LIVE: The Houston Texans address the media

LIVE: The Houston Texans address the media

Good afternoon. [snorts] Max Crosby. >> Yeah, when it comes to the Raiders defense, Max Crosby definitely sticks out amongst that defense. He’s a very disruptive player, run game and pass game. He does a really good job playing with good effort finishing. So, he’s a guy we’re definitely have to have awareness for of where he is. He’ll align at both sides at any given time. So, we have to know where he is and we have to make sure, you know, we’re we’re out working him. We got to get hands on him. We got to finish him. He’s a good player. We got good players. We just got to outwork him. I know you say basically every time I ask that your defense still has room for improvement, but I wonder aside from that, um, what do you think has allowed them to be so consistent for for so many weeks this far into the season? >> The defense is consistent when everybody’s locked in on the same page. Everybody’s doing their job. Everybody’s being exactly where they’re supposed to be. No one trying to do too much. Everybody’s just doing their small part to make the puzzle fit, to make it all work together. When we do that, we’re a good defense. When we lose sight of that and someone kind of does something out of the norm, that’s where we’ll have we have holes and we have plays that we give up. So, it’s just a consistent messaging for our guys to make sure everybody is doing their job just to the best of their ability. When you do that, the defense works in a really nice way. >> After your first season, you all made a decision to change positions for for Jaylen. um the way he’s playing out, is it what you envisioned at that time or has he exceeded your expectations or what do you think about that? >> I love Jaylen Petri and what he provides to our defense. He really unlocks, as I always say, he unlocks everything that we can do. Like he’s in true X factor for us, like being able to be as versatile as possible, to not be predictable. He’s a guy that offenses they have to game plan for where he’s going to be aligned. You know, how he fits the run aggressively when he’s at the nickel spot. He’s just he’s a he’s a dynamic player and he’s shown that throughout this year. Not only fitting the run, playing physical, but and when it comes to taking the football away, always our number one goal. He’s done a great job of that this year. So excited to see him to continue to go make those impact plays for us. >> CJ Tenico, especially over the middle, is one of the more successful plays in football. Is that something you think is important to win in January, especially if you guys can be playing in the cold outdoors? >> For us, our we execute our offense. Really doesn’t matter where the guys are on the field. Just execute. >> When he looks behind the scenes, what the quarterbacks are doing? What’s Johnson to quarterbacks have played over the past six? >> Gerard has done a great job this year. I definitely seen growth in him as a coach and how he’s done a better job of working with the quarterbacks. uh he’s uh give those guys a lot of pointers, a lot of tips, especially from him being a guy who’s who played the position and he’s coached the position, helped a lot of young guys throughout his career. So, I’m I’m just uh very pleased with Gerard and excited to see his growth as a coach over this past year. I think he’s done doing a great job. with the defensive tackles. Um Tommy and uh and Sheldon, they they seem like they’re kind of in a rhythm. When when you’re look when you’re lacking in depth like you are right now with the injuries, do you want to kind of keep them at the same snap count and try to find someone that can keep them fresh or do you ask them to do more? >> With our defensive line, we’ve always rotated our guys. Uh we take eight, nine guys to the game. So, we’ll continue to rotate our guys how we rotate them. We’re not asking guys to do more or less. We’re just asking guys continue to do what they’ve been doing. >> You talk about um consistently. You talk about messaging and about when guys do the things that they should do, then it all works. It it could sound to some like, well, that’s really easy. Just do what you’re supposed doing that same thing all the time. >> Yeah. The biggest challenge when you you know in playing football there are a lot of mistakes that happen because it is a physical game guys get you get tired you kind of lose the discipline like when you get tired. So it’s always a a hyperfocused mentality to be locked in just one snap at a time. Sometimes you may be thinking about another snap or a certain look you got in practice and you may be trying to anticipate a play. You may be trying to anticipate, right, what the defense is doing based on their structure that they’re presenting, like are they going to stunt, are they going to move, and you just maybe lose sight of some small things. You forget to communicate in the moment. You have long drives where guys get tired. They get winded. And when you get tired, the first thing that goes is sometimes your mind goes and it’s just you have to really back in. have to find a way to truly like take some deep breaths, focus in one snap at a time mentality. And that’s what happens all all across football. It happens not just with our team. You see it just in all areas of football when when guys slip up and happen to make that mistake. That’s where you know a team tries to capitalize on when that happens. So it’s uh always for me it’ll be a hyperfocus on do your job. Do your job every single rep that you get. Forget the last rep. forget the next rep. Just lock in and focus on the one that you have right now. >> You get a guy in the middle of the season. What are kind of the phases to get that guy ready to where he’s ready should he be called upon, but you try not to put, you know, too much on his plate as he first kind of gets