Jaguars Coordinators on Key Contributors Ahead of Week 14 vs. Colts | Jacksonville Jaguars

on the TV broadcast. I guess it was a satellite reporter who said that uh I guess reported that he they like to think they have inside information, but he said that during the by-week his goal was you stripped the defense down to the nuts and bolts. Okay. What do you mean by that? And what modifications have you made to the overall scheme since the bye that has kind of led to the success you’re having lately? Not not a ton. Not a ton in terms of uh making changes, but I think whenever you get the by-week, you get a chance to do that. You know, you get a chance to really kind of quality control and see what’s been good. Uh and honestly, what’s what’s been called? Um sometimes you’re practicing stuff and you’re looking at it and saying, “All right, we really like this.” Maybe you don’t get to it in the game. Uh the situation doesn’t present itself, you know. Um so sometimes you can kind of pair things down. And I think that’s something that uh has helped our guys. We’ve done that a little bit and I think the guys have done a good job with it from this normal evolution as the season goes on. Maybe you toss some things and you know you you kind of streamline things, let’s say. Is that a better way to put it? Yeah, sure. I I every year I say this a lot, but the the season’s so long, you’re going to have different stuff that you do. Um, and there’s some stuff that makes it there’s there’s so many great ideas and like anytime you’re with a bunch of guys who have been around and we got a bunch of coaches who have been around or really good football coaches in that room. Um, they have a lot of great ideas. Our assistant coaches um so what makes it into the game plan, uh, what you end up keeping, that’s always a hard decision. But as the season goes, you kind of figure out who you are as a defense, and you really gravitate more to the skill set of the players, what they do well, and putting them in those positions um where you could play fast and be most successful as a defense. That same kind of thing Josh down from the locker room yesterday that uh kind of the sack production picked up as things have simplified for him over the past couple of weeks. I mean, what changed? um just certain stuff that we’re doing probably uh you know with with groupings maybe even you know rotation of guys and stuff that’s been a little bit different but um yeah really we haven’t changed a whole lot but I think as things are going and you’re and like anything else when you’re doing things over and over and over again um now you get to this point in the season I think guys are very comfortable with what they’ve been doing you’ve been uh working the same techniques or running the same games or whatever it may be uh it really simplifies for You know, Trayvon banged up. You’ve been flip blocking Josh’s side, giving offensive lines a little some different look, moving him around some. Yeah, we we’ve tried to do that. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but um yeah, we we’ve done that a little bit. Moved him around, moved some other guys around. Um and I think that gives us some versatility in the rush and trying to manipulate matchups as best we can um you know, at certain different points in the game. But the guys have done a really good job u in the fourman rush especially. So, you know, they really kind of when I when I refer to the pass rush, I just think it’s more so about our guys. Um, the detail they’ve been practicing with, like just being downstairs with them, you know, in the meeting room. Um, they’re so dialed in and and, uh, I think we’re really picking up there and doing a good job of that over the last few weeks. You think you’ll keep moving Josh around when back? Uh, that’s a good question. Yeah, I I mean uh you know certainly a lot of ideas that float around and Trey gives you more versatility too, you know, and I think Dennis has done a great job. I think some of the young guys have done a great job. Um and guys, you know, even stepping in last week for Eric, I thought did a great job, too. So, um we feel good about all those guys in there and the versatility that they have to move around uh in the front. 21 yards per catch for the Colts. Is that a quick game guy or is deep threat? Some of both. He’s some of both, but uh he really can run. You know, he’s generated a lot of big plays down the field for them. Um I think they do a great job of uh trying to get him isolated and you know, for one, you know, stretch the defense with him. Um he’s an impressive guy because like I said, not only can he run, but he’s a bigger target for them. Um and he’s done a really good job for them the whole year. Safeties obviously played well lately, but what could Eric back his leadership experience mean for you guys this week? Eric’s a great leader and I’ve said before he’s a great communicator. Um, anytime you get a guy like that that has that veteran presence, um, the toughness that he brings to the game, you know, he’s a physical guy. Uh, you know, he’s tackled his, uh, he’s tackled his this year. He’s done a great job being physical in the middle of the field um, and really separating guys from the football. So, I love that about his game. you know, I love uh you know, when he’s out there cuz like I said, he’s always bringing an edge to us and uh he is a great communicator back there. And then Tyler Warren, are there many tight ends you’ve prepared against or kind of utilized the way he is? Yeah, we seem to be getting a lot of these tight ends that are that are good players, but you know, that’s kind of the invogue thing in the league and he’s another one who’s really really super talented, can do a lot of things for them. They use him in a myriad of different ways. um you know, he’s in the back field, he’s out there at receiver, he’s in at the tight end hole, and he’s really uh done a great job for them this year. He’s I I think, you know, he’s really got all the skills that you’re looking for in a tight end. Physical on the line of scrimmage, you know, like I said, they’ll move him around isolation block with him. Um and they’ll get him down the field as well. So, he’s uh he’s definitely a guy you got to know