Offensive Coordinator Mike Kafka
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm sure you guys might ask some questions about the injury report. Anything injury related, you can go ahead and direct that at Dabs (Head Coach Brian Daboll).
Q. How do you, with the quarterback situation the way it is, how do you game plan knowing Tyrod (Taylor) might be starting?
A: Yeah, that kind of falls under the injury related question, I would say, but we are all preparing the same way. Nothing has changed for our prep.
Q. How about from a play calling perspective, for you as a player caller, how different would you call the game with maybe Tyrod compared to (quarterback) Daniel (Jones)?
A: Our process this week has been the same. Always prepping, trying to make sure we put together the right schemes, put together the right formations and do the things that we need to do to put ourselves and give ourselves a chance this week.
Q. Tyrod having played as a starter in this league before and the fact that he has some familiarity in Buffalo, if he does play, what is your confidence level with him and how much does that help, having a guy that's got that experience?
A: Tyrod has a done great job since he's been here. He's a veteran guy, like you said. I have a lot of confidence in him and all the guys on our offense really to go out there and execute.
Q. From a skillset perspective in regards to the play calling, what do you see different from Tyrod? Like what does he do differently, maybe better or worse that you look at and say, okay, I've got to utilize this.
A: Yeah, I think whenever you look at, really any of the players on offense, you want to try out and pull out their strengths as much as you can. You want to try to eliminate as much weaknesses as you can. So, that's what we are doing this week, is to put together the best plan for the players that are going to be out there.
Q. What are Tyrod's strengths in your eyes?
A: Tyrod is a veteran player. He controls the huddle. I think he does a great job of, obviously, getting the ball out… He can make plays outside the pocket as well. He's done that his whole career.
Q. There have obviously been some one-on-one matchups maybe the offensive line has missed, but it also feels like there has been a lot of times where there have been breakdowns communication wise. How do you explain that? What do you have to do to fix that?
A: Those are things that we are really tough on ourselves on and so we got to make sure that we tighten up that communication, tighten up our responsibilities, our fundamentals. That kind of always falls back on that when you really look at it. So, we evaluate that hard and we go through the week and we study, we prep and we look at all those things and see how we can improve in that area.
Q. What do you look at as the biggest problem with the offensive line in the first five games? The reason you guys have struggled there, and you need to get fixed.
A: I think on offense, it's really never one person or one group, it's an 11-man operation. All the guys have got to be working at the same level of execution and we've all got to operate and execute better.
Q. Have you had to condense the playbook for the lack of a better term or do anything differently because you say it's 11-man, but the protection isn't there, you haven't been able have a lot of time in the pocket. Have you had to kind of tighten up what you guys have?
A: Our process hasn't changed; we are looking to improve on those certain fundamentals and techniques and schemes, and I think that's part of our process is continuing to improve on the things that we haven't done as well and continuing to build on the things that we have done well.
Q. How much more of a light goes on that this week when you are a playing a Bills team that leads the league in sacks?
A: Yeah, they are a talented defense, have some familiarity there playing them in the past. They get after the football, they run, they tackle, they've had a lot of production in the pass game and the run game, so we are going to make sure we prep it and study and make sure that we are prepared to go.
Q. You mentioned the things that you've done well, what do you think you've done well?
A: I think one of the things that we improved on from last week was the turnovers. That certainly showed up early in the season, so last week we were able to minimize that and improve and to me that's a step in the right direction and so we will continue to try and build on that this week.
Q. What have you seen from (guard) Justin Pugh?
A: Justin has done a nice job stepping in here in the last week or so and trying to get familiarity as much as he can with the offense. He's a good worker. I know he's had a little bit of a past here, so he has some familiarity with the organization, he's been great to talk with and one of those veteran guys that you look at that has played in some games.
