Anthony Weaver meets with the media | Miami Dolphins

Anthony Weaver meets with the media | Miami Dolphins

with Iffy. I know the two defensive snaps obviously were his his lowest when he’s been healthy this year. Why so few for him? And then the decision to give Ethan 16 defensive snaps at corner. If you could expand on those two things, please. Yeah, reps and and who plays most and who starts and those things are all earned throughout the week. Right. The the trader kit has shown flashes. We want to see what we got, right? wasn’t necessarily a anything that if he didn’t do, but there wasn’t a lot of argument to say like, oh, this kid shouldn’t be playing more. Um, that being said, all things are our options. You know, all things are on the table this week. Again, a lot of competition at that position. We said it all along if he’s in there. Have the utmost trust in him to go out there and execute his job. and the traitor kid. Again, I know there’s some things that show up on the tape that are kind of out there, right? Just because situationally where we were and how that game finished, but truly believe in that kid as well. So, hope that one missed tackle play doesn’t hinder his development. And with Bonner thinking getting Ethan, I mean, I think you guys saw how Ethan was playing in training camp, right? He was he was very close to potentially earning a starting spot. Love what Jack has done. think both of those guys could play well for us in spots and uh we’ll continue to let them battle it out throughout the week and let the ref sort themselves out. I’m sorry. It’s okay. Um I was going to ask you if you could break down that long pass to Maki at the end. From from both a pass rush standpoint and then a standpoint. Yeah, just uh right, we really started the play before, right, where from a coverage standpoint, we were on our guys. We had tight we at that particular point in time, right, the balls on the 41, I believe. Uh we had their kickers line at about the plus 41, which gives us about 18 yards of wiggle room. So, we had to be tight on them. At that point, you can bring pressure, right? Man pressure and potentially leave your corners vulnerable or you can rush four. And I had the utmost faith in our pass rush that we can get there. And we did. I think you got to take your hat off to to the quarterback, right? Number 10. He stood there in the pocket, stood firm, and must have hands like Shaq cuz just just didn’t fumble the ball the first time. Obviously wiggled away from Jay Phil. You’d hate you hate that that we missed that out, right, to potentially make a gamechanging play. He took an outside rush in the B gap, which again, you’ve seen Warren Sap and Aaron Donald do a ton of times. Uh, next to good edge rushers and Chop had a good rush and they kind of have to like bump each other off a little bit. So, it’s unfortunate situationally. The play before we gamed it up, right? But, it wasn’t it wasn’t a matter of like mismanaged rush lanes or anything like that. It was more the quarterback just making a play. As for the coverage on that particular play, they kind of ran like two overs and we had a we had a Robert we were in a Robert defense. A Robert says cut cut to cut the over. Mink who plays nickel but really hadn’t played a lot of nickel third down reps for us prior to that game just cuz we had to just where we’re at from a personnel standpoint. Heard the cut, thought his guy was getting cut, drops it. Trader tries to make him right and then just misses the tackle inside out. So, um, again, all that being said, really proud of the effort of the guys. Thought outside of really just five run plays for 100 yards, unfortunately, and a third down in the low red zone on the first drive after half. We played pretty well. I know it doesn’t show that way. They’re two for seven in the red zone. had a couple sudden change stops early, missed a sudden change stop there in the third, but for the most part, we we’re getting better as a defense. Our run deficiencies need to improve and and that’s on me ultimately when it’s happening in different levels of the defense. There’s there’s front second level misfits, backend mis tackles. I got I got to shoulder that. Um, collectively we’ll get better. I know we are. That’s certainly not a matter of belief or work and we’ll continue to do just that. Just work. We have a storm on his way back. Jaylen Phillips. I just want to stick or Jaylen Phillips. Storm Phillips. Um, what conversations have you had with Jayen Phillips? A guy who cares a lot and obviously is would take that hard not finishing that side. I hit Jaylen as soon as it happened on the sideline. I unfortunately have have been in those shoes before. I remember one game when I was we were playing against Cleveland. I was playing. I missed a sack twice on the same play. So brutal situationally for him. Again, it’s an awful spot to be in as a player because you truly feel like you let all of your teammates down. I told him like, “Hey, this the result of the football game never hinges on one play. I know that play is magnified because of when it happened, but we had multiple ops to win that game throughout. So, what I told him was, “Hey, feel this pain. It’s going to hurt. You got to take it all in, but you also got to find a way to shake this thing off and and keep chasing your purpose and your greatness because it’s in there. That kid wants to be great, and he can be.” Following up, sorry, but just just following up, want to stay on the subject with Jaylen Phillips. He’s been a guy who even back to his rookie year, I mean, you’re probably talking about double-digit sacks where he’s got guys within his clutches and they just slip him. You have been in that situation as a pass rusher. How do you close? How do you learn how to close? I I think there’s a there’s a fine line, right, when you when you get to that point when you’re kind of at like