This week Jones and and you know you played Donald and Man, you've been in the league a long time. You've seen Reggie White and Bruce Smith and all these great players. Where is this guy in the in the great in the great so the great at the interior spot?
Is this guy at the.
Top of the list?
Yep, he's not not top. He's in. He's in that group. He's in. He's a guy you have to count for in every play some way, shape or for him if you can. You gotta do the best job you can to. You know, they have ways to isolate him one on one. They put him in all different positions. Uh, Their defensive corner is Steve Spegnula does a great job of putting these guys in different places. This defense has evolved so much, and Chris Jones is such an integral piece of it.
And I think he's playing his best football. This is probably the best I've seen him play a short sample size. I thought he had a great year last year, but I think he is starting off to having, you know, an MVP kind of season. He's really playing well, run game, pass game. Everything he does, there's a there's a thought behind everything he does, really, really a challenging part player to play. It's you know, everybody has different things. This
guy's a monster. He's a big, big guy, and then at the same time, he's got athleticism, he can move, he's got quickness, he's got all the things that it takes to be a dominant defensive lineman, which obviously he is. So we we have our handsful. We have our handsful every week. Believe me, we have our handsful every week. This one I just keep waking up with ninety five ninety five and that's what my every day is like that. So I'm hoping to get over that dream this weekend.
To kind of follow up on that with Chris Jones.
Obviously, Hoodi has played pretty well throughout this season, but how do you think he will kind of respond to this challenge.
Of having to go up against We checked with me after the game on Sondayell. Let's know, I think he's going to definitely have his hands full Chris is. I mean, uh, Pooni's had done an excellent job for us, you know, but he's got every week it's a different challenge, and every week when the new guys show up, he's got something else. He's got to work on and uh, and now it's another guy and this and and the better
players now have more of a book on him. You know, they've seen four or five six games on Dom and all of a sudden some things have shown up. So we'll Chris use that. How many times they put him over there to want to get the one on ones with them? I know every great rusher tries to excuse me. They find a place to put their guy that they think the best matchup is we can best exploit. I mean, you don't want not that Chris Jones and Trent not. It's a great matchup. It's fun to watch, and Chris
Jones will have a chance to beat Trent. But in the same sense, if you could put him somewhere else, you might want to put him there. And how it's strategically they play them in their defense, you know, to say have confidence in Dom. I want to see more how Dom reacts as the game goes on, and then next week it follows up because I to say that he's gonna go in there and dominate. You know, he's gonna have his hands full.
I know he will to the super Bowl. And obviously there were a few plays that there were key protection breakdowns. And obviously, aside from Jones, it's a physical front, especially in the middle. How much do you go back to those plays in that film preparing for this week or that separate?
I know, yeah, we prepare. We use every game. Start off with the super Bowl and then the games from the season. Was my starting point because we kind of prepped for that game last year with all the games privus previous, so I had all the cutups from that done. I took the game, took the Super Bowl, were from there, and so obviously everything we did in that game was comes under you know, scrutiny and research. We hadn't played
them since twenty two, so we played them. We played them, and then I go back to nineteen and watch that Super Bowl as well. They look at anything I can see if teams summled to us where they attack us, and we made we made mistakes, we misstakes. I tell the guys in the sideline, and this is not this is my fault. I didn't prep them well. I really
didn't prep them well enough. I could have done a better job, especially the two protections that we messed up with both banks early in the game and then with the Spence later in the game. That was really we hadn't prepped that protection for as much as they gave us with that, and it kind of come that way. It had been a protection we hadded a few years ago and I hadn't quite been completely vetted through and we've cleaned it up, but it's still a challenge with
what we do with it. It always has been this style of protection. So that being said, uh, and then so then and then we didn't We chose a time to not play our best game up front. The Chiefs did a great job. All credit to them. They won the game. There's no looking back. As Trent said earlier, that ship sailed. You know, there's a whole new season, whole new game, whole new team. It always is a new year. But at the same sense, you know, we didn't play our best games. So I hope we can
put our best foot forward this. We can play a little bit better game up front and do a good job. They're great front, great defense, well coordinated. They present a lot of issues and problems which they presented us, and we didn't pass the test as well as we could have. I'm hoping the guys are a little more prepared, like to kind.
