Brian Schottenheimer Interview Transcript 11/11/10

On Thursday New York Jets offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer addressed the media.  Here is the transcript courtesy of the Jets.

On Mark Sanchez’s comfort level between the base offense and the two-minute offense…

“I think there’s a lot of things that come into play. (In the two-minute offense), he gets into a rhythm. One thing about a two-minute offense is, you’re maybe not throwing it every snap, you’re throwing it quite a bit. It’s easier to get into a little bit of a rhythm, instead of going maybe run, pass, pass or run, run, pass (and) different things like that. He gets into a rhythm. He likes to go fast. He likes to have a tempo to him. It just kind of puts him at ease and that’s one of the things that you’ve seen. He gets people moving. He gets very comfortable and confident knowing that, “Hey, I’m dictating the tempo of the game and they’re going to have to adjust to me.” I think it gives him a confidence about himself and it helps when you have good players on the outside and up front, where you can give up one sack a game against a team that had seven the week before against Washington. That’s something that doesn’t get written about. You look at those guys up front. I think it was one sack, if I (am) correct, against a group that got seven the week before against Washington. (Detroit is) a terrific pass rushing group, so you have to give those guys up front a lot of credit.”

On whether he would look to use the two-minute offense if the offense is struggling…

“Absolutely.”

On whether they have used the two-minute offense to ignite the offense at all this year…

“No, we have not. It’s always in our hip pocket. We actually talk about it every week. It all depends on a lot of things. You take into account the time of the game, the score of the game, conditions (and) all that stuff. It’s something that we always talk about, and there’s a couple of different ways that we can do it. It’s something that we actually talked about a little bit last week even on the sidelines, and we probably waited a series or two to get into it, because we wanted to try to continue to get the running game going.”

On if they had the mindset to go for the end zone to win against Detroit or just settle for the field goal to tie…

“I’m trying to remember. (Having) no timeouts hurt. I do know that because you’re limited a little bit. I do know when you get into that situation, it’s a little bit (of) risk-reward. We actually called a play on the completion to Shonn Greene, that he (Sanchez) threw out to his left, where we had guys going vertical into the end zone. Detroit, obviously playing the situation, as well, they dropped everybody back. There were calls in there that did that. In terms of trying to clock the ball, you’re always in a risk-reward (situation). What do you want to do? Do you want to cost yourself a down to save time? I don’t remember the exact specifics, but I think when we hit the one first-down, we clocked it, then we called two passes in a row and we checked them both down because of the defense they were playing, I believe.”

On the running game and how it hasn’t been as dominant this season…

“We look at that a lot because you’re sitting there, you’re ranked fourth in the league and you’re like, ‘Boy, what’s wrong with the running game?’ Looking back at last game, specifically, because it’s freshest in my mind, we haven’t popped the big runs. Last year, there were a lot of big runs, runs that would break, runs that would pop. We talked about it actually last week going into the Detroit game, if you’re going to put eight (or) nine guys in the front, if you get through that front line, you have a chance for a huge play. I’m trying to remember the longest run that we had. I think the longest run last week was 12 yards. I think we’re close in a lot of areas. Again, teams still feel like they want to try to make us one-dimensional. Most teams go into the game, going, “We want to make Mark Sanchez beat us.” As Mark continues to develop, I think that’ll be harder and harder. What teams have to be willing to do is know that if they do that, Braylon Edwards might run behind them for a 70-yard touchdown.”

On relying on the running game even though teams were focused on it…

“Absolutely, but again, that was a situation where you’re dealing with a rookie quarterback. We really did have some things that we were being smart with and now it’s a little different. Mark’s matured and we have a ton of weapons outside. We’re farther advanced now in the passing game than we were last year.”

On if it helps as offensive coordinator to know some of the opposing coaches and players personally…

“It’s fun. It’s overblown, in terms of, we know them (and) they know us. It’s going to come down to executing. I’m telling you, I haven’t seen them much this year until this week, (but) they’re playing really well, obviously. (With) what they did to New Orleans and what they did to New England, they’re playing extremely well for Eric (Mangini) and Rob (Ryan). They have a lot of confidence right now. It’ll be fun to see those guys. They know us, they know a lot of our players, we know them and it’ll be good to see them.”

On why Shonn Greene’s carries have gone up the last couple of weeks…

“He had a bunch of really good carries last week. I think you saw a little bit of that battering ram again. He broke a couple of tackles. I think the safety, (Louis) Delmas is one of the better safeties that we’ll play all year, and Shonn got him a couple of times on the boundary. I just think that he’s finding his groove. He’s finishing runs, he’s knocking people back, and again, we go back and forth. The guy who has the hot hand is going to get the carries, and he kind of had that hot hand last week and had some big carries for us.”

