he had a productive spring. We thought he earned an opportunity to get a bunch of reps. We’re a little bit of a right-handed team right now, so he hasn’t had a ton of activity. (He) might have had a little more today than the first couple days. I don’t think, probably he’d like to see the ball a little bit more often. Usually, again, in your instillation period, you only have so many reps and you can’t have quite the balance that you’d like to have as an offensive football team that you’re going to have during a game plan or a season. Again, you’re still kind of teaching and putting in a system so to speak. I think that will balance out over time, but I don’t know that he had a lot of touches quite yet, but he’s certainly deserving of a lot of opportunities.”
(On a report that the team worked out free agent wide receiver Braylon Edwards today) – “I want to say it was Tuesday or Wednesday I believe. I think it’s just our personnel guys doing their homework. I don’t think it’s anything more than that. I don’t know if it’s a reflection on anybody else. I think it’s just guys doing their job and seeing what’s available, making sure we have enough information to make good decisions about who we would carry on a roster and who he wouldn’t.”
(On if guys were bogged down in pads today like he thought they may be yesterday) – “It wasn’t too bad. Not surprised. My initial reaction maybe that the defense might be a hair ahead. That’s not uncommon I think of the first day of pads when your offense guys, at least in my history, seem to take a little bit longer to get used to the leverage of the game and the speed of the game. I think the pass rush on third-down, it appears, again, I’m not saying we didn’t protect at all, it just appears there was time that they got a pretty good push on us even when they weren’t. We had a pressure period, but then we had a normal third-down period where you can mix up the calls and it just appeared at times even with their four-man rush they were getting some good pressure. I think that’s, again, something they’ve got to get used to. We’ve had a quick whistle on all of the stuff before. Now, you don’t necessarily have to have that quick whistle. We don’t want guys on the ground, but I think the protection looks to be a little bit of a concern.”
(On safety Chris Clemons being sidelined how much of an opportunity it is for guys like Tyrone Culver and Jimmy Wilson) – “Yeah, it’s huge. It’s big. You hate to see any player, you’ve got to remember at times, even though we get frustrated as coaches too, I mean, when you sit back and you think of it, these players put in a lot of effort and a lot of time and make a lot of sacrifices to put themselves in a position to compete for a job. When they get hurt, it’s tough on them. You don’t wish that on anybody. You want them to be able to get out there and compete for a job. That being said, as you mentioned , it’s an opportunity for other guys. You want to make yourself known. You want to get exposure so to speak. You want to get repetitions and, sometimes, an injury to somebody else can be a good fortune to another player because he’s going to have more opportunities to make plays on tape and get noticed. It works both ways, but you hate to see a guy that works hard get denied opportunities.”
(On Eric Steinbach playing at right guard for the first time and if there’s a chance he could play left guard as well) – “I wouldn’t rule anything out. I think that, again, you’re talking about a guy that really hasn’t played in 12 months and, beyond that, has been a left guard since 1999 or something. I think from that stand point, we didn’t want to rush any one. We kind of want to get his feet underneath him so to speak just from a football sense and learn. You don’t want to move a guy to a side when he has no familiarity with the scheme. He’s walking in brand new off the street. We’ll take a look, see how he does maybe after a week or so. Just want to see him get a baseline and we’ve got to get a feel where he’s at. He needs to be confident and comfortable himself in the system and then we can talk about more options. As you know, I’ve said a lot of times, we’re looking for the five best guys. We’re looking for good football players, guys that are tough, guys that can stay on their feet, guys that are smart up front. However that shakes out, it doesn’t really bother me. I’m not overly concerned about that stuff. That being said, you want to be aware that you’re dealing with a guy that’s got 14-years of reps at one position at one side of the line who hasn’t played in 12 months. You’ve got to use decent judgment on that.”