here. How do you kind of manage that when you add a guy mid-season? >> Yeah, whenever we add someone mid-season, uh, we’re we’re throwing everything we have at them, right? Seeing what they can handle first and foremost and seeing, you know, how can they go out and help us? How can it benefit? We may have to change some things, you know, technique-wise or what a person has, you know, from what we’re doing. Like we’ve been working techniques and things like that since OTAA. So, we know when we get guys who come in mid-season, it’s not going to be perfect technique, but can we find a way as coaches to get guys in a position that it’s it’s good enough, it’s serviceable, that it can go, we can go play winning football. A lot of times we talk about last year about his physicality that he brings. What ways have you seen his technique grow as far as >> with Kamari? I think he’s he’s grown a lot. He’s always had that physical presence, but I think he’s grown when it comes to just playing the football. All right. When he’s gotten a lot of opportunities of guys, you know, running go routes on him. and he’s done a great job of not slowing down when he gets the go route, but still speeding up and finding a way to look back and look up for the football and going and attacking the football at his high point. That’s uh corners have to be able to do that and he’s doing it at a high level. And with the opportunities that he’s gotten when it comes to attacking the football, he’s done a a fantastic job of that. and you know the physicality will always be there but I’m very excited and encouraged by his growth of going up and taking the football away. >> What have you seen from the um Raiders offense and what are some of the challenges that they present to you >> with this Raiders offense? I think you know it’s they have really some good players when I the first player that jumps out to my mind is Bowowers, right? The tight end he’s a a truly dynamic tight end. You don’t see many tight ends like him who he aligns all over the field. He’s not just aligned at the tight end position. He lines at the wide receiver position and he runs wide wide receiver routes. So he’s he presents a tough challenge for us matchup wise kind of like on the flip side with Crosby. You know, you got to know where Bowowers is at all time and he does a really great job of catching the football. Uh he can run every route on the route tree. So he’s not just a onetrick pony. He can do he can do it all. So I really respect his game. really loved his game when he was at Georgia as well. I think he’s one of the best tight ends in in the league right now. And then when I go to the back field and you see the bag Genty like and what he’s capable of doing, I know they haven’t ran for a ton of yards, but when you watch the film and you watch this young man run the football, he’s a he’s probably one of the best when it comes to contact balance, like he finds a finds a way to jump through tackles and continue to make guys miss tackle. He plays tough, plays behind his pass, a really tough runner that I I respect a lot. I think he has a really bright future, you know, in our league. So, those two players are the guys that stick out to me the most and they can definitely they can definitely make some big plays on you. So, you have to be aware of those guys at all times. >> What do you staff like about that jumbo package that you run? It seems like y’all really started running it back when your tight ends weren’t healthy. So, y’all gotten them back. Y’all still [clears throat] running a decent amount. What do y’all really like about that extra extra line? >> We we’ve run jumbo probably the most in the NFL. We run the jumbo package a lot. And what I like about it is we know we’re going to run the ball, right? Let’s line up and let’s get a bigger guy at the end of the line of scrimmage to make sure we’re blocking. All right. Some some of the best players in the league. When you come to the edge players, outside linebackers, defensive ends, you want to put a a big body. you want to match up the right way so you can try to have success in the run game and not put our tight ends in those positions every single time. So, it’s more of a matchup thing that we want to make sure we’re matching up the right way to give ourselves the best chance to have a successful play. >> How are some of the guys like Derek Woody doing it in terms of managing them throughout the week when it’s going to be approaching? Yeah, all of our guys will be they’re on that individual plan of how we’ll manage them throughout the week and as I always say, we’ll see how the week goes with those guys and see where we end up. >> You know, Jar’s success and and Nick coming back, does does that give you like additional confidence, I guess, indicates that if if what he isn’t able to play that those two guys could shoulder the load? Whoever’s at the running back position is all going to be first and foremost about our offensive line, our tight ends, and how we’re blocking the line of scrimmage, right? Our our backs be our backs. We know we got anybody who touches the football. They can be dynamic. They can make plays for us, but it’s going to be about how we handle the front. And the Raiders have a really good defensive front. They do a great job of attacking, right, causing disruption in the run game. So, it’s going to be a challenge to run the ball versus versus this Raiders defense. got time for a few more. >> Uh what do you think about uh Pete Carol and just his overall football life and will the Miko Ryan be coaching at 74? [laughter] >> Uh one thing I say about Pete Carol, man, he’s uh he’s a legend in this game. He’s done it for a long time at a high level. Have a ton of respect for Pete and what he’s done to do it at the college level and win and go on, you know, up in Seattle to do a great job there and win. He’s always won games. He knows what it