where he’s at. And even James have talked about Jaguars DNA. What does that to you and how does that kind of show up on Sundays? Being tough and being team first. I think those are things that I think about right away. Um being a great teammate. Um and a lot of that you asked about the the pass rush earlier. You guys had asked about that. I think there’s a certain selflessness. Um you know, when you’re selfless in the rush, uh there’s a team rush mentality, you know, and executing the plan. I think the guys have done that. They want to see each other’s success. Um that gets them excited. So, when we talk about Jaguars DNA, you know, being physically and mentally tough, uh, loving your teammates and trying to be a great teammate, those are the things that come to mind for me. What makes Devon Hamilton a good run defender? Honestly, like I just said, extremely selfless. Um he’s a guy that if you really value defensive line play and you love to watch Dlineman work uh in the run game and you know transition in the pass game, he’s about as good as I’ve been around. Um he’s such a great teammate that guy. Um he’s a tough dude, you know, he plays through it all the time. Plays through everything. Um you look at the other day, I mean he jumped in at long snapper, you know, so one of the great two-way players in the league obviously right now. But, uh, no, he’s he’s, um, you watch him in there and he’s, you know, he’ll play zero knows, he’ll play shade. We move him around, but, um, grinding blocks and, you know, tearing off blocks, not staying blocked. Um, he’s a big guy obviously, but, he does not stay blocked and he does a great job splitting double teams and he keeps people clean in the run game. So, he’s a huge part of everything we do. Hoping to get that line in, weren’t you? Hoping to get that in. Yeah, I mean, he is, man. He’s like Chuck Benerick, the guy. He’s The follow, is this the best run game you’ll face so far this year because of Taylor and also their front? Yeah, they’re very good. Um, obviously the running back is explosive, but um he’s also explosive because, you know, he don’t go down easy now. He’s he’s not a guy that you can arm tackle. It’s got to be a team tackling mentality with him. Um he’s a physical back and they’re physical in the front. You know, they got guys that finish blocks. uh when you have that many explosive or long runs, it’s because guys in the front are f finishing blocks. Um they do that on the perimeter, they do that in the front. So that’s something we got to do. You know, we got to stay after it. Uh do a great job with our eyes. They challenge it with all the schemes that they run in the run game. They probably have the most multiple uh run game of anybody we played in terms of scheme variation, uh motion, pre- snap. They do a great job of it. Um, and I think they’ve done a great job offensively with their run game and and matching up and marrying their play action pass game to that. But yeah, that’s that’s definitely the challenge this week because he’s a great back and they got a great front. Thanks. The shuffles on the offensive line, I last week even got Wyatt Milm in there for a little bit. And how tough is it? I mean, that continuity playing next to a guy, you build that repertoire. How tough is it to keep just kind of inserting different pieces? It’s definitely a challenge. Those guys have embraced that. It is tough though because you get later in the year, you’re going to have less and less practice reps. You’ll notice we’re not you have only so many days in full pads and then even the days when you’re not in full pads, you can’t always get out there and truly get practice reps. Can’t go full speed because guys get banged up. It’s the nature of the beast a little bit at this point in the season. So, you start to try to work a guy like Wyatt in at guard, at tackle, and he’s playing both sides. got to be ready to play multiple positions because when a guy’s your seventh or eighth lineman, they can’t just say I’m the backup right guard and only the right guard. They got to be the backup right guard, backup left tackle and backup left guard. So you go into the week and you know I might only have a couple of reps during the week. Where do I take those reps? Do I take all three at right guard? Do I take one at left tackle? So you get in situations like that where thankfully Wyatt had gotten some reps in that situation, but you’re kind of banking on the whole body of work over the whole off season, the whole training camp, even during the spring of those guys being in meetings together, being out there at practice together because there’s things in that game plan plays in that game plan that they may never have done together. So it’s a challenge to be able to go out there and then do it in full speed when it’s a play you’ve only walked through or only talked about in a meeting. But I love their approach to it. How do you prepare for a defense like the Colts? so many different looks out there. How do you kind of simulate it in practice? Well, that’s another thing that I mean that that is a challenge with limited reps. You have to have rules to the to the offense, to your system, and you have to kind of rely on things that you’ve practiced over the course of the year. You know that not only you need to have a plan for everything they’ve done, but you know that they’re going to have something new that they haven’t done. They’re going to game plan something to attack us, our protection schemes, our routes, our concepts, our run game. So, you kind of have to take a principles first approach and say, “What are we trying to do? What are they trying to do from a broader view?” And then, how can we conceptualize this to let the guys still go out there and play fast where they’re not paralyzed by 5,000 different rules of 5,000 different looks? They do a great job of scheming things up, being creative, attacking all those different things. So, it’s a great challenge for us to simplify things back down to let our players go play. You got Brian Thomas back last week and then you see him go out there Jacobe Myers had the catch and Brian goes and gets the pancake block down. Yeah. I mean seeing him putting those kind of effort plays making plays for his his other