Q. Art, did you think your running game took incremental steps last week a little bit? Or what did you expect to see or hope to do more?
ARTHUR SMITH: Just with anything, you've got to continue to improve. A lot of it comes down to just really the simple things when you're off here or there, whether it's in the pass game, running the football.
I thought we had some cleaner runs. That's not where you want to be. When you lose a game and you're playing down in the fourth quarter, your opportunities are going to be a little more limited.
Then it all starts in the first half, third quarter, a chance to really change the outcome of the game, and it usually comes down to a couple plays overall, extending drives, those two third and twos we didn't convert different times on the opener. We had to settle for three. Or coming out in the first half, get to third and two. Those are things that they add up, and then the unintended consequences if you get down and you're playing at a faster pace, trying to get back into it. So it all goes into it.
The original, yeah, it was a little bit better but not where we wanted to be, but certainly when you lose, a lot of things need to be better.
Q. Aaron talked about the importance of being able to run the ball when defenses are giving you a two high look.
ARTHUR SMITH: Sure.
Q. How much of a weapon is the quick game, especially having a quarterback like Rodgers whenever the defenses give you that, just in case the run game isn't going the way you want to, you can always lean on that?
ARTHUR SMITH: There's a lot of things in the run game that may show up as passes when you package things. I know sometimes people call red alerts, RPOs, and really everybody does it a little bit different. With the IDP rules you don't see as much of that as you were seeing the past couple years.
Some of the things we did early on in Tennessee when that was in vogue when we drafted Marcus coming out of Oregon, true RPOs that you see in college football. A lot of people they put what they call run solutions, run alerts, going in as pass completions, but a lot of times it's part of the run game depending on the way you operate.
That's another way, there's a lot of space there that you try to take advantage. Those are rushing attempts that they'll go down as a run.
Yeah, at the end of the day, though, when you get down in the red zone and you've got an opportunity and people, for the most part, no matter who you're playing, they're usually going to play some kind of shell coverage. Unless they're expecting run or they're trying to heat you up, you've got to be able to take advantage of that. It's just math.
Your numbers are, you're at an advantage, and if you don't execute, sometimes you give credit to the defense, and sometimes we've got to do the little things to help ourselves.
Q. How much do you anticipate or did you anticipate the run being part of this offensive identity?
ARTHUR SMITH: When you say identity, that could be very vague. Is there a reference point you're talking about in terms of identity? I've heard that term in football over the years, but it's one of those like coaches get there and say we want to be fast, physical. No, we don't want to be slow and soft. I'm just curious what you're referring to.
Q. In terms of do you see this offense as run first or more balances or more of a pass heavy attack? How did you envision the run game fitting in?
ARTHUR SMITH: I don't fancy myself as an air raid guy, and I don't fancy myself as playing the triple option or Wing-T. You want to be balanced, and sometimes it's week-to-week with matchups.
Regardless of what your philosophy is, you become one-dimensional in any circumstance, you're going to make life hard on yourself, especially in the NFL. If you had overwhelming talent and this is the 1970s and I can put 135 stars on scholarship and just bludgeon people, yeah, that would be one way to do it. If you're looking to be efficient, explosive, it may come in the run game or run alerts or screen game, check-downs, however you get to it.
The key is obviously to score, drive efficiency, and trying to hit chunk plays. How you get to that, you can certainly do it with the run game. We need to do more of that. In the Jets game we hit some chunk plays in different actions. Obviously in the Seattle game at times we did okay, and there were times we stalled out.
If you're talking about identity to give -- just it's not me. You'll never hear me say my offense. I don't want to be labeled as a guru or give some cute title to it. We want to be balanced, and we want to be efficient, we need to score points. That's the best way I can answer that.
Q. What goes into the decision-making for the balance of snaps between Jaylen Warren and Kenneth Gainwell? Is it more about smooth transfer? You want Kenneth Gainwell to be able to beat guys in certain passing plays or just purely you guys want to give --
ARTHUR SMITH: There's certain packages. And sometimes it's -- obviously, Jaylen is a guy that's made a lot of plays. Like I said, we didn't have him available a lot last year. KG is new to us. I think it's hard when you have three running backs and you're trying to divvy the carries. That sometimes can get hard. I've been through that before.
If you've got guys that are balanced -- you look over the course of the season, some games -- Jaylen got in a rhythm last week. There's certain packages -- I don't want to give too much strategy away, especially playing these guys in New England. I know too well. He's got his little henchman, Stretch, John Streicher. You guys ever see the Godfather, Robert Duvall? That's what Stretch is to the Patriots. He's searching whatever you guys put out there. Stretch is looking at team strategy.
This depends. Sometimes, full transparency, there's certain things you try to scheme for them. We've got faith in both those guys. Certainly the guy gets hot, you don't want to take the ball out of his hands. I thought Jaylen, one positive from last week, I thought Jaylen certainly showed up.
Q. Do you think Jaylen can do more?
ARTHUR SMITH: In terms of what?
Q. He was playing about 60 percent of your snaps so far. Do you think, if he continues to be the hot hand, more often than not, he can have --
ARTHUR SMITH: Certainly, if the guy earns that. Again, you're talking about there's a lot of -- there's a couple plays where both of them are on the field, and they're both offensive weapons. Certainly there's a part to that as well. You've got to do whatever you've got to do to win the game too, but you also think about the totality of the season. We can't ask anybody to run the ball 500 times.
Maybe there's somebody that can do it. I certainly haven't seen it. That all goes into it.
Q. Vrabel came in at Tennessee, kept you on as a coordinator.
ARTHUR SMITH: I was