Of dial up the blitze even more like in the fourth quarter relative to the other three quarters. Kind of challenges that, and just in terms of kind of keeping ship, making sure you guys are staying sharp, you know at the end of the game with fatigue or whatever it might be setting in.
Yeah, it's always you know, I think every protection we've talked about it. We know the strengths and weaknesses. Like I said, that protection, we knew the strengths and weaknesses, but it hadn't been played out as much. And so everything you know, so it has been played out. Now there's other things. That's my job is to always think ahead. Okay, we're going to call this in the reds and we're gonna called this on third down. We had one last week.
We got a pressure on our quarterback. There's a third down call that I blame myself. I hadn't emphasized it enough that Colton could have helped Jake on one. It's a third and two pass where the three technique out up the field and Colton could have helped, and we talked about it had never come up, and I've talked about it for ever since I've been the line coach here that hey, when we get this play in this call and it happens to be a wider da da da da da, this is what you need to do.
And I could have emphasized a little bit more. And so we those things that have to be because that's it's those critical times. It's like, you know, I used to joke all the time. We used to have these discussions as coaches. We'd talk and we'd say, yeah, well, but gosh, it might just happen once. I'm like, great, okay,
you guys all go home and go to bed. What if that wants is the third and three in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl in overtime the Super Bowl, it happens at one time, We're like, ah, crap, they got us. Wait a minute. You know, you don't know when that one time is going to be, so you have to fully you have to make sure you go through it all now. Same sense, you can't practice twelve hours a day and you don't get the reps at
everything every week. You just can't do it. So you know, that's why you hope over time, guys have experience, they learn, they listen, they take good notes, and when it comes up in the game, Bam, it's there, and you know that one last week and others in the past. I lay myself first and foremost. I will to say I could have emphasized it more in the same sense your professional football player. I say it once, should you get it right? I don't know. That's the tradeoff. As a coach,
I gotta make sure they get it. You know, just because they're a pro football player get paid, there's still a lot going through that brain and they have the physical challenge of those brought up pro. I gotta block Chris Jones. Okay, coach had all these nice coaching points in a nice air condition room and watching tape, I can take all the notes and I can talk about it. We have a walk through, and you know, Ben Bartch is playing Chris Jones. Great. I got no problems today.
But then all of a sudden it's live bullets and all of a sudden, gem any Christmas. I gotta block this guy and remember all these coaching points, and it's going one hundred miles an hour, and grant, that's when they get paid to do. But it's not easy. That's why it's my job to alleviate as many of those things as I can to make sure they're able to succeed.
The actually passes difficult to execute against defenses that are putting six defenders on the line.
Scrig Well. I put it this way. A lot of play action passes you're able to help you you're selling a run. Were able to actually help each other, right, so you can come off the ball like a run, and there's people to help and protect you when all of a sudden you have five or six man blocks. How aggressive can you really be on when all of a sudden, if I go after a guy like a run,
he just jumps inside or jumps outside. I have to temper what I do a little bit more so while the ball action may still show how aggressive can I really be? We had one a couple of weeks ago we called one that was a play that we against two weeks ago Arizona. It might have been last week too, I remember of the week. It was second eighteen, and we called a play sort of a play action pass kind of play. And I'm always like, hey, at your own risk, Brope, because it's like second eighteen. I'm not
sure they're buying the run. It's like the three technique last week that beat Jake up the field that Colton probably could have helped them on. Like I say, my fault, not Colton's, is that they're probably not playing a run on thirty two to three. Even though we've run the run, they're going to honor it as much on thirty two
to three. Same thing with the play action. So situationally five or six on the line of scrimmage, you're not having helps where so many of our playction passes there's help inside so you can come off the ball a little bit harder, and then we don't have to help you come off the ball a little less. So all a sudden, you take five or six guys not able to come off the ball as hard. It's harder to sell the runes. That makes sense, Okay, you.
Guys ran it really well against eight man frontch this week. I thought that play where Girenda had the seventy six yard run, Pooney had two guys out on that play. You were really excited about Grendo and we saw it this week.
How is it? What's the key to run blocking.
For a guy like that, there's a little raw but a great speed.
