01-17-2022, 11:41 AM
This might be a dumb question, but so many times, you say you’ve worked on plays for years but never run them. What’s a number of those type of plays?
"That’s a hard one for me to answer, to be honest with you. I think in the red zone, that’s just how it works. You might work on, shoot, 25 concepts over the course of a year. The hash matters. The exact yard line matters. The down and distance matters because that dictates what coverage you’re going to see. And so sometimes, it just doesn’t work out to where you get some of these reps that you spend one rep on every Friday for 12 weeks, it just doesn’t come up. It just so happened that the coverage matched the concept that we’ve carried for a long time. And this was a team that showed that coverage that we would like that concept against. The red zones are very particular. I think that’s why we’ve improved in the red zone, because we’ve just repped these concepts over and over and over for so long now that the guys understand them. We spend one walkthrough rep or one live rep on them every Friday. And the guys know, ‘Hey, it may not be this game, it may be four games from now that it comes up.’ But our guys do a good job of just understanding the concept and being where they need to be."
Burrow has gone a long time without throwing an interception and no turnovers yesterday, how big is that?
"Huge. We preach it every week. But when the talent is going to be evenly distributed going forward here, you’ve gotta win the turnover battle or else you’re really handcuffing yourself. Critical that we won two to nothing yesterday in that fashion. Really, the early one, the sack fumble allowed us to gain control of the game. Even though we weren’t able to finish with a touchdown, we got a 10 to three lead and then a 13 to three lead. It just allowed us to play the game how we anticipated playing. So again, that gave us better control of the game and then of course, Germaine put it on ice there at the very end.
"The fake sneak and jet sweep to Ja'Marr Chase, can you describe the challenge of installing a play like that?
"We've had that for a couple weeks. And that's kind of where you're at at this point in the season. You've got a lot of plays that maybe you installed for who knows, San Francisco. I don't even know who we had it in for. But you continue to work it every week until it makes sense for you to call it. And that one made sense to call in that situation. That was a team that does a really good job in short yardage, particularly when you're under center. They make things really difficult for you. So we're fortunate that one worked out for us.
"Is there a look that Burrow has been better against in Year Two than in Year One?
"I haven’t seen many defenses that surprise him. He’s got the answer. I think the best play from him yesterday, honestly, was the seam route to C.J. Uzomah, just because that’s not their primary coverage. That’s really a secondary coverage for them that they don’t major in all the time. So for him to recognize they were getting to that and going to where that progression would lead you, was really impressive and just kind of shows you where he and C.J. are at from a chemistry standpoint and just where Joe’s at from seeing, ‘Hey, this isn’t why we called the play, but I know that this is a great answer versus that coverage look. I thought that was an outstanding job by those two."
What were they doing coverage wise?
"Well, it is a good look for what he did, but you’re calling two different concepts to beat two different coverages. They ended up clouding the side that he worked C.J. on, so C.J. had Devine Deablo carrying him down the seam and Joe put a great ball right over the top of his helmet. Again, not something we work on during the week because that’s not the coverage we were expecting to beat with a lot of our concepts. But, that’s just Joe having the experience and the knowledge that just any game we’re playing in, if a team plays that coverage, we have this concept called and that’s a pretty good answer for it."
"That’s a hard one for me to answer, to be honest with you. I think in the red zone, that’s just how it works. You might work on, shoot, 25 concepts over the course of a year. The hash matters. The exact yard line matters. The down and distance matters because that dictates what coverage you’re going to see. And so sometimes, it just doesn’t work out to where you get some of these reps that you spend one rep on every Friday for 12 weeks, it just doesn’t come up. It just so happened that the coverage matched the concept that we’ve carried for a long time. And this was a team that showed that coverage that we would like that concept against. The red zones are very particular. I think that’s why we’ve improved in the red zone, because we’ve just repped these concepts over and over and over for so long now that the guys understand them. We spend one walkthrough rep or one live rep on them every Friday. And the guys know, ‘Hey, it may not be this game, it may be four games from now that it comes up.’ But our guys do a good job of just understanding the concept and being where they need to be."
Burrow has gone a long time without throwing an interception and no turnovers yesterday, how big is that?
"Huge. We preach it every week. But when the talent is going to be evenly distributed going forward here, you’ve gotta win the turnover battle or else you’re really handcuffing yourself. Critical that we won two to nothing yesterday in that fashion. Really, the early one, the sack fumble allowed us to gain control of the game. Even though we weren’t able to finish with a touchdown, we got a 10 to three lead and then a 13 to three lead. It just allowed us to play the game how we anticipated playing. So again, that gave us better control of the game and then of course, Germaine put it on ice there at the very end.
"The fake sneak and jet sweep to Ja'Marr Chase, can you describe the challenge of installing a play like that?
"We've had that for a couple weeks. And that's kind of where you're at at this point in the season. You've got a lot of plays that maybe you installed for who knows, San Francisco. I don't even know who we had it in for. But you continue to work it every week until it makes sense for you to call it. And that one made sense to call in that situation. That was a team that does a really good job in short yardage, particularly when you're under center. They make things really difficult for you. So we're fortunate that one worked out for us.
"Is there a look that Burrow has been better against in Year Two than in Year One?
"I haven’t seen many defenses that surprise him. He’s got the answer. I think the best play from him yesterday, honestly, was the seam route to C.J. Uzomah, just because that’s not their primary coverage. That’s really a secondary coverage for them that they don’t major in all the time. So for him to recognize they were getting to that and going to where that progression would lead you, was really impressive and just kind of shows you where he and C.J. are at from a chemistry standpoint and just where Joe’s at from seeing, ‘Hey, this isn’t why we called the play, but I know that this is a great answer versus that coverage look. I thought that was an outstanding job by those two."
What were they doing coverage wise?
"Well, it is a good look for what he did, but you’re calling two different concepts to beat two different coverages. They ended up clouding the side that he worked C.J. on, so C.J. had Devine Deablo carrying him down the seam and Joe put a great ball right over the top of his helmet. Again, not something we work on during the week because that’s not the coverage we were expecting to beat with a lot of our concepts. But, that’s just Joe having the experience and the knowledge that just any game we’re playing in, if a team plays that coverage, we have this concept called and that’s a pretty good answer for it."
