Q. How many safeties would you like to see on the roster?
JONATHAN GANNON: You know, depends. Honestly you know, what, that's a blend of Howie, Nick, clay, us. So we're going to keep the best football players and they are all going to have multiple roles.
Q. Although James Bradberry has not practiced this past week, when he has, what have you seen out of him that you see beneficial for your defense?
JONATHAN GANNON: Can play different styles of defense. He's smart. He can cover. Gets the ball tough. His level of understanding, especially being in the first year in the system, and he's a vet, so he's played a lot of ball. But just picking everything up. He's been very comfortable with it. His understanding of what we are trying to get done with different coverages, he understands that and has been a great addition for us.
Q. Is he giving your group more physicality?
JONATHAN GANNON: That group was physical last year I thought. They tackle every day and I don't question any one of those guys in that room's toughness. But to add another player who is a big-time tough guy always helps.
Q. What do you think about the tackling on Sunday?
JONATHAN GANNON: Okay. We missed some. That's a little bit, too, you guys by game plan specific, we talk to our guys about tackling certain ball carriers throughout the week. This is a guy that you have to tackle low or this is a guy that you have to tackle high. We definitely need to clean that up a little bit because I thought there was some leaky yardage in there. I did think our population of the ball was good but would you like to get the ball carrier on the ground on first contact a little bit more.
Q. What makes somebody that you want to tackle low, tackle high --
JONATHAN GANNON: Running styles and how big they are, how big they are, how small they are. There are some little guys you want to tackle high because you miss if you go low and vice versa with some big guys, if you tackle him high, he's going to push the pile a little bit. There's all kinds of different tackles in space, in the core, in the box, is it a frontal tackle or an angle tackle but you want to attack certain ball carriers a different way sometimes.
Q. What does this mean you're looking for in your defense specifically against the skill players on the Dolphins?
JONATHAN GANNON: Excited, just like Cleveland, it's a brand new scheme, significantly different scheme from what we run and from what Cleveland runs and we know they have got some represents. It would be good to see if we can play without game planning them, play our calls we're going to call and execute them at a high level and knowing issues or matchup issues and play accordingly.
Q. With Josiah playing safety and Andre at nickel, is it those players at those skill sets or are those positions often interchangeable.
JONATHAN GANNON: There's different ways to do it depending on the player so that's a case-by-case basis. Typically you've seen you've got corners that slide inside or you've got safeties that can slide inside. It's really just, you said it. It's really their skill set for those two guys kind of fit what -- within our scheme what we are asking those guys to do. They have both done a good job with it.
Q. The speed on paper, at least a good test for what you want to see?
JONATHAN GANNON: Really good test. Really good test. They have got some guys with some major gas which will be good for our guys to see that type of speed. For three weeks, we see speed, too. It's just a little bit. You know, where they deploy people is a little bit different than our offense, so that's why it's going to be good to see if we can execute at a high level with a different skill set of their players and a different scheme than -- than ours.
Q. What have you seen of Josh pre-Draft and now that you have him in the building, how much of that --
JONATHAN GANNON: What we saw on the tape in pre-Draft is he had really good coverage ability. He was smart and tough. Since he's gotten here, that's what he's proved to be. So I really like where Josh is at, as that whole group. I like where they are at as far as their coverage ability, their tackling, their understanding of the defense, and you know, we've just got to continue to get better, a little bit better every day.
Q. As you imagine Kyzir -- how has he adapted?
JONATHAN GANNON: Very easily. He's another one that's extremely intelligent. He's played in a system similar to ours, so it wasn't completely polar ends of the spectrum when he got here. He just had to put it in our verbiage a little bit. He's doing a good job as far as being where he needs to be and executing at a high level in the run and pass game and production.
Q. As you execute your defensive philosophy, what made you want to be so matchup and game plan specific?
JONATHAN GANNON: Just, you know, it's a good question, you know, 2022, offenses look a lot different than they did ten years ago, five years ago. So I never wanted to get into a meeting on a Monday and say, well, we did everything right, and they still beat us because of our scheme got us beat or because of the matchups that we knew weren't advantageous to us, got us beat.
So that's the reason for a little bit of adaptability with scheme week-to-week as you guys see is, you know, what we do is predicated on how we need to win this game, and that goes to like we've talked about it is our people, their people, people versus people, people versus scheme, scheme versus people and that's how we will always evaluate it.
Q. Do you see someone as a leader of your safety group?
JONATHAN GANNON: Got a lot of leaders on that defense. You know, Marcus Epps has taken a little bit of a leadership role, more than last year, you know, because he's playing more, and his production is high and he does everything right. Anthony Harris is another one. He's been a leader since I met him as an undrafted rookie in Minnesota, so he's got leadership traits. But that whole room from a football character standpoint and doing things right on a daily basis, that's what a leader is to me and they all do that.
Q. Nick talks about having the advantage of surprise heading into Week 1, with all the new defensive players, how do you get the practice and looks you want without giving things away in training camp?
JONATHAN GANNON: You know, last year, we probably, I don't want to say hide, hid, but we probably didn't do as much in preseason games because we didn't want it, you know, everyone to see that going into the first couple weeks. This year, we're kind of playing our stuff. The book is out. People know what we are going to do. It just comes down to execution and our players winning at a high level.
I feel good where we are at right now especially after these next two days with joint practices, you want to see all different parts of your scheme, what you're going to use in a certain game go up against different people and different schemes. And not to say like, again, we are not game planning for these practices, but you want to say, hey, if I call this and you've never seen a look, can we execute it, you know and get what we want to get done with the call. So really excited for these next two days.
Q. Where does Taylor stand, is he still a developmental guy?
JONATHAN GANNON: All those guys in that linebacker room are competing for playing time to be starters and be on this team and that's where he's at.
Q. Do practices give enough of a sense of how you are in a run defense, where you need to be live to gauge that?
JONATHAN GANNON: It's live until you hit the ball, you know what I mean. That's the last pieces to tackling and we want to see us make tackles because that's what a game is.
But in practice, that box is completely live. I feel good about that evaluation of where those guys are at, playing block, putting their hands on the right people and in my opinion, pretty good. Pretty good. We've still got to keep working on some things and that's a continuous process, and we have a couple weeks before we play, which we need to improving where that part of the game. Is.
But I like where they are at right now.
Q. Working with Jordan Davis, where has he impressed you the most and improved the most?
JONATHAN GANNON: I would say all our players, not Jordan, is consistency. That's always going to be the improvement part. What he's done a good job with is playing multiple spots and changing his technique by the call.
I have really seen a pretty good jump from him the last week or so where he's understanding, hey, you know, I can be more aggressive here, I can't be as aggressive with this call, with this blocking scheme, I want to do this to the block, I don't want to do this paragraph par just his understanding of what he needs to get done with his position when the offense gives him certain things, I think that has -- that has really improved.
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