Well, that's it's it's like it was when we had you know, thirty one here before I talked about Maraheem and obviously he's not that's fast. We've talked about this the guy. If you give the guy the space, if you give a guy the crease, he's going to hit it and he has a chance to really, you know, to make things happen. The challenge is the same challenge. It still trying to create the same amount of space for JP, for Christian, for everything else. What's excited about
thirty one is keep seeing it. He said, I remember I told you. I think I told you when we played the Rams and Banks missed the play that you'd have loved loved to see it come out, because I think guys that could have split the safeties and gone a long way, but Banks missed the blocks. We didn't get see it. This was one where he happened to create a nice scene for the kid and the safety took a bad angle, which sometimes they take bad angles.
They're faster. That's the exciting thing. When we used to call McDaniel mke McDaniel had had a term for Raheem. He said he's the angle assassin, meaning that you think there's an angle, the proper angle for most safeties to take out a run or is this, But with Raheem he was the assassin. He would he would beat those angles because you couldn't. You couldn't take the same angle with raheemcus he was so fast. Guys with a little
more speed it changes those angles. So those guys are used to fitting to run a certain way and it's just all of a sudden, you can't that great story, John Lynch right, he tells the story. I might have told it before. Randy Moss is one of his first games, John Tampa two. They're supposed to let's say're supposed to
line at twelve yards deep. I don't know what their their their depth was as a safety, but playing Randy, all of a sudden, John looked up in the third and fourth quarter and Herm Edwards looking at him and say, hey, bro, you're you're twenty yards deep here? Why youre twenty years sep Well, because Randy, you'd stay at twelve, and all of a sudden you have to play the deep half
on Randy, He's passed you. So all of a sudden, that changed the whole dynamic of the of how he played, and he found himself at twenty, you know, deeper than he should be. John tells a story better than me. But the same thing with this, So that that's the that's the excitement of playing a guy with a guy like that, because boy, when you can get through there, all of a sudden, it might be just a little bit different than they're used to. And that's that change
of pace back you talk about. I'm saying slide. I saw a I saw a change in his gait. I thought he did. Now he say he turned the sideline. Now I didn't say slide. I said score. My hand's going like this. Score score score, score score. Okay, I don't slides, right. You can argue that with our analytics apartment. But I saw the kid's gate change. Now, maybe the you know, the refrigerator jumped on his back and slowed down. After seventy five yards or so, I looked like he
was trying to slide down. Now he says he was to I'm believing him to ask you, what is God's play? Okay, well, you know he says it's power. Marty Schottenheimer, uh and his football life story says it's uh, it was, it's God's play is his power now. I like outside Zone. I was a power guy my whole career until I came to work for Mike and Kyle Shanahan and Washington. We ran a ton of power and with Mike hall Stott and worked one and guys like that in Tampa,
and uh, the power powers a great play. I love power. We still run some power in our offense. He calls at God's play power encounter. Kind of the same thing. But uh, but yeah, that's what he calls. Its coaching staff in the league's who's that.
City staff is as a cut above? Is this the elite staff?
Well, I mean Andy's been doing it for so long. Does a great job on offense. I don't say their offense very much. And I think Andy hacked their offensive line. Coach is outstanding. Steve spagnels I said, it's an outstanding defensive corn and one of the best. And it's just evolved through time. How much better I could liken him to like Kyle, you know, like what Kyle did when he was with the Texans and what we did with Washington, and we did every step of the way to where
he is today with our offense. You see them on defense. It's the same way he's evolved. It's not just the same old defense. It's evolved and there's a lot of moving pieces to it. And I think Joe Cullen their defensive line coach, and I think all the d line coaches. I respect all the guys we go against, but Joe Collin is one of the best. I noticed. I noticed that when he was in Baltimore. I'm like, who is because it wasn't just the starters that played well. He
had these second tier guys. They're like, Holy gow, this guy's a freaking stud man. He's doing everything you could and actually could go look at the second tier players that weren't as talented. Maybe that you saw the technique he was trying to coach because they did everything exactly right. Well, that's a coach man. He's get his guys to do everything right. I think Joe Collin his bags. Those are two guys that stand out to me on that side. And then they take the old line coach with Andy
on the other side. They have an outstanding I'm not going to crown him, you know. And now I'm glad to know that was the most important question. The rest of them I will discard from here on out, but that one right there, definitely he's that's a very very good staff. Appreciate you guy,