takes. He knows what winning football looks like. And he has an unmatchable energy at being over 70 years old and have the energy that he has to watch him like on the sideline to watch him in all of his interviews or meetings like it’s always positive energy. And I love that about Pete. And I can see that that team it feeds off of what what he brings. Like he’s a great leader. You feel the energy. their team is their team feels that energy and they play that way. It’s going to be a a really tough unit because Pete is a great leader and those guys haven’t melded in or anything like that. We watch the film. We respect what this Raiders team put out there on the film like they play tough, they play physical. It’s going to be a really good matchup. >> All right, see you guys. Hi. Hey. I ain’t saying nothing today. What’s up? >> So, when you first came back from the concussion, we talked about kind of the benefit of the bird’s eye view having been away for the last few weeks. How you played the last couple games. Have you been able to see kind of that coming to fruition? I’m curious if like you notice anything that maybe you’re doing better now or differently or just any benefit from from the time away. >> I mean, I guess I mean I would say there’s always, you know, things that you can always pick up on, you know, while you’re in it or away from it. So, um I think, you know, we’ve gotten better in all phases. Um, and I wouldn’t say any specific area, but I do think in those specific specific areas that I touched on a couple weeks ago, you know, we got better in and as a offense and I think, you know, our defense is still playing great. So, you know, just putting up more points every week, I think, you know, help and, you know, just trying to execute at the highest level. >> You guys have talked a lot about your struggles in the red zone, but it seems to still be a problem. Is there anything you personally can do to make it better, or is it just have to be kind of everyone doing their part? Uh it’s I mean I always look internal to see like what I can do better. Um and then from there you know I think we look at as a whole like what are we doing um you know as players as coaches schematically you know so um I think you know it’s another area we can get better in. >> Um you earlier this week and you said you guys have a relationship kind of relate to another. What do you enjoy about having in your corner and do you think he’s helped your NFL transition these last few years? Uh yeah, my dad used to play Warren Moon or highlights all the time and he was always, you know, telling me about, you know, Warren and how great of a quarterback he was and um you know, to be able to, you know, play in the same city he did is kind of cool and to meet him a couple times. Um and he’s always very nice and, you know, um very respectful and, you know, instills a lot of confidence in me. So, um you know, it’s it’s really cool to see like me being a little kid, fan of this guy, you know, and then now, you know, he’s supporting me. So, um, you know, I really appreciative of him and, you know, us having a relationship. >> Um, you often talked about other quarterbacks that are, we’ll say, legendary, you know, the Tom Bradies of the Warren. How is it [clears throat] make you feel that you can have connections with some of those guys that you grew up watching and they respect what you’re doing and you can still, you know, be a fan of them, I guess. >> Uh, yeah. I think it’s cool, you know. Um, I think, you know, like something that I’ve learned is like they’re just people, you know, and like when you’re a kid, you just think like they’re like, you know, like this this crazy person, but, you know, it’s kind of cool just to see them being down to earth and like they’re respectful. Um, you know, and I think, you know, just for them to take time, you know, to reach out or like see us in person and, you know, and I’m not the only young quarterback, you know, they they probably, you know, see a lot of other quarterbacks like out in public and they say hello and very respectful and nice and giving us feedback and, you know, um, you know, tips and pointers here and there. So, um it’s really cool, you know, just to see the the humanity side of them and, you know, just um being able to pick their brains a little bit. So, yeah, it’s always cool whenever you get to run into one of those guys, but I don’t like bothering anybody, so I try not to, you know, [clears throat] reach out too much, but um yeah, it’s always really cool to see them. >> On the subject of older quarterbacks, um I think Philip Rivers has a kid about your age. What did what did you think about him coming back after so long and playing last weekend? >> Yeah, I thought he did amazing. I thought, you know, to, you know, have that short week of prep and, you know, to be able to, you know, go out there and make some plays. I thought he did great. Thought he, you know, took care of the football. Um, you know, uh, made plays, um, you know, got it out early. So, um, I thought, you know, they they I thought I think Shane Sen is a heck of a coach and, you know, uh, his scheme is great and I think, you know, the the way they run the ball, you know, helps out. So, you know, I’m I’ve been a big fan of Philip for a long time, too. So, it’s cool to see him, you know, play and, you know, get a good game in under his belt. >> Yeah, brother. >> I couldn’t remember if you said previously, but when it comes to Max Crow, just being a fan of the game, what type of threat is he? >> Yeah, Max is a dog. you know, he can wreck a whole game and, you know, um he’s, you know, done it year in and year out, you know, and um I just think he’s a, you know, a heck of a player, you know, has a motor, you know, uh doesn’t stop, doesn’t quit, you know, so um you know, we got to make sure, you know, we take care of that and try our best, you know, slow him down. Um