Brian Schottenheimer Interview Transcript 9/22/11

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

On LaDainian Tomlinson saying Schottenheimer’s father had the best gameplan for the Raiders…

He did, it was one of our years in San Diego. The openers were all listed as 50-Power, 50-Power, 50-Power. I can’t remember the direction, it’s pretty amazing that he (LaDainian Tomlinson) does. But he had an awfully good record against them and enjoyed playing against the Raiders.

On Buffalo’s approach last week against the Raiders and what he learned from it…

That’s a good question. Obviously, what we try to do is take something from all the games. Denver, obviously, lost to them, but they did some good things. (The Bills) basically tried to spread them out a little bit and made their linebackers walk out in space and threw the ball quick- got it out of their hands. It was just a shootout. But, (they) hit some big runs, got some big runs that got through and put up quite a few points. So you look at that, you look at some of the things from the preseason, but we study them all very closely.

On where he thinks the offense is right now…

I think we’re a little bit inconsistent. We’re doing a lot of good things. There are some things we need to clean up. Some of the penalties are things (that) are just hard to overcome. Moving forward, the big goal this week is to be more consistent. I think if we do that, then we’re ready to kind of take off. And again, there’s a lot of really good things that happen, then we do something that doesn’t make a lot of sense, then we do a lot of good things, and then we’ll have another setback, but consistency has been the goal for us this week, as we’ve talked about.

On how he feels about Colin Baxter…

I felt really good watching how he played last week. To get thrown into that situation, I thought he did a really good job. We won’t make a ton of adjustments. The beautiful thing for us is that he’s surrounded by a ton of veteran guys, all the way across the board. And you guys all know how I feel about coach (Bill) Callahan. But he’s had a good week of practice, it’s been good to see him working with that group and it’s business as usual.

On how much the offense will have to adjust with Mangold out of the lineup…

That’s where we’re going to lean on some of the guys around him. Lean on Brandon (Moore), lean on Matt Slauson, some of the guys that have been in there and seen it. There won’t be a ton of adjusting. Again, we were pleased with how well he played and we go in with a gameplan. We’ll always be ready to adjust. Obviously, (it’s) a very formidable group inside with (Richard) Seymour and (Tommy) Kelly. So we’ll have our hands full against that whole group. It’s a whole group that is playing hard and we’ve always had good battles with them.

On the Raiders primarily being a 4-3 defense…

They’ll play some over though. It’s not a head-up nose (tackle) but it’s a shaded nose that they play, so I’m sure that they’ll look at some things and move guys around and things like that.

On if anticipates the Raiders will try to test Baxter…

I don’t know, they’re a multiple front team anyway. They do a lot of different things. It being their (home) opener, I’m sure they’ll be flying around and ready to go. Obviously they’re a very, very big front four, front seven really when you add in the linebackers. They’re extremely big.

On if it is difficult to get Plaxico Burress integrated into the offense…

I wouldn’t say there’s anything difficult about it. I think he has a good sense of the system, he has a good sense of what we’re trying to do. I think obviously, Week One, he had some huge plays, a big touchdown pass. Last week it was one of the weeks where they kind of surprised us and played all this soft Cover 2 and just kind of doubled him. I don’t know whether that was because they had a couple corners down or what, but I don’t think it has been an adjustment. We go in with plays for everybody like I said, and when a guy like Plaxico comes out with no catches that means somebody like Dustin Keller has had a big day. And all we care about is trying to win the game.

On Rex Ryan trying to get the ball to Burress down at the goal line in the fourth quarter…

Obviously, we were in the red zone, and so I think one of the things, he’s obviously a red zone target for us. But it was one of those situations where we were still working on some things. Obviously you never want to see Mark (Sanchez) take shots, take hits, but in that situation we had a couple plays we felt really, really good about. They looked great all week in practice and so we took a shot at it.

On Oakland playing a lot of man-to-man defense…

Deep safety in the middle of the field. We went into the plan last week, Jacksonville played a lot of post safety man-to-man and they kind of surprised us with all the Tampa that they played. But again, the Raiders are the Raiders. They do what they do and they do it well. A lot of in your face man-to-man with a deep safety and a hole player inside. But you always have to be ready to adjust. I like the plan, I think the plan looks good. We have guys obviously we feel good about when they’re singled, when they’re isolated, and in that second half against Buffalo, they actually played quite a bit of split safety, which I was surprised about. So they obviously have that in their package, they used it some.

On practice against the defense helps his players win the one-on-one battles…

Absolutely it does. Some of those one-on-one battles are some of the premier players in the league on both sides and we get great work against those guys.

On how Burress is adjusting to a different role…

We try to get everybody involved. I think when he comes off, it’s generally just because we’re using three tight ends and things like that. We have tags certainly where he’s in some of those things. Maybe he’s coming off more than he’s used to, but he’s a huge part of what we’re doing. There’s tags for him all over the place. He’s obviously a starter and the role, we don’t see it as any different, it’s just how we play around here.