(On if he ran two units back-to-back in practice while in Green Bay) – “No, we didn’t really. Like I said, I think most of the year and, again, don’t quote me on this because I don’t know how accurate I am, but I think the player number used to be 80 or around 80 or at 80 for most of my career in the NFL if I’m not mistaken. We’re fortunate that we’ve got a relatively healthy roster and now we’re up to 90 guys. As I said, last year, I don’t know how many pro teams did it like we’re doing it now, but you didn’t have a lot of time to plan last year because you weren’t really sure what the heck was going on. We tried it in the spring and, when you don’t have pads and you’ve got shorter practices, now, again, we’ve kind of amped up the duration of practice every day and we’re going to go a hair longer tomorrow. Tomorrow, we’re going to be in the red zone. I’m going to tell the players it’s not as much running so I’m sure they won’t mind staying out 20 extra minutes, but that’s a joke (laughing). I’m sure that’s about the same response I’ll get in the team meeting (laughing). We’ll see. I don’t know how long we can do it. We’ll see. Hopefully, again, as we’re teaching the offense, I’d love to be able to keep doing this while we’re teaching the offense and defense, and get it all in. Then, as we get closer to a preseason game, we’ll probably shift the focus a little bit.”
(On where the idea came from to have two units practicing back-to-back) – “Well, we’ve done it in the past, but I know (offensive coordinator Mike) Sherman had done it a bunch at Texas A&M. That’s kind of how they practiced. I believe Coach (Nick) Saban did some of it when he was here to a certain degree I believe. Somebody told me that, I think. It’s a practice that maybe we’ll utilize if we can for as long as we can. Again, you’ve got X-amount of guys. Like I said, we really don’t want to practice for three hours at one time. I don’t know what the heat index was today, but it seemed like it was getting up there a little bit. We want to be smart. We want to get a lot of work in. Again, I think we’re going to have 120 snaps to evaluate. That’s a lot of snaps, so the guys are putting in a lot of work.”
(On his history with defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle and why he chose him) – “It goes back, I first met him in 1986 I believe. I was working the Holy Cross football camp in 1986. I worked it a number of times there. Then, Kevin went onto Syracuse and was the defensive coordinator there when coach (Paul) Pasqualoni was there. They had a lot of success and I would visit up there. I knew him as well as some of their offensive coaches. I used to go up there to visit. I visited him when he was at Maryland. (I) never worked with him, but I had a long association with him, kind of a professional acquaintance I guess would be the best way to describe it. Then, as I was thinking about, if I had the opportunity, I’m a big believer in the explosive plays or creating them on offense and limiting them on defense. I think, if you look at it, my history at least where I was is that most of them were in the passing game, most were in the coverage matchups. That’s a huge thing to me and I don’t know, I was kind of hoping to get a guy that had a defensive back experience. Kevin’s called games in college I think for about 15 years I think. They did a great job in Cincinnati of taking the ball away in his tenure there and so those were things that were attractive to me from a big picture stand point and then I knew the quality of the individual well. I think if you watch him coach you can tell he loves football. He loves teaching. I was at the defensive meeting last night, I usually go to the offensive meeting, but I went to the defensive one last night, he’s got a great rapport with those guys. I think they have total faith that this guy knows what he’s doing. He keeps it light and he keeps them going. You can’t just sit in the room as a coordinator anymore and just put up a PowerPoint picture of a play and act like you know every answer and sit up there and talk for 50 minutes. Those guys will be asleep in two seconds. He engages the room. He does an outstanding job of that and I think he’s been doing a great job. He’s got a great family. He’s a family man. We’re really delighted he’s here.”
(On Coyle doing sprints with the players after practice) – “Is that why his jersey was so wet today (laughing)? I didn’t even notice that to be honest with you. I better pay more attention. I’m relegated now to where is the ball, what yard-line is the ball on, get out of the way of the film and that’s about all I’m doing these days. I didn’t even notice that to be quite honest with you. I knew his shirt was a little wet, but I didn’t know he was doing sprints.”