so, um you know, it’ll be, you know, a a fist match up there, you know, or fist fight you up there every play and, you know, I know he’s ready and we’ll try to be ready as well. What did you like best about what what do you like best about what you all did last week and and what do you hope you all can take with you this week and moving forward? >> Um I like the way we ran the ball. I thought, you know, we ran the ball really efficiently, you know. Um thought our quick game pass uh our quick pass game went really well to where I was getting the ball in my hand and guys were open and running great routes and you know and I think the best team is just to move on you know and you know learn from our mistakes which we did and you know and try this week to you know fix those things and there’ll be new things that’ll come up this week. So like every week it’s always a battle to fix these things but I think you know we’re starting to roll at the right time and you know December is where you want to play your best ball and every game is important and every game is hard and you know they they don’t they want to win. want to win. Um, and then around the league, you know, guys, you know, hoping you lose and, you know, we’re hoping, you know, to win every game. So, um, you know, that that’s always in the back of our mind that, you know, the next game is the most important. So, being able to flush the failures, you know, and learn, you know, from them as well and go and try to get another dub. >> Talk about you talk about flushing the failures. How different is it as far as, I guess, [clears throat] enjoying playing football from the beginning of the season till now? You know, you started off 0 and three and now you got a sixgame winning streak. It’s got to feel different, right? >> No, not really. I mean, I think people kind of lose their mind around the building. We know what we had. We knew what we had the whole year. Um I mean, I I I my process hasn’t changed, you know. It’s just we’re starting to finish better, close out games. So, um yeah, I I really never lost faith. You know, I I think we’re a heck of a team. And, you know, just like everybody loves us now, they can hate us in a week. Like, so who knows? It doesn’t really matter. So, we’re just focused as a team. I mean, we’re focused on what we what we can control and that’s how we play each week. So, um you know, whatever that looks like. So, you know, we’re going to continue to have faith in one another and trust in one another and keep playing hard. >> What do you see overall from this um Raiders defense when you look at the tape? >> Yeah, they’re good. You know, they they have a lot of good lineman. Um you know, Devin White, you know, has been playing, you know, uh high level, you know, backer for a long time. Landon is a great backer as well. And on the back end, you know, they’re figuring some things out, but I think, you know, they’re they’re up in your face, you know, and do really good in their their spot drop zones and, you know, their blitz their blitzes and, you know, they they can pressure you at any time. I think, you know, Pete Carol has been a great coach and a great scheme for a long time. And if you look, man, they they’ve had some some close games, you know, for, you know, some teams that are going to the playoffs, you know, and some um some teams that, you know, we played against that are good. So, you know, this is not a team to slack off on one bit just like last week and, you know, we got to be able to, you know, um, establish, you know, the line of scrimmage early on and then, you know, the pass game and whenever that comes. So, um, but it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be a challenge and we got to be ready for it. >> CJ, you’ve been working with Gerard Johnson ever since you’re a teenager, 11. How’s that relationship grown over the years and what have you seen from him, his growth as a coach? Uh yeah, I think Gerard is, you know, um me becoming like being me being a kid back then, being 16 years old, meeting him and now being 24, you know, it’s crazy. It’s almost 10 years ago. That’s wild. Um but like just to see, you know, not only just my growth, but his and our relationship grow. Um he’s somebody who, you know, I consider a great friend and somebody who I know I can call. Um but also, you know, I’ve seen him grow as a coach. uh you know and see him you know his have his fingerprint in our system you know finally after a couple years you know he’s able to put a some input plays in and you know um thought he’s done a great job of that and coaching me you know footwork you know he’s a mechanical genius I feel you know he’s a guru when it comes to you know footwork and you know uh being centered in the ground and pronation with your wrist all that good stuff you know he’s very you know he’s a fan of and good at coaching it so you know I’m very grateful and happy to have him as a coach >> totally had a big game on Sunday and I think he’s now up to his most yards as a Texan. Just what has his impact been on this offense this year? >> It’s been a lot. You know, I mean, it’s been felt by everybody. I think, you know, Dalton is, you know, week in and week out, worked very hard. You know, his leadership has gone to another notch. Um, you know, his run game blocking, you know, and that just doesn’t helps more for, you know, his route run ability, which I think he’s one of the best in the league at. So, um, I’m just super proud of him. glad he’s, you know, a brother of mine, somebody I consider a great friend and, you know, it’s just really cool to connect to him. I think, you know, me and him have a chemistry that we can be looking at each other a certain way. We just know what we’re going to do and make a play. So, um, it’s just it’s really cool to see. I hope I play with him for a very, very long time. All right.

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