Offensive Coordinator Ben McAdoo
November 27, 2015
Q: Do you think Hakeem Nicks is active Sunday? I guess I should start by asking, has he made enough strides in learning your offense?
A: He’s definitely made some progress. He’s got some work on our stuff and in the look team. It looks like he’s in good shape, he’s catching the ball well, and it’s coming along nicely.
Q: What do you view him bringing to the table for you guys?
A: He’s a big, veteran target, has a lot of experience, has made some plays in stretch runs before. It’s good to have him here.
Q: Where do you stand with your offensive line at this point with the possible shuffling of guys, and how confident are you?
A: Very confident, yeah, very confident. We had a good week this week. Dallas (Reynolds) came in, we haven’t missed a beat so far up front. He does a nice job directing traffic for us. We’ll need a big week from those guys this week, Washington does a nice job up front creating some havoc.
Q: You mentioned that Hakeem has made plays in a stretch run before. Is that something you felt as an offense you needed to add? A lot of guys haven’t had this experience with a playoff push.
A: I think Coach said it best when he said he was the best guy out there, and we’re fortunate that he was out there. He came in and he’s doing a nice job. He’s working at it, putting in some extra time learning it, spending some time with Sean (Ryan) and Ryan Roeder, putting the time in after practice and in the evenings. He’s had a nice week.
Q: Obviously you talked a couple weeks ago about Eli and Odell and with as many targets as Odell is getting, you want to increase the percentage of completions there. I’m just curious, when you look at Odell, obviously there’s a ceiling at some point and we’re not seeing it. What do you need to see from him to get better and the idea of getting better?
A: Well, he’s done it this week. When you practice, you make mistakes and that’s the cycle. You practice, you make mistakes, you fix the mistakes, and you have a chance to execute and move on and learn from there. He’s done it a couple times this week in practice and that’s the evolution of a young player. When you’re a young player, you have to go out, you have to practice, you have to make those mistakes in practice, fix them later in the week in practice, and execute in the game. Not just him, that’s all young players, and all players, really. That’s just the evolution of it. He’s a young player who’s been productive and has a chance. He’s working at being a pro and that’s part of it.
Q: You guys have been self-scouting, self-evaluating during the bye week. right? When you looked at the running game what do you see and what do you think needs to get better there?
A: We saw some concepts that we do better than others--that doesn’t mean you get away from things, that means you work at them to improve. You see what individual players, what they do best, and you try to help them where they need help the most. In the run game, we were winning the down at a fairly decent clip. We need to eliminate the zero and negative yardage runs that hurt you. The other thing we do is when we get a chance to have a one-on-one, we need to break an arm tackle and take it to the house, that’s something we haven’t done.
Q: What did you see from the red zone and what do you need to do to improve in that area?
A: Saw five turnovers. We’re number one in the league in turnover ratio, defense and special teams are doing a great job getting us the ball and we’re taking care of it fairly well. But half of them, half the giveaways are in the green zone. When you turn the ball over five times down there, you’ve got problems. Nine penalties, dropped balls, missed throws, and mental errors. Our focus needs to increase the longer you drive the ball and that’s a major factor. You have five turnovers, you lose five possessions and five opportunities to score right there off the bat. When the field shrinks and you have longer down and distances to go, it makes it a lot harder and a lot easier to call a defense. That’s what we need to do, we need to focus on the details, chase the details and not touchdowns.
Q: When you say of the running game, “We’re winning the down consistently,” what you mean is that the play is blocked correctly?
A: The play is blocked, we’re gaining yards. We need to rip off a couple big ones. We need to minimize the zero and negative yardage runs when we’re getting hit in the backfield or whether we just get back to the line of scrimmage or lose one or two. We need to get those out of our system.
Q: It sounds to me, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, it sounds like it’s on the backs to do that more than anything else.
A: Well, no. It’s everyone’s involved in that, it’s not one group. Believe me, there’s enough to go around and I’m included. For the backs, the biggest thing for the backs is they need to be aware of the situation. When there’s one yard to go, they need to get that yard on third and one. When you get one-on-one with a safety, we expect our backs to beat that safety and take one the distance, and we haven’t done that yet and it’s a challenge on them to do that. We expect them to do it and we count on them to do it.
Q: Do you anticipate continuing to distribute their workload the way you have in terms of rotating those guys or might we see changes there?
A: At this point in time.
Q: When you talk about breaking an arm tackle, which back has been the best at that so far?
A: They’ve each had their moments. They’ve each had their moments. I don’t know that one sticks out one way or the other. Andre (Williams) is a big, physical guy and if he gets a body one-on-one in the hole he’s pretty good with it. Shane (Vereen) has some wiggle to him. They each have their own skillset. Rashad (Jennings) does a nice job, he’s had some nice second half runs in games where he’s come out. But we just need to play the way we’re capable of there.
