Kellen Moore on preparations for Arizona Cardinals | New Orleans Saints

Kellen Moore on preparations for Arizona Cardinals | New Orleans Saints

Got everyone good to go? All right, guys. Um, good weekend for our players. The chance for them to kind of get away. Obviously, a number of them saw their college teams, which is always the fun part of this weekend. Uh, some wins, some losses in there. Uh, but a lot of a lot of good stuff for everyone. And so, uh, roster wise, we had some, uh, some some challenging things to navigate that, you know, the last 24 hours. Um, we released JT Gray, which was, um, you know, one of the hardest things, uh, so far in this year. And so, that was a really challenging move. He’s a he’s a really good special needs player. He’s a really good player. He’s done a lot of good things here. And u it was a really really challenging u decision that we had to make. And then we did sign Kaziah Isard to practice squad. He came from Kansas City. He’s defensive tackle. Uh he was did training camp with them. He did some awesome stuff in preseason. We we evaluated him. And so uh you know, just as we continue to navigate some of the roster moves, there’s obviously challenging things that come up. And so uh you know um you know, we’re excited for this week though. We’re excited to get get into this thing. And the guys were in today were able to get some really good field work in. Uh they went weight room, went into some field work where it’s really almost like a phase two day like in the offseason programs were able to get a bunch of field work done, throwing individual drills, uh get into a little bit of walkthrough and put them in position to be ready to roll on Wednesday. So I’ll open up to any questions. What’s the What’s the challenge with how Arizona uses their safeties and the way they they rotate and all that? there’s a ton of flexibility within their structure and uh you know it’s really challenging because some some of it feels like it’s according to rules and some of it kind of feels like it breaks rules at times and uh Jonathan and those guys have done an awesome job just developing a really really uh innovative system that that really stresses you from an offense perspective. They have a lot of pieces that can play a number of different roles and so um you know there’s some gray you know I’ I’d like to say there’s a lot of gray within it which uh you know can be challenging from an offense perspective. We’re going to put a lot of time and effort into preparing this week. With the release of JP Grey, was it because you needed other spots in the roster? A lot of it comes down to the roster flexibility and uh that’s that’s the challenging part of it. We know the high quality player that he is, the impact he’s had on this organization. He’s a really good player. um you know just with the roster as you kind of play play uh you know the roster management part of this thing over the course of you know this season and throughout the next few weeks you know there’s a lot of challenges associated with that and so uh it was a really tough one for us to do was he offered a practice squad spot or uh we haven’t gone that road I mean I would imagine JT is going to get u have some opportunities really really fast and so um I’d be surprised if that opportunity presented for for our own sake uh obviously he’s a really good player is there somebody that y’all are planning to call up from your practice squad and take his spot. Well, we’re kind of in the moving a few pieces around and so obviously we’ll probably make some corresponding moves and, you know, I think a part of this is just there’s a lot of moves that you kind of have to navigate the first few weeks of the season. And um and we have some, you know, guys on PUP and some guys on IR that certainly we anticipate eventually, you know, being a part of this thing. And so, you got to have the roster flexibility just to navigate all these all the all these moving pieces. Did his injury earlier this summer have any play at all? No, I don’t think so. I mean, obviously the challenge associated with that was just the limited exposure through training camp. He wasn’t able to do a whole lot, uh, unfortunately. And so, um, you know, he’s healthy now and obviously um, you know, he’s a really good player. Do you feel that you saw enough throughout training camp in the preseason to kind of know who’s taking his place on those gunner spots? Yeah, there there’s a few guys who obviously have done it done some reps in preseason and then throughout training camp as well. There’s a number of guys who’ve done it as well. And so, um, yeah, it’s a big- time opportunity. I mean, we need guys to step up in those roles. That’s going to be a huge critical aspect of it for for teams from a special teams perspective for us. And so, uh, you know, we we got some big time opportunities for those guys. Tell them that that Penny front like you guys use it, they use some of it. Like, how does that how does that stress out an offense? Like, what is what does that present? Everyone’s covered up. You know, by rule, it starts as a bunch of one-on-one blocks and then all the moving pieces that they can add to it. Um, you know, they can move the front, stem the front. Um, you know, what’s unique to them is their ability to pressure from the secondary level. Um, Boot obviously is an incredible player and his versatility is really second to none in this league. Just his ability to play from a post safety position and really get to so many other threatening positions. And so, um, you know, it’s a it’s a really good challenge for us this week. Do they cover up like kind of with the everything like are they unique in their