Dabs’ Digest: 1-on-1 with Coach Brian Daboll before 100th season opener

Q: During our first meeting two years ago, I asked you what you would say to the team the night before the game. You said the closer you get to the game, the less the coach needs to talk. Do you still adhere to that?

Daboll: “I do. I think you’re constantly teaching, communicating, making adjustments throughout the week. When you get toward the end of the week, you trust your preparation and all the work that you’ve put in. And then you trust the players. That’s what practice is for. Practice isn’t just to go out there and run around, and it’s (not) a punishment or any form of that. It’s to make sure that you do things at a high level in practice. So, when you get to a game, you have a comfort level with trusting yourself to do those things. Again, the looks that you get in practice, I would say you have a 10-play period of offense or defensive plays. And the play that you practice against or the defense you practice against, that rarely comes up. You can study all the tendencies and statistics and all those things, but you might hit one or two in a game where, ‘Boy, that’s exactly how we practiced it.’ Rarely do you hit it the exact same way, but it’s for the timing and the rhythm of the quarterback in the passing game with the receivers, the trust with the running back and the timing of the offensive line blocks, the technique of the double teams, the press man coverage that you play, the communication that takes place versus whatever type of offensive set you get.”

Q: How many plays are on your typical call sheet for a game? Is there a typical number?

Daboll: “No, it just depends week to week on what we’re doing offensively, what they do defensively. There’s been a wide variety of numbers. There’s not one set number.”

Q: And how many do you typically use in the game?

Daboll: “It depends on the game. Sometimes there are repeats, sometimes there aren’t repeats. Sometimes you’re playing it in one personnel group and they’re causing issues in that personnel group, and you’ve got to switch to another personnel group. Those are the adjustments that you make. The plays that you practice, you have confidence in those plays. It’s, ‘What are they doing?’ How you combat what they do relative to their personnel grouping and what they’re putting in there versus what personnel group you’re putting in there. You have your ideas on down and distances and things like that, what you want to call. But the things that happen or, ‘Hey, I prepared for a big zone team, and it was all man to man’ or ‘We prepared for a big pressure team, and they really dropped a bunch of guys. Or they move this guy over here, so now we want to double team this guy relative to this guy. Those are the conversations that take place during the game.”

Q: As a play caller, there’s a time pressure to make the play call. You have that clock running and the communication goes off at 15 seconds (on the play clock). So, is practice also for you as far as getting those plays in quickly?

Daboll: “The periods that you script the night before, you want to make sure you’re getting certain looks against what you are calling on offense. There’s other periods that we do, that’s really in training camp where you’re going against the defense and they’re unscripted periods, and you’re calling it quickly, getting it to the quarterback as quick as you can.

“But that’s the goal all the time is to make sure you’re always thinking as a play caller. You call the play, and you have a vision of how that play is going to go and where the ball potentially has a chance to go to. What are the odds of what the situation is going to be on the next play? And I’d say that you have a good idea. You call something on first-and-10. You’re thinking, ‘This is a quick possession pass, probably going to be somewhere around five to seven yards.’ You got your second-and-three to five call ready to go. Oh, there’s a false start. It goes back. Now you have to switch your thinking real quick. Or there’s a sack or it hits for 30, a catch and run. And now you’re back to first-and-10. So, it’s the situations that come up in a game that are different than the probable outcome of the play that you’ve got to be on top of and get out quickly. Again, you hit a 35-yard play. You’re in a different field position in a different area of the field. There’s a holding penalty. Now you’re backed up 10 more yards. You’re backed up at the -18 (yard line) instead of being at the 40-yard line. Those are all things that happen quickly, and you’ve got to make quick decisions.”

Q: You’ve been asked so much about (quarterback) Daniel (Jones’) comeback from an ACL. (Wide receiver) Bryce Ford-Wheaton returned from the same injury. He seemed to be in the building every day in the offseason. It’s fair to say he was an underdog coming into camp, but he made the roster.

Daboll: “We have good guys that care about football, that it’s important to get back out there and do everything they can do. And Bryce is one of them. He’s much like Daniel. Basically, they lived here in the offseason to rehab and make sure that they put themselves in the best position. And Bryce plays a different position than quarterback, he’s a receiver and a special teams player that has to run a lot and cut and do things. He’s worked extremely hard to get back. And he earned his spot.”

Q: You’re playing Minnesota Sunday. Many of the Vikings – (wide receiver) Justin Jefferson, (safety) Harrison Smith, (running back) Aaron Jones, (outside linebackers) Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel – played no snaps in the preseason, which is becoming more and more common. How does that affect your preparation for the first game?