On how Braylon Edwards got one-on-one coverage for his 74-yard touchdown catch…

“Obviously, it was something that we had kind of seen earlier in the week that they played a specific coverage. If you look at it, what happened is there is a safety to his (Edwards) side, but because of the route that the slot receiver ran to that side, we’re in a three-by-one set, because of the route that the slot guy ran, it ate him (the safety) up, meaning if he would’ve done something different, he would’ve looked to double Braylon. They had a guy back there, but the design of the route was something that kind of ate him up and held him long enough to where Braylon got the single-coverage. For example, they have keys in the secondary. In that case, the DB is reading number two. If number two does something different than go vertical, than he’s going to cover number one. Like the chess game, ‘Ok, this guy’s keying number two. What do you want to do with number two?’ If we put number two here, he’s going to do that. If he goes this way, he does that. That’s a little bit of the chess game. Of course, you have to guess right. They don’t always play that coverage. It was just one of those situations where we guessed right, and we executed.”

On if LaDainian Tomlinson is slowing down…

“It’s hard to keep that tempo up for anybody. I think it’s not just LT (Tomlinson). There are things we can do better blocking up front. There was a play last week where Mark actually missed a check. It’s a little bit of everything. It’s good to see a guy like Shonn (Greene) step up when LaDainian doesn’t have his best day. We know he’s going to have a lot of good days ahead of him.”

On if he prefers to have a 50-50 split between running and passing plays…

“That’s always been my preference. Over the course of the season, (I would prefer to have that split), because going into a game, you never know. So many things dictate how a game gets called. When you’re in a game, you’re doing whatever you can to try to win the game. You don’t stop to think, ‘Oh, I’m going to get second-guessed for throwing it 40 times in a game.’ You never stop to think about it. You say, ‘Hey, we need to win the game and how are we going to win the game?’ You never think, ‘Oh man, I’m running it 50 times. This is awesome.’”

On them running a lot more last season…

“A lot of it, I think, is Rex’s personality of the ground-and-pound. Believe me, we’re a physical team. We love to run the football, but when teams are loading up and stopping that, we’re slowing it down and they’re going to be playing one-on-one on the outside. You have to have the ability, in my opinion, to be a good offense and take advantage of that and vice versa. If they want to play a bunch of split safety, you have to have the ability to run the ball.”

On if it can help the running game to spread players out on the field…

“It can. It all depends on the defense. What it does open you up to is you have to put more things on an alert because you can get some tough looks to run the ball. Again, when you have weapons like we do, most of the time when you put people out there, they have to respect them. I think you saw that a little bit in the Detroit game.”

On how working under Eric Mangini helped him…

“There are a ton of things. I think Eric is one of the best ever at teaching situational football and the different things that come up in a game. Rex has done this as well. There was a situation that came up in the San Diego/New England game a couple of weeks ago where Philip Rivers threw a lateral and it was a backwards pass and New England picked it up. It was a huge play in the game and he didn’t go after it. That was something that Eric always looked for. How can we prepare these guys? The reason I bring it up is because Rex showed it to the squad to teach those guys. Those are things that get passed over when we’re all watching the highlights on Sunday night or Monday morning. You don’t lock it away. That’s something Eric always had a great ability to do was say, “Here’s the situation. We’re going to put you in the situation. How are you going to respond?” I thought that was something that I really learned, the attention to details in situations.”

On if he shared the same style as Mangini in game-planning for each game differently…

“Yes, I think so. We’d all be lying if we said we’re not going to adjust some. It depends on how much you do. You’re going to go into every game-plan with core concepts and ideas, it’s just how you address them. When we say game-plan specific, we’re running a lot of the same plays, but we’re dressing them up to look different. They’re running a lot of the same coverages (and) the same fronts, they just dress them differently and put people in different spots. That’s what makes it game-plan specific.”

On the challenges of facing a Rob Ryan defense because of how prepared he is…

“I think that’s why Rob and Eric are such a good fit because they’re from the same school. We’ve played Rob a couple of times. We’ve obviously always known that (he is prepared). It always been extremely tough going up against his defenses in Oakland and when he was in New England. It’s great to have a guy like Rex. It’s his twin brother. He’s going to know him better than anybody. You see the way they play, that they’re very well prepared. You see little adjustments that they make. They’re a very well-coached team. They’re very well prepared and a lot of that comes from preparation based on backfield sets and things like that. When you play a team like this, it makes you go back and take a second look at that self scout and say, ‘Hey, what have we done out of this formation? What have we done in this formation?’”

On what Mark Brunell brings to the team…

“Experience is the easy answer. I’ll try to expand on that. He’s had those days that Mark’s (Sanchez) had. Good days where you’ve thrown for over 300 yards. Bad days where you’ve thrown a couple of interceptions. He’s seen so many things. He’s played different defensive coordinators. He’s played Rob Ryan probably 10 times in his career. He’s a sounding board for Mark on top of the fact that he’s still a football player. There’s nothing he hasn’t experienced that Mark is experiencing or has experienced, so he’s a great sounding board for him. I just think it’s invaluable for a young player that just turned 24 today that you sit in there saying, “Boy, this is something I never thought of.” “Hey, it happened to me back in 1997.” There’s just a lot of mutual respect because he’s done so much. He’s had such great accolades and such a great career and they get along really well.”

On today being Mark Sanchez’s birthday…

“Today is Mark’s birthday. Now he’s going to get mad at me because I told (you) last week about the fine system. He still hasn’t talked to me (laughter). I have to thank you guys for that. Today’s his 24th birthday.”

Tyson Rauch

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