in the strike zone where you have to make sure you you almost slow down a little bit in your mind because if you’re just if you just go there and try to kill every quarterback, the majority of them nowadays, like they’re athletic enough, they’re going to give you a little move and they’re wiggling, they’re going to they’re going to be out of your grasp. You have to find a way to collect yourself, bring your feet on the tackle, wrap the guy, and get him on the ground. Easier easier said than done, right? I think you guys saw that we had we had a couple free runs at him, too, and we missed those opportunities as well. So, yeah, nothing easy about it. It’s unfortunate for Jaylen, but he’s going to make those ops more than he misses them. Go ahead. Any more follow? I don’t want to jump on anybody’s follow. You video, too. There were That’s the question. Different topic. Duck. Looks like he’s under way back. Does he go back into the starting lineup where he was in week one or is it an open competition? Yeah, I think I think that has to be earned, right? Rousul has done an incredible job out there. I think it’s going to be hard to supplant him by just saying like, “Hey, you’re back.” He has to go out and prove that on the practice field. But if he does that, then he’ll certainly be right back out there. What you saw from Juju Brent and what led to his I believe nickel snaps. Yeah. Again, for us, particularly on third down, right? Um we do a lot of different things and we put a lot on Mink because he can handle it, right? He’s playing like three different positions at times. So, in order to alleviate some of that, we try to make sure on third down that we can make him play safety. Um, so to do some of that, we put Guju, again, experimenting a little bit. I think we’ve had like 10 nickels, 11 nichls on the roster this season, so it’s been a little bit of a revolving door. We threw Guju out there. He he showed signs. Probably not his ideal spot to play, right? He’s kind of long strider. has length, but we thought he could use that length in this particular situation against McConi. So, Juju is going to be fine. Don’t know that Nicholas is ideal spot. We’ll see how it shakes out this week. Um, but I trust him when he’s out. Let’s put it that way. I want to ask you about you personally. Um, you seem more subdued today and I know at one and five there’s no reason to be jovial. How is this affecting you and do you worry about your reputation? You were a hot head coaching prospect. I know that’s selfish, but seriously, do do you worry how are you doing? And are you worried about your reputation? No. Absolutely not. I I’ve told you guys this before. Like, I work in service, right? And I I’ve been doing this a long time. And I don’t I don’t do it because I want to be a head coach. I don’t do it because I want to make money. Uh I do it because I want to help players and and I want to win, right? I want to win. This game ultimately is about winning. So, how I’m doing? I’ve been better. I’ve been better. I’m a little edgy, but I told I told the guys on Wednesday that when you’re in this situation, it’s going to involve courage and character, right? That’s what it’s about. And I I need them to show that. in that in these situations, what happens is that you have these battles against yourself where you’re trying to make sure you’re not having losing habits. You’re not pointing the finger. Uh you’re pulling the thumb. You’re making sure you’re not taking shortcuts, right? Because obviously that’ll result in losses, too. But if you can’t win these battles against yourself, I don’t know how the heck you win the battle against somebody else. So that’s what we’re trying to do every day. I’m trying to do my best to make sure I remain a a lighthouse in the storm, right? Keep trying to do the next right thing. Get these guys to play as hard, as physical, as fast as they can. Inevitably, the score will take care of itself. We got to find a way to win these games in the fourth. I think we’ve lost four games. Four of our five losses have come in the fourth quarter. And I’ve always thought that pressure reveals habits. So until we’ve have enough training where those mistakes don’t happen in critical situations, the results won’t change. Now, what I can promise you is to a man, everybody in this organization is committed to that. But I promise you, there isn’t a man in this organization that isn’t working to get this right. Everybody’s disappointed. Our fans are passionate and they have right to be disappointed. But it is not for a lack of work. I promise you that. I was going to ask you after Minka, among the players on your 53man roster, anything, who do you think is best equipped to play nickel corner after Minka? That’s a good question. Uh, you know, the the funny thing about that is we’re going to experiment with Elijah Keville out there last week who has that who’s had that who’s done some of that in his past and then he got hurt on Wednesday, right? and he got a quad on Wednesday. Um he’s probably the next guy that comes to mind. If he’s actually played some big nickel out there, the trader kit I think is suited to do that. Um you know, but in terms of the the corner spot, I know Jack Jones has done it a little bit. I just think that adds a lot to his plate and wouldn’t be fair to him. So, there’s some guys, right? And and again, we’ll find a way to go out there and compete. And and from a from a pass defense standpoint, again, I I think our guys are doing a heck of a job. Uh you know, Coach Duke or Coach Aroujo, Coach Slo, Shed, they they’re doing a great job training those guys. Those guys are taking the training and applying that training in game. But until we stop the run, right, none of that really matters, right? We got to we got to earn the right to rush the passer and get him in longer third downs.

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