Coach Brian Daboll gives final updates before season opener

How's Drew doing? Drew, how is he doing? Good. Good. Good practice. Anybody you're

ruling out yet? Nope. Do you expect Dr. Locke to be your back, be able to be your back

this week? Yeah, I mean we'll go like we normally do. Practice and have our

meetings and make all our final decisions. With the time of career on the 53 QBs, the emergency QB is just automatic though, right? You'll have

somebody be that role every week, right? We will.

Are you excited to actually have a real game and see, you know, what your team actually is?

Yeah. Again, put a lot of hard work. Guys have done everything they could possibly do through OTAs, through training camp, coaches. It's been a lot of time preparing for opening game and, you know, the unique thing about the opening game is you have 17 games plus additional information to look at. There's information overload at times as a coach when you're looking at things.

So, you know,

yesterday,

with the day off, kind of tighten things up, coaching staff wise, minimize some of the things, make sure that we can go out there and play fast, know what to do, play physical. That's what really the, I'd say the first few weeks are in the National Football League. So, you know, we've done everything we possibly can do. We'll have a good day today. Friday, situational football. I'll go out there and try to compete and play as tough, physical, smart football as we can.

When you guys, when Daniel played his best in 2020,

he led the league at lowest interception rate. You guys didn't really push the ball down the field the way you guys are pushing the ball down the field now. So I guess my question is, do you have to be willing to live with more mistakes and more interceptions to trade off for more big plays? Or does he have to thread the needle of finding aggressiveness without making mistakes?

Yeah, that's a good question, Ryan.

I think that's what the defense is doing. What I want him to do, which I want all the players to do, the coaches, you know, all of us is to make the best decision, whatever that is. So if it is a 40 yard, 50 yard bomb, or if it's an intermediate throw or taking a check down or throwing it away or taking a sack, if there's nothing there, you know, not, you know, jeopardy, jeopardizing the ball, making sure we try to stay in rhythm on offense. But that's the job of a quarterback is to make, he handles the ball in every play, make the right decisions.

Get us to the right plays if he needs to. And, you know, turn it loose when he needs to turn it loose.

Were there any corresponding moves to cutting Carter yesterday?

Yeah, so he'll go on to practice squad. And then Yach, we release Yach off the practice squad because you can only have so many veterans.

You filled the active squad?

We still, no, we didn't do anything with that yet.

Are you going to?

Before the game. Again, we'll talk about, we'll talk about that stuff tonight.

Dave, you still want to talk about Darnold the other day, I think on Monday.

Yeah.

What is the, can you speak to the importance of continuity? He hasn't had a lot of continuity in his career so far.

And I'm kind of curious what you see out of him now.

Obviously, he seems to be in a much more stable situation.

Yeah. Again, I've spoke to this.

I got a lot of respect for Sam, did a lot of work on him and had good communication with him through the whole process.

I've gotten to know him over the years. He's pretty close with Josh.

So, good young man. I think he's in a good spot with, with Kevin.

Again, it's a hard, it's a hard position to play. It's a hard position to win at.

But last 10 Super Bowls, seven of them have won by two quarterbacks, right?

They're right, Brady and Mahomes. So it's not 16 of the last 23 have been won by five.

Roethlisberger, both Manning brothers, Brady and Mahomes. It's a tough position.

I think he's in a good spot with, again, with Kevin. Got a lot of respect for him.

And he's got all the talent in the world and, um, good young man.

Brian, just back to the, the Coughlin decision. What was, what motivated, what was motivated?

Yeah, I would say good, yeah. Roster management stuff. Yeah, just moving.

Yeah, I'm just, I'll leave it at roster management. Um, good question for Joe, but that's, that's where we're at.

Did you expect Jacob Johnson or Yachton Johnson to be back?

Yeah, again, all those things, it's week to week here.

We're moving, shuffling things around.

I'd say that happens probably with a lot of teams in the early part of the year.

What's your plan at the second cornerback spot?

We'll find out. We'll, we'll go today. Drew will take a bunch of reps.

We'll see how he feels. I think he feels good.

Quarterback? Cornerback. Corner.

Oh yeah. We'll, we'll make that decision. We'll have someone in mind.

Would you like to have one guy play the majority of snaps or could you have a different guy series to series?

Yeah. Again, we'll talk about that after, uh, after practice today.

Where do you see him from Adoree?

He looks good. Yeah. He's in shape. He's had a couple of good practices, picked up the system well.

You know, he's been with Shane before, so encouraged by, you know, the last few days with him.

Is he in football shape enough, I guess, game shape at this point?

Yeah, he's done, he's done a good job in practice and we've, you know, upped his reps.

He's been out there. He's, you know, he looks good.

What are your expectations for Daniel this season? What do you want to see from him?

Yeah, I would just say we're focused on Minnesota. So again, making the right decisions, putting the ball where it needs to be put.

Taking care of the football. He's done a good job up to this point.

OTAs, training camp, done everything he possibly could do to get ready for this game.

How much are you expecting him to be more of a playmaker though?

Maybe is that, I know kind of along the lines of what Ryan said before, you want to throw the ball down the field more and take more shots possibly.

Are your expectations for him that you need him to make more plays?

Yeah, I just, I expect him to go out there and do everything he can do to play as good as he can play.

Know the game plan, which he does. And then whatever those decisions are, I mean, again, like I said, it's a tough position to play.

So make the right decisions whenever that's called upon.

You've been pretty open this camp though about, yeah, I think even the one series, one game the starters played, the emphasis was to throw the ball down the field.

In the preseason game?

Yes. And I mean, all training camp, we saw that it was mostly, it was an aggressive throw the ball down the field offense.

You had stats one day, I think, on why that is.

Why are you guys trying to become a more aggressive down the field offense?

Well, I just say we're trying to be as good of offense as we can.

So again, whether that's down the field, intermediate, run game, inside, outside, you know, usually it takes 11 guys to operate a successful play.

And again, whatever that, whatever the situation is, you know, you live in a world of just throwing the ball down the field.

I mean, the more you throw down the field, the lower the completion percentage is.

Staying on track.

Staying on track is important.

Being able to execute all facets of offense is really important, not just one area.

But big plays help, you know, skip third downs, move the ball a little bit further down the field.

There's less plays in the drive.

All those things happen.

So you've got to be really, really efficient on long drives.

And again, the amount of big plays that happen each and every year is, it's small, but it is significant in terms of outcomes of games and points.

Can you mention information overload, like from a coaching perspective?

Going into the weekend, do you have to strike that right balance, the idea that you don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of saying, you know, well, if they do this and they do that and they do this, how do you work that with your guys going into the weekend?

I'd say you do that as a coaching staff, you know, that's what you do right now, this time of year, you study as much tape as you can, you have those conversations, and then you boil it down for the players to digestible information that they can handle.

And then you rely on your rules and the things that you went through in training camp, you know, the practices against other teams.

The different looks that you get, the communication it takes down in and down out to have a successful play, whatever that facet is, I mean, they do a good job of rushing the punter and their eight up looks and the twists and the movements and their overloads.

And you practice that in OTAs, you practice, not necessarily against Minnesota, but so you can improve your communication because you don't know what you're going to get in the early part of the year.

I'd say probably the first month, it's everything's changing.

So teams got to find themselves out.

Schemes are a little bit different.

But that's why you do so many things in the offseason, training camp, try to practice against other teams so that, you know, oh, it happens the fourth play of the game.

Hey, remember when we were back in this practice, this is what we did when we got this look.

We adjusted to this on the sideline, and you've already been through that process.

Do you have a swing tackle?

How do you look at your backup tackles?

Yeah, they're the two guys that aren't starting.

I'm saying, like, has Jermaine taken any snaps at left tackle?

Like, if something happens, is it automatically one guy would feel both of those?

Or does it depend on if you need to use a backup tackle?

Yeah, I would say that we have a plan for that, who our backup tackles are, who our backup center is, who our backup guard is, or if we had to move somebody.

We've talked about that.

We'll continue to talk about that and put the final touches on it tonight, but definitely have an idea.