guys. What does that say about the kind of guy and player that Brian is? It it means a lot and I know it means a lot to me personally. It means a lot to the guys in the room and it means a lot to him to go out there and prove that he’s that type of player. He’s bought in. Um, I mean it it’s one of those things where you love the touchdowns, you love the the catches, you love the big plays, and that was a huge play, but like those types of plays are plays you look back on, and you feel like that’s representative of the identity of our offense, and that’s representative of his identity as a player. So, there’s so much in just that play that doesn’t show up. Like, we always talk about the stat sheet. There are all these different plays and things that show up that don’t show up on the stat sheet that show up on tape and that means so much. Um, you know, a play like that is so special. We talked about the Laquin Allen, some of those plays earlier in the year. That’s right up there with like the type of things that like damn near bring a tear to your eye as you’re watching that. Hey Grant, uh, you have 12 games of Colts tape to look at this week. How do you prevent overanalyzing? Do you go back four or five games or do you pick snippets from the whole season? Yeah, that’s a that’s a challenge you face really at the end of the season. and it starts to become a big challenge because there is so much tape to go through. But it’s kind of one of those challenges you face all year because most of these coordinators you’re playing against have been coordinators last year or two years ago or in this case for a long history all the way before that. So you have a library and a body of work that you can study and basically drown yourself in data. So you try to pull out once again the main principles, the concepts, the things that are issues for you and hope that your rules and your system can handle everything else. So you might not get to go over every pressure that they’ve done with the players since 2021 or even since week one. You might not get to show them every single blitz that they’ve shown. But if you have good rules and you have a system and a foundation that the guys can rely on, then you trust in that that it can handle different things like pressures, fronts, run schemes, things like that. Follow that. Did the Colts change their coverages a lot when they got Gardner, but now he’s out? Do you how do you is it a guessing game that what they go back to? Well, there’s certainly always an adjustment when you have an injury, but I I think it’s pretty rare for an offense or a defense to totally scrap an identity. So, if a team is playing man coverage and they lose a guy who was a great man defender, they still had four other guys on the field who are really high level at executing man coverage. Same thing when you have zone guys and different guys who are great pressure players or different rushers. You know, they they’ve lost a great rusher, but they still can run some of those same pressures or same rush patterns that they were running when Buckner was in there. So, you don’t lose kind of the identity. I think that you kind of make adjustments typically. Now, everybody’s different, so you know, it’s kind of week to week based on the game plan. How much do you need to adjust based on missing that guy? It’s the same thing for us when you miss a wide out. You know, some games you may have heavily relied on that guy because the matchups presented themselves favorably for that guy. And then some weeks you kind of move along business as usual because running your normal core plays or running things within the flow of the game, you don’t need to change. So, it is a little bit week to week, but I don’t think you ever really totally stray from the identity of an offense or defense. you were in the building with Daniel Jones a little bit last year. What did you learn with your time with him? I mean, did you notice like did you see then that the light might come on for this guy? I think it it was evident pretty immediately. I mean, you talk about a guy who’s talented in pretty much all aspects of what you’re looking for in a quarterback where it’s mental processing, physical ability, and then the ball coming out of his hands can make every single throw all over the field. You add on top of that getting to be around him what an unbelievable person he is. His work ethic, the guy he is in the locker room with the teammates, the camaraderie, the relationships that he builds with the guy. I mean, I I don’t have enough positive things to say about Daniel Jones. I mean, he the way he works. So, it’s easy for me to say now hindsight, right? I’m a little bit biased, but no surprise to me at all the type of success he’s had. Coach, what is what is the versatility that Cole Van Landon has been showing and the way he plays and last week in a little bit of an emergency situation moving over to a pretty key position. Um, you know, when you first got here and you started you started watching film and you got to know Cole, you know, did you detect that kind of I guess willingness to do whatever was necessary for the team? You certainly got to know by talking to him, getting to know him, that he would be willing to do what we needed. He’s one of those guys for whatever you ask, he’s going to attack it with his absolute maximum effort. But there’s a lot of guys that are willing and and able to try those things, but for him to actually go out there and do it in a game and move from right to left, we talked about doing it from a week- toeek basis and say, “Last week you were playing left tackle, now you’re playing right guard.” But to do that within a game is truly exceptional. So, not only is it exceptionally physically, but exceptional mentally to know how we’re hitting combinations at left tackle, not only left versus right, but outside versus inside. What are the calls out there? What are the looks we’re getting? It’s different fronts, totally different surfaces. Now, I’m working with tight ends and I’m not working with a center and a guard. So, for him to do that and to continue to kind of do it week to week is a testament to his preparation, his work ethic. Thank you.

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