Daboll: “Those are things you do in the offseason when they acquire players. Again, you can look at the strengths and weaknesses of each individual player that you’re playing, and you have to go back. And whether it’s Houston tape or Miami tape, Green Bay tape and New York Jets, Carolina, San Francisco, you go back and look at that. There’s a point in the opening part of the season where you can end up watching too much, where you’re just, ‘We’ve done a lot of work in the offseason. We’ve done a lot of work here the past week and a half,’ and as it gets closer to the game, you kind of gear down to really what you have to do, whether it’s on offense, defense and the kicking game. And again, that’s going back to the communication process, trusting your fundamentals, everybody being on the same page, overcoming a bad play, staying even keel with a good play. Those are the things that are important, playing with the right relentless attitude and effort that you need play in and play out. That’s most important. But, looking at (cornerback Stephon) Gilmore, looking at Greenard, looking at (outside linebacker) Dallas Turner at Alabama, and he played some of the preseason. But those are things you do during the offseason and get your tapes ready so you can go through it with the players.”

Q: Does the fact that most starters play little or not at all in the preseason make Week 1 more unpredictable?

Daboll: “I think Week 1 is always unpredictable. All the years that I’ve done it, there’s always been some – we’ve come out Week 1 and thrown it something like 20 times in a row, empty (backfield). I don’t think the other team thought you were going to do that, or other teams come out and you think they’re going to drop people and they blitz a lot. Or some people come out in a different personnel group that you haven’t seen. That’s why OTAs and training camp are so important. That’s why you move people around so they can get a wide variety of looks because in the early part of the season, not just Week 1, but I’d say Week 2 and Week 3, when teams are still kind of figuring things out. It comes down to taking care of the ball, not giving the ball up, playing good field position, playing good situational football, trying to get off to a fast start, tackling well, blocking well, catching well, throwing well, run after catch. The things that really matter and they matter every game. But I’d say they’re significant in the early part of the season. Guys that haven’t been hit 15, 20 times a game, taking care of the ball, maneuvering in the pocket. That’s why we did so much team work (in training camp). That’s the early part of the season. It’s the first game.”

Q: If you or I were throwing to him, Justin Jefferson would probably be a great receiver. When you watch him on film, what jumps out about him to you?

Daboll: “Everything. He’s a complete receiver. You can line him up in any position you want to. He can run any route. You can have him doubled and he’s still getting the ball. He’s exceptional at what he does. Smart, instinctive, excellent hands. You can run him on any route, throw to him in double coverage if you need to. I mean, everybody talks about the tight ends being the security blanket for a quarterback. Good receivers or good tight end receivers, those are security blankets for quarterbacks. When you can throw it to a guy and it doesn’t matter if he’s covered or not, you have a confidence that he’s going to come down with the ball.”

Q: Defensively, they’ve re-done all their edge rushers.

Daboll: “They’ve re-done everything defensively since the last time we saw them (two years ago). They’re a completely different defense. They do a great job of taking the ball away, particularly getting it off the runners. They line up in multiple fronts. They’re a pressure team. Flo (defensive coordinator Brian Flores) has done a really good job there. I’ve known Flo for a long time. He’s a very good football mind. And they’ve got some veteran players that know how to play a scheme. They’re in another year of it, so that helps. But playing a team like this defensively in the early part of the season – there’s unknowns when you play them in the eighth week of the season based on how they game plan. I don’t want to speak for them. The way Flo’s grown up in the business, we’ve worked together for a long time and they’re a game plan team. So, you’re playing them in Week 8, you really don’t know what you’re going to get. So, Week 1 you just have all this tape to look at from last season, the 17 games and the three preseason games. There’s 20 games right there. And again, we’ve competed against one another when he’s called games. He’s been a head coach at Miami. We have a lot of tape to look at. You get to a point where you’ve watched so much of it you say, ‘Okay, let’s focus on us.'”

Q: Is there anything you can do when you face a rookie kicker (Will Reichard, a sixth-round draft choice from Alabama) in his first game to get in his head? Or does he have too much big game experience?

Daboll: “Look where he went to school. Alabama. Doesn’t get much bigger than that. And he was very productive there. Historically productive. We have to focus on what we do well. And then for a young kicker, it’s his first game out, but it’s not like he hasn’t played in many big games or in big venues or big crowds. He’s a good player.”