ability to kind of hide like a lot? I just think that yeah, they do a really good job. Uh, you know, I think, uh, you know, this is one of the more creative defenses in our league, uh, just as far as the multiplicity and, you know, more importantly, this is week one. Every week one, there’s going to be an element of unscouted looks and unknown. Everyone’s had an entire off seasonason to put together a new plan. There’s going to be some things that are unique that uh, we have not seen, and that’s part of week one in general. Then you cap on to it that we’re playing these guys. Um, you know, it’ll stress us out, you know, a healthy dose. when you’re putting together like your your game plan specific to this week’s opponent like how much input do you allow your quarterbacks in that say I like this play I don’t like that play so you I think it becomes more and more prominent as the week goes on uh early early in the week you know once you get into the flow of this thing we’ll have our conversations early in the week just debriefing the previous game kind of eyes forward to the next one we’ll build the plans out and I think as the quarterbacks see the plans you have more and more healthy discussions of u you know things they like things they want to have more discussion on And ultimately towards the end of the week, you know, we get into a a really narrowed focus as far as what we’re going to do on Sunday. How much of a challenge does it present with the amount of change they have when it comes to the defensive front, the new talent they added this off? Yeah, you’re watching film of last year. Obviously, you have a little bit of exposure in preseason, but it’s very minimal. Um, there’s a healthy dose of element of unknown week one. And and obviously, I think on our side, we have a little bit element of unknown. And so, uh, that’s what week ones are. It’s really the first three weeks of the season. Uh, everyone’s got a lot of unknown factors and so it’s kind of uh, you know, you got to play really clean football the first few weeks of the season. You got to really focus on the fundamentals, trust your rules. Um, there’s going to be, you know, unfortunately some mistakes and you got to play really clean football and give yourself a chance. What have you noticed from Spencer and the way he reacts to like unscouted looks? Is there anything that like suits him well for this matchup? I think he just, you know, he’s able to process things and if it’s not clean, he’s able to make a really quick uh alternative decision. And I think that’s what we’ve seen throughout this entire off seasonason, his ability to make really good decisions, whether it be with his feet or with, you know, just finding an outlet, finding a checkown. Um, you know, I thought he had some really good ones that showed up in the preseason games where, you know, he’s looking one way and he realized maybe I maybe I should have gone the other way. Oh, he finds the checkown, he finds, you know, Kendre over the ball completion and it’s another first down and we just keep on moving. And I think that’s the the big part of playing quarterback is, you know, you’re going to make a mistake. You’re going to uh they’re going to disguise something and something’s going to look a little different a after the snap. And so, um, you just got to react to it. I know this entire off season has been building to this, but for you, this being your first, uh, regular season game as the head coach, does now being in game week come with any extra jitters or extra excitement now that it’s a few days away? I think we’re all excited. We’re all excited that this is ultimately what you do this whole offseason program to build up to the opportunity to play in regular season games. These are the ones you want. Uh I thought our guys have done a really good job. I think our guys are in a really good space, you know, mentally, physically. Uh they’re they’re ready to roll. And so, uh you know, part of the challenge of week one is it’s still a full week of preparation. We got we got a lot of stuff we’re going to be covering over the next, you know, however many five, six days. And so, uh leading up to the Sunday and so you can’t get to Sunday too fast. You got to go through this process and we’ll get there and we’ll be excited for it when Sunday rolls around. We’re at the dome. How has your role changed? Just like being a head coach, like are you watching the offense or the other team? Like what what’s changed for you? Yeah. Yeah. I think uh you know, there’s obviously other other aspects of this thing that I’m excited about. You know, that that’ll be a fun process for us to find our groove and find our routine and um it’ll be fun to, you know, do all those. John, I know we’ve asked you a lot about this throughout the offseason, but today was another day you could have gone full bonus practice versus walkth through. I mean, what what what are the benefits to not maximizing every every practice opportunity you get? Yeah, we get we got just about what a normal red day with a helmet on would be, which was those quicker practices in training camp. I mean, we were a few minutes short of that. Other than that, it’s it’s not far off. Uh, you know, we we were able to hit some individual hit some uh some team setting walkthrough portion of it. And so, uh, that allowed us to get get our guys kind of acclimated, get them ready to go so Wednesday can be a really solid Wednesday and put them in position. And so, uh, part of that was, you know, get them enough work and get them ready to go, but also put them in position so we can have a more traditional week, uh, coming off of the weekend. Do you expect any of the good guys, specifically