T Nate Solder -- July 24, 2019
Q: Will you be on the field tomorrow?
A: Yeah.
Q: What’s the progress been like? When did you start to feel like your old self again?
A: Good, you know what? I feel great. I haven’t played football in a while so we’ll see, that’s what camps all about, right?
Q: When were you cleared to do everything with your ankle?
A: Well I’ll be out there tomorrow. I’ll be doing everything they ask me to do and that’s kind of what I’ve been told.
Q: So will you be on the field day one?
A: You know how doctors are with these things, they give you a window, when you might be ready when you might not be ready so you just do the best you can each day and your body dictates when you’ll be ready.
Q: So you might be limited?
A: I don’t know what the plan is with the coaches. I don’t know what the plan is for me at all. They have not discussed that with me.
Q: Nate, so any limitations at all, did you have to adjust what your plans were for the offseason in terms of getting yourself ready?
A: Adjust the way I ran my typical off season? I was doing a lot more rehab this off season than I would usually do for sure.
Q: How does that affect you taking the field?
A: Oh I hope it helps me. You know all that stuff is just really great just for strengthening, mobility, flexibility, range of motion and all that stuff even if you’re not injured I think is really good. So it’s been good.
Q: Do you anticipate even though there’s new players here, the two veterans they brought in, you know are veterans… they’re similar to you in age and experience and things. Do you think that will hasten helping grow you guys, you know these guys have been around?
A: Yeah, I’m actually really excited because you know they’ve all learned from different coaches and different systems, and have been successful in different ways. I think that we’ll all be able to teach each other and learn from each other in a lot of ways so I’m looking forward to it for sure.
Q: How do you go about building chemistry even at this point?
A: Well, you know I don’t think you make it too complex. I mean you go to work every day, you work out with each other, you do the best you can, you spend time with each other and the rest is up to God and he kind of aligns things the way they should be I guess. So there’s no formula or rocket science to it, it’s just human nature I guess.
Q: Is it different working with veterans than rookies like Will (Hernandez) was last year? Do you take a different approach with getting to know them and their tendencies and what they like to do?
A: Great question. I think that you probably would have to because they’ve done it different ways in the past. You’d have to somewhat understand where they’re coming from and with a rookie they’re still learning, they’re still figuring things out and you can maybe mold that a little bit more. That’s the only thing I can think of for that.
Q: So there was a lot of talk last year that some of the reason the offense played much better down the stretch was improved by upfront. There’s a chance that you’re starting three new guy’s week 1 than who started week 17. So, how much of an adjustment is that, and how can you get better by playing that level out of the shoe versus a slow start to the offense like last year?
A: I think that’s yet to be seen. I think that’s what we’re going do in camp. We’re going to put it in as real life scenarios as we can. We’re going to work it out, improve it and its not going to be where we want it so we’re going to go back to the film and improve it again. That’s the process that we’re going to do throughout camp and hopefully it’s a progression throughout our time here.
Q: What is it that you see with this offense that can be better this year?
A: We have another year as a group together. I think that, that’s significant, I think that the experience and playing together all last season and some of those improvements that we made is kind of a way of finding our identity. Honestly I think that we can’t take any of that for granted. I think that you have to start from ground zero and start from step one and do the best we can be from here on out.
Q: So what do you think with this team overall that’s going into camp this year?
A: First off, it doesn’t matter what I think because it’s going to matter how we perform. It’s going to matter how we prepare. So, it’s going to be important that myself as well as everyone else just gets on the same page, we do the best we can every day and continue to progress and don’t take any steps backwards.
Q: Coming from a championship team that you’ve been a part of in the past, do you think this can become a championship team?
A: Well sometimes you can’t see, you know the finish line like that. You just take one step at a time, you don’t try to make any broad predictions, and you never know what’s going to happen. We’re in a great organization, we have great coaches, we have great players and we have as good of chance as anybody. But it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort and we take nothing for granted.
Q: How much more comfortable do you feel in general, knowing that you’ve been here? That you know where the cafeteria is? That’s a joke but you know.
A: Yeah, that’s right that’s real though. That’s a psychological thing, I mean knowing where things are, knowing where you’re living, where you’re staying. I think those are all really good. Hopefully that’s better this year. I think we got somethings personally under control that were difficult last year, moving and all those sort of things. In terms of the team and like I said it’s all ground zero. We don’t want to take anything for granted because sometimes experience doesn’t matter at all, it’s how you perform and how you do going forward.
Q: What’s the best offensive line you’ve been on? Is it durability of the same five guys? Is it depth? The good offensive lines you been on what did they have?
A: Well, I think definitely that it you can have the same five guys out there but, it’s the NFL and guys get nicked up. Guys miss time, that’s what it is. You don’t make excuses and so having guys that can step into those roles, really good backup players is really important too I think. So having a group that’s tough, hard-nosed, that takes responsibility for what they do, cares about what they do and works together and humble about what they do is really important.
Q: So the fact that (Chad) Wheeler and (Spencer) Pulley got a lot of experience last year and might not necessarily be starters this year is something that can strengthen this team?
A: Yeah I think that everyone that has had time and experience increases your depth and your ability to withstand those kind of ups and downs with injuries throughout the course of an NFL season.
Q: How important is it for, let’s say the offensive line to not only take what the coaches are telling them to do but for you guys to coach each other and to help make it through a season.
A: There’s different philosophies on that. Some will say that if you do what the coach says than you’ll be the best you can possibly be, others say that you’re the one that’s out there so you have to kind of understand things and it’s not just what he says but it’s how it gets played out on the field. So, it’s a combination of both those things because the coach can see what’s on film but he can’t always be in that facemask so to be able to communicate between us is extremely important.
Q: Nate, how important is it for you guys to get Saquon (Barkley) running in the sense that it takes pressure off of Eli (Manning) when he’s running and things like that.
A: Well he’s a critical part of our team but no NFL team is dynamic and successful if they only have one thing. So we got to have multiple weapons, we got to have multiple ways of scoring, multiple ways of gaining yardage, all those sorts of things. We can’t put all of our eggs in one basket or all the weight on one guys back
Q: Nate, how much did you and Will learn about each other from last year and how long it took. Also the fact that you’re coming together today. How different? How much better can you be because of experience?
A: I think that experience is very valuable but just like the stock market it can go up and it can go down so we just have to continue to work one step at a time and improve every single day.
Q: So you think there will be a quarter back competition?
A: That’s the fun topic (laughter), I don't know anything about that.
