Offensive Coordinator Mike Shula -- October 17, 2019
Q: Chandler Jones, what makes this guy so special in your opinion?
A: He’s very athletic. I’d say two things. He’s very athletic, and he has a high motor. To add a third thing to that is his size. He has long reach, he can bend, he can accelerate, he can change directions. His motor is always running. Then you throw in his experience and instinctiveness. He’s really good. He’s having a good year, and I think he’s one of the top players in the league.
Q: How does Patrick Peterson change their secondary?
A: Another great player. He’s extremely talented. He has great football awareness. You have to be very, very careful when you’re throwing the ball in his direction for a lot of reasons. He plays with a lot of confidence, as we’ve all seen throughout his career. Again, we have to be very, very careful throwing the ball that way.
Q: With Daniel (Jones), what are the next steps you’re looking for from him? Obviously, you’re not expecting a fully developed quarterback in his first, second or third start. Or even his fifth, really. But what are his next steps to kind of put that next step forward?
A: Well, we want to win. We want him to lead us to win. But with any young quarterback, just the continued progress of making good decisions consistently and not making the bad ones. You’re going to make mistakes. There are going to be things every week that you wish you could do a little bit better. You just don’t want the ones that are, ‘I wish I didn’t do that, and it really didn’t have anything to do with the defense,’ those types of things. Along those lines, the continued increase in timing, better timing, making decisions on staying with number one or getting off number one, things like that.
Q: You kind of mentioned the unforced errors type thing there. How much of a hurdle is that for a young quarterback to kind of get past those unforced errors and kind of get those out of his head, not forcing things?
A: It’s not just for a young quarterback. It’s really for… You watch around the league, even some of the best quarterbacks around the league are trying to do things maybe they shouldn’t be trying to do too much. That’s the beauty of the position. It’s one of the most unique positions in all of sports because you have to make split-second decisions with guys trying to take your head off, so to speak. You want to be on time, otherwise you’re going to be late against good corners that are going to intercept the ball. I think the biggest thing is if you do make one, then you have to have a short memory and move on. Then through experience, just say ‘Hey, I’m in this situation again. It’s first down, I don’t need to hold on to the ball. Just throw it away. It’s okay to throw the ball away.’ Those are the things that come to mind.
Q: His first action for you guys, I remember the first play, Pat (Shurmur) talked about how he forgot to motion a tight end over. Those kinds of things for a rookie quarterback you can see in practice. Next play comes up, you correct the mistake and move on. Is it more tangible with the decision-making that you almost have to see week-to-week in games, and how he grows from those situations? Is that something you can really coach up?
A: I think sometimes you have to do that, because sometimes, and this is with any quarterback, you’ll see things in practice and the quarterbacks are making good decisions. Then all of a sudden, it’s the same exact situation in the game and they’ll maybe do something that they didn’t do in practice. Those are the things that you’d love to simulate as much as you could for every position, but especially for the quarterbacks, game-like conditions. How fast you have to get it out. It’s easy here when you know no one’s going to sack you or hit you here. You can kind of sometimes hang onto the ball. But all of a sudden in a game, you have to make that decision whether or not to throw it away or just make a better decision. That does comes with experience. But you just kind of coach the heck out of it. Probably the biggest thing is you don’t generalize. Hey, if there’s a game that we could have played better, then don’t just say, ‘Well, how?’ This is why specifically. Then if you get into the situation again, ‘Let’s do it this way.’
Q: How much do the injuries that you guys have had to go through, still going through, with (Evan) Engram, (Sterling) Shepard, (Saquon) Barkley, all of them missing time, (Golden) Tate missing time at the beginning of the year, kind of impacted what you’ve wanted to do on offense? Or maybe have had to change your play-calling philosophy?
A: It’s part of the game. We talk about it a lot, and Coach Shurmur talks about it. You actually have to plan for that. Ideally, everyone stays healthy and you get everybody working in sync together through a lot of reps together. But it just doesn’t happen. We really spend almost as much time making sure the guys that we know are going to be called upon to step up are getting those same reps, physically or mentally. Is it a factor? I’d hate to say yes, because then it sounds like it’s an excuse. But we will say this. We welcome those guys back when they come back.
Q: The Cardinals are ranked down near the bottom of the league defensively. What has hurt them?
A: First of all, you can kind of throw that out the window, I think. Every week in the NFL, it doesn’t matter. You can throw stats out the window. When you look at your schedule at the start of the season, you can throw that out. I think that they’re young on defense, and they’re still learning. Everybody is still learning the system. They were up last week against a really good offense and kept them down until the end against Atlanta. They’ve been in some really good games. We have to worry about ourselves, no matter who we play.
Q: Coming off the injury that Barkley has had, I know it looks pretty good so far. Coach said he’s doing well this week. Is there a lot of nervousness you think early in the game, trying to see ‘What does he have? Is he going to be fully recovered? Is he going to be able to give us what he’s supposed to give us?’ Do you think about that now?
A: No, I don’t think so. I think if he’s ready to play, then we kind of just treat it like he’s ready to go. I think Coach (Craig) Johnson, our running backs coach, he’ll monitor that as well. But otherwise, if we had any hesitation at all, we wouldn’t even have him out there, if that were the case.