On if Burress’ number of plays were scaled back against Jacksonville…

No, I think we got up big. Late in the game obviously we were kind of doing some different things, rolling some guys through, stuff like that. But absolutely not. We want all those good players out there on the field, but at the same time we want to be difficult to defend by throwing multiple personnel groupings at people.

On Dustin Keller…

Obviously, we talked about this I think during training camp. He’s just such an athletic guy. He’s such a problem for linebackers and safeties. He has such great ball skills. I think the touchdown pass that he caught in the Jacksonville game, he literally took the ball away from, I think it was (Paul) Posluszny, that was underneath it. And then of course to have the ability to score. But, again, he’s playing fast, he knows the system. He and (Mark Sanchez) have, obviously a great chemistry and he’s just one big play after another. Again, when teams want to play us certain ways like Jacksonville obviously wanted to play us and they were going to open the middle of the field, whether it’s the play coming out where he got behind the linebackers on a little play action, that’s what they have to do. We hope that they pick their poison and we adjust based on their gameplan.

On trying to get Derrick Mason more involved in the offense…

You guys know I’ve said this a lot. We have packages for everybody. We’re not going to go into the game and say we have to get this guy five catches, we have to do that. We’re not going to do that. That’s not fair to the team. That’s not fair to Mark. We don’t do that. We design good plays. We moves guys around so they’re in different spots. The best thing that we say is, “Keep working, keep going.” The game’s got a flow to it. Some games, you’re going to have four, five, six, seven catches. Other games you might have one, you might come out with none. We only threw it 24 times last game. Whereas the week before, it was 44 or 45. That obviously affects a lot of things. They’re all good players. I wish there was more than one ball, but we’ll try to spread it around as best we can.

On keeping everybody happy in the offense…

They’re competitors. They want to help. It’s part of a business. Coach (Henry) Ellard does a great job with it. I’ve never one time taken offense to a guy coming and saying, “Hey, I want the ball, I can help.” I don’t take it personal. I listen. I take it in. Sometimes I agree with it and I say, “You know what, I need to get you a ball, you can help us go win this game.” There’s other times, I just kind of take it, and put it in the back of my mind, and say, “Yeah, if I can get around to it, I will.” The biggest thing is these guys are all competitors. They’re all great players. We want to get them all balls, but the main thing we want to do is win the game.

On what he saw on Sanchez’s two interceptions last game…

Obviously, the (second) one, we had the situation where it was third down and long and (Rashean Mathis) came off the route, and the guy squeezed it, (Sanchez) never saw it, to his left. In that situation, he probably could have just dropped it off to LT (LaDainian Tomlinson). And the second one, refresh my memory?… You can tell how quickly I put it out of my mind.

On what he has seen from Wayne Hunter…

I think, obviously, the thing with Wayne, the two penalites. One was kind of a glancing blow on the facemask, so that was an effort penalty. There’s definitely some things where Wayne would like to have a set back or something, where he just kind of got out of sorts a little bit. We have complete confidence in Wayne. We talked about this last week. He went up against DeMarcus (Ware). We’ve seen this guy go up against some of the best pass rushers in the league. We have no doubt that he’s going do that. He’d like to have a few plays back from the year. I’d like to have a few calls back from the year. I’d like to remember what the interception was to Middleton. I can’t remember that. We have complete confidence in him. He’s going to work through it and just keep working. He’s a great player.

On whether he is pressing because he is a starter now…

Towards the latter part of last year, he was the guy. In the playoffs, he was the guy. In those last couple of games, he was the guy. It’s a long season. It’s a marathon. He played okay last week. Obviously, you get the quarterback hit, you get the penalties, that’s going to draw attention, but we have a lot of confidence in him, how he’s working, and how Bill (Callahan) is doing the plan.

On whether Antonio Cromartie has approached him about playing more on offense…

I’ll tell you what, don’t be expecting that guy to be in the backfield on the around that we ran. Actually, we had a chance of blocking it. No, I guess when you lose a yard or you make zero you don’t come to us. We want to use a lot of people. We always have that package up, but when I called and I saw that corner start to creep, I was like, “He’s not going to come, is he?” And sure enough, there he came. How about how amazing of an athlete Cro (Antonio Cromartie) is? (For) a lot of guys, that’s like a 10-yard loss. He makes the guy miss, he outruns him, he gets back to the line of scrimmage. That just speaks to the type of athlete he is, and obviously, guys like that can help us.

On the NFL Films clip of Ryan saying Ground and Pound and how much he hears that each week…

A lot. Generally it’s early in the week, then it dies down a little bit, and then of course he always wants the Wildcat package. He loves that, so I hear that a lot. But a lot of it is in fun. It’s always good when you can look back on a game like that and say you were having some fun in the fourth quarter of a game like that. But it’s all in good fun, and when he says it and I know he means it, then that’s easy. I can really, truly tell when he truly means, ‘I want to run the football.’

Tyson Rauch

See Full Bio