CHIEFS SPECIAL TEAMS COORDINATOR DAVE TOUB
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Q: **What happened with the deflected punt?
TOUB:"We had A-Gap pressure. It was the center and the right guard, we had to change and personnel, Kevin Pierre-Louis got banged up, we had a new guy in there. A little miscommunication, a little pressure. Got a hand on it. Fortunately, it wasn't a block, at least we got a little bit of a yardage out of it. But we learned from it."
Q: Devin Hester, calling it quits. You guys had a great run together.
TOUB:"Unbelievable. Talked to him yesterday. He's very satisfied doing what he's doing and he was a great player. Really, five years from now if he doesn't get in the Hall of Fame, it'd be a shame."
Q: Other than his speed, what stood out to you about him?
TOUB: "His vision. His vision to be able to anticipate the guys coming down the field and then his overall strength. He was a lot stronger than people gave him credit for. He could run over you if he needed to. Then his ability to catch tough punts in a crowd, going backwards and over shoulder. You couldn't kick away from him. You'd have to kick it out of bounds to get it away from him. Obviously the kickoff returns were huge when they were kicking from the 30-yard line, we got a lot more balls in our hands and so he had a lot more opportunities."
Q: Did he change that position?
TOUB: "There's no question. Having a guy like Devin (Hester) made everybody have a returner after that. We went out and reached for a guy basically, if they did good, going and getting him in the second round and having a guy just as a punt returner/kick returner, to draft him in the second round was outside the box thinking. He did a real good job with that. Then he performed on the field and now everybody has to have a returner. He changed the game that way. He put special teams on the map as far as how you can win games on special teams and I think everybody across the league has gone to that now because of him."
Q: Do you see a little bit of Tyreek (Hill) in him?
TOUB: "Yeah I do. Ty has a lot of talent, the same things that Devin does. Then teams are kicking away from him, same. It's like déjà vu all over again. The same thing that happened in Chicago is the same thing that is happening here."
CHIEFS DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR BOB SUTTON
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Q:** Tough break for Steven Terrell coming off a pretty good game.
SUTTON: "He played a great game. He made obviously the closing play, a great play over the middle on the tight end. Did a great job. We were short numbers in there and he just went in and did a tremendous job and we'd love to have him still going. But I thought he really stepped up and did a nice job for us."
Q: Does that speak to how deep that position group is with all the injuries this season?
SUTTON: "Yeah and I think it speaks well of Al (Harris) and* *Emmitt (Thomas) because they've done a great job with coaching all those guys, so they're in position to help play. And you have to give the players the credit because as we've spoke here before, you're second group of guys sometimes you get a little more because they're on certain groups, but basically they don't get a lot of reps. So you have to take that as a player, take that challenge on. When you're not in there, you're in there. You're that player. It's you in there. When you're watching the video, that isn't Ron Parker, that's me playing that position. That's how you have to do it and see it if you want to keep moving ahead. A guy like Steven I think did a great job of that because he's had games where he's been inactive and still did a great job, stepped in and really made no mistake, did a great job. I think it's both things. I think it's depth at the position and the fact that both the coaches and the players have done a good job preparing. As we say, come Sunday or Saturday night, you might be going in thinking you're the second guy but in one play you could be playing the whole game. You don't unfortunately get the same amount of reps as the other guy does in preparation."
Q: To have the kind of season Keenan Allen is having, how does that open things up for his teammates?
SUTTON: "Keenan (Allen) has always been a tough guy to cover. He's a highly competitive, tough minded, goes in to make the tough catches, a good route runner. Understands leverages. He's just a really good football player. Certainly when you're on the run he's on right here with the hundred yard games and ten catches and touchdowns, when you have six for a hundred or seven or eight, you went downhill, says you're on a pretty good run. But he's just a good football player and anytime you have a dynamic player like that, that is performing consistently, one, forces a lot of attention from everybody, and then two, certainly from their standpoint, opens up other players."
Q: When you go over film from last week, do you ask your players where has that been?
SUTTON: "To me the most important thing, you always try to validate. The things that are really important, which I think are true in any job, you need to constantly validate or my impression is that things can become collections of words and not have really any meaning in anymore difference than this. So the things that are really important to you, we try to present up on the video screen from practice or games. Say hey, that's what we're looking for or that isn't what we're looking for. But I think it's really important to do that. Sometimes it doesn't lead to a successful play there but part of the job is you say look, if you continue doing those things we're going to be fine. It's going to work out here at the end. That's a trust factor on their part. I think that's really how I handle it. I try to say hey, that's exactly what we're looking for. We work on this every day, try to rip the ball out. For me those are exciting to see on film and I think for the players to see, hey that's something we like, that's something you do in practice and then in individual you try to get it done in practice, the live situation in practice. Then the ultimate test is, can you pull one of those off in a live game situation. So that's kind of the stages that we go through."
CHIEFS OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR MATT NAGY
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Q:** How is this team different 12 weeks later?
NAGY:"They're at a point right now where they're playing with a lot of confidence. They're playing fast. You see them flying around and that's what happens when you win. When you win the ball's bigger when you're swinging at the ball and that's just where they're at right now, so you see that on tape. They had a new defensive coordinator in Gus Bradley when they first got here and so they're kind of learning their stuff, the ins and outs of it. Here they are into this part of the season and then you can see how they're really developing and trusting his system."
Q: Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram, what kind of challenge do those two present?
NAGY:"They're, as a tandem right now, playing in my opinion probably the best in the league as far as bookend guys. We understand that and it's been a theme, you guys know, I've been saying it all year long that these defensive lineman are aggressive across the board in the NFL. But when you have two guys playing in the style that they play, a lot of spin moves, a lot of games that they do and they create lanes by doing that, then on top of that they're just full of energy. They're very successful this year."
Q: The strip sack has been an MO for them too. How do you create an awareness for that?
NAGY:"Alex (Smith) has to be great in the pocket, being able to push up and out. Understand when they're trying to run the hump there and swat at the ball. So two hands on the ball for Alex, protecting it, trying to find lanes but there's going to be times where they break down the pocket and it's going to be real crucial for Alex to have really good awareness and presence in the pocket."
Q: How do you feel like that's been the last few weeks during the time when the offense wasn't going good? I think even he admitted that he was a little dicey in there, has that improved?
NAGY:"It has and normally what happens with that is your eyes are the first thing that happens and so if there's a little bit of pressure or if you start seeing some things your eyes go straight down to the line of scrimmage and it's just a domino effect. It affects your feet, it affects your throws. So when you have protection or you have that green grass in front of you things are a lot clearer. So he's done that the last few weeks. The offensive lineman have done a good job of giving them that and that's where it all begins."
Q: I was talking to Alex the other day and he talked about the fact that when you're calling plays he gets them a little bit faster, even just a couple of seconds. How important is that couple of seconds as far as just being able to get a pre-snap read?
NAGY:"It helps you just because that extra second can prevent you from a delay of game. That extra second can help you show what they're going to declare on defense with maybe holding a blitz or a safety coming down or popping back, this team likes to do that. So those extra seconds help. It's just part of the process. I thought Coach Reid and I did a good with that procedure of me being the conduit to Alex before. But the way we're doing it now, it does, it speeds it up a little bit and it definitely benefits him."