Taylor, Trevor Penning to practice this week? I think there’s a chance for a couple of those guys. Yeah. Um, you know, I think today was a really good work day for those guys. It’s really about how do they recover tomorrow. see how that and put a plan together starting on Wednesday. So, I would imagine you you’ll see, you know, a guy or two out there. Kell, with the red, green, yellow days, uh once you get into a regular season schedule, like how flexible is that as opposed to what y’all did in training camp? Yeah, it’ll be pretty consistent. Our our weeks will flow pretty well and uh be pretty consistent as far as what Wednesday, Thursday, Friday looks like. Um again, we’re on obviously a routine where we’re going to be playing every Sunday, so we don’t have the short weeks or the long weeks or anything in between. Um, so I I feel like we’ll be able to get into a really good routine and, you know, we’ll we’ll see how the season goes. Got a lot of uh praise for his preseason uh performances. How do you expect his role to I guess increase as he kind of settles in in regular season? Who was that again? Kelvin. Kelvin. Oh, awesome. Kelvin did a phenomenal job. Um, I thought he was just really, really steady, really, uh, played with really good play style. I thought he was physical. When a mistake happened or someone kind of um, maybe won a down, he responded beautifully. And so, um, he he’s done everything we’ve asked. A guy like JT when you release, do you have to like address that in front of the team at all or we’ll have a team meeting today. So, we always go through every transaction um, you know, with the whole team. You know, anytime we sign someone, anytime someone leaves our our program, we communicate it. Um, you know, this is, you know, arguably the ch most challenging one or one of the more challenging ones we’ve had this offseason. Yeah. I guess just like how about you do I don’t know if like do you worry about it is the right like phrase but like the fact that he meant so much here does it yeah no it’s there’s nothing easy about this one um you know it’s it’s a hard one for all of us there’s a report about um a workout with Brendan Rice is that something you can confirm or deny tell us we had we had you know these Mondays you’ll you’ll tend to have these different workouts so we we had a number of players in and u you know a couple other positions And so it’s always good Mickey and Mickey and those guys do a good job of just continuing to evaluate different guys and we’re going to need guys as the season goes on and you know you got to navigate these rosters. You uh you had mentioned before you didn’t have any preconceived uh notions on on Kendra Miller because of of things that had happened in the past, but getting to work with him for you know the entire camp and everything like that. What what stood out to you and what helped his his role evolve to to where it did? I just thought he’s a really consistent person, consistent player each and every day. And so, you know, I don’t know what ever happened. Um, he’s done an excellent job. He ran the football really, really hard. I thought the things that showed up was his ability to catch the ball in the pass game. I thought he had some good examples of that. And then the protection was a big part, I thought, where he took a big growth step uh just as far as his ability and consistency in the protection game. You know, that’s a mentally straining position, you know, when you’re at running back to be able to handle all those moving pieces. And so, uh, yeah, he’s done an awesome job. on captains tonight. What’s that? You vote on captains tonight? We’ll vote on captains today and uh yeah, we’ll go through that process today. Set number of like we we don’t have a defined set number. We’ll see how all it goes out. Can you tell us a little bit about just what you’ve seen from Jawan Johnson over the course of this offseason? Yeah, Jan’s done a nice job. You know, I think uh pass game stuff pops up, you know, and I think what’s coming alive more and more is his ability to handle the run game portion of this. And that’s an important piece. We can’t have him just be a pass game guy. We got to have him be a complete tight end. That’s the expectation and I thought he’s done a really good job of uh you know creating that. Pretty excited about wearing the gold jersey the first game. Is that something that you had? Yeah, that was that was really just a collection of a lot of different conversations. Certainly the leadership group, a lot of the leaders on this team, you know, we kind of went through that process as far as talking about that in the offseason and uh you know, this this has been a goal for you know, some guys, Cam specifically, uh for for a while. And so, uh, thought, uh, you know, they were all really excited about that opportunity. Kelly, you once saw yourself as potentially coaching in college. Did that start to shift towards the NFL like when you were a player, or is it just kind of a matter of circumstance getting? Yeah, that’s a good question. I think circumstances certainly play a big role in that. I was fortunate to go right from playing to coaching in Dallas. And so, um, you know, that was a, excuse me, very fortunate transition. And so, uh, yeah, I I know a lot of people certainly my brother coaches in college football and there’s a lot of good in that as well. And so, you know, that’s just the path that kind of took. Good. All right. Thanks, guys.

New Orleans Saints Head Coach Kellen Moore speaks with the media ahead of Week 1 vs. the Arizona Cardinals from the Ochsner Sports Performance Center on Monday, September 1, 2025.
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