Josh McDaniels 11/5: "The staff we have is tremendous across the board"

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

How are we doing?

Josh McDaniels (0:02)

You're going again?

SPEAKER_3 (0:03)

Yeah, I'm going on.

Josh McDaniels (0:04)

Lead off, hitter.

SPEAKER_4 (0:05)

I'll do, I'll get it, right? Oh, I just thought on Drake being named the October Player of the Month, you know, five games considering the September he had, and people like, like you already wanted to cut him, and things like that.

SPEAKER_5 (0:19)

Bradley Fire, Bradley Fire, I guess.

Josh McDaniels (0:24)

Yeah, I mean, that's a, you know, something to be proud of for Drake, and I think they always always look at those things as team, team achievements, you know, I mean, certainly nobody's going to win an individual award in, in, you know, football without all the guys that do their jobs around them. So I think you celebrate that as a group and certainly deserving of it. And a lot of credit to him for just kind of, you know, improving as September finished and got into the next month of the season.

A lot of little things he, he did better, and hopefully we can continue to do that.

SPEAKER_6 (1:06)

You guys have had a lot of turnover, a lot of injury, a lot of changes at the wide receiver position over the last year plus. Can you just speak to what Todd has meant to that room and the growth and development of that group of receivers?

Josh McDaniels (1:18)

Yeah, I've said it a lot, and I probably don't say it enough.

The staff we have is tremendous across the board. And Coach Todd, I don't know that I've been around any coaches that have been more prepared on a daily basis, have more individual time that they set aside and designate for their players to come in and do extra and meet with them. I mean, I've told you guys this, like the line outside of his door in the morning is, you know, it's like the line outside of Dunkin Donuts. I mean, it's exactly the same, and everybody comes in, and they get individual instruction. And the cool thing about that position is that they don't all play the same position. They're in the same room, but, you know, Pop's instruction is different than Max, and Kyle's instruction is different than Efton's, and AJ's instruction is different than Romeo, and Romeo's instruction is different than the next guy. And so, there's a challenge to that, because it's not like you just, you know, when you're coaching the quarterback, and I'm not trying to take the easy route on this, but, you know, the quarterbacks all do the same thing, you know. They're playing the same spot, and so whichever one of them is in there, they have the same responsibility. For the receivers, you know, if there's two of them on the field, they're both going to do something different. If there's three of them, they're all three doing something different. If there's even more than that, and you get the pitcher. So it takes a lot of time because it, you just can't say one thing to the room and throw it over them like a blanket and say, okay, we got it, you know. So there's a lot of talking to different people about different things. The details are really important in that room.

And Todd is tremendous, absolutely tremendous, at getting his group prepared for practice, getting them to improve during the course of the week. And then by the time we do our last walkthrough on Saturday, I mean, it's a fricking, it's a clinic in terms of what it looks like. And, you know, and our coaches deserve all the credit for that.

SPEAKER_7 (3:23)

What have you seen from the Packers just in their ability to generate turnovers?

Josh McDaniels (3:27)

This is a really well coached defense. No question, Jonathan Gannons, I've known him for a long time. He's tremendous in terms of their sound and complicated at the same time. That's not always an easy thing to do on defense.

But they don't give up a lot of big plays, and so they make you drive it. That's one.

Two, their challenger with their front is physical, violent, they're fast, the second level. They're very instinctive in the secondary. I think the two safeties and the star, the nickel, are as good as we've played in terms of reading the quarterback and finding the football. There's a lot of eyes on the football because this is mostly his own team. And so if you make a mistake, there's going to be a lot of packers that see it. And so I think the combination of making it hard to make big plays, to shorten the drives, and then forcing you to execute 8, 10, 12 plays in a drive, and then the combination of all the things that they give you, and then they capitalize on their chances. And I think that's the hallmark of any defense that creates a lot of turnovers is a lot of teams may get chances to turn it over. It's whether you do or you don't. And this team certainly capitalizes on their opportunity. So huge challenge, really good team, really good unit from the front, all the way through to the back and in every area, there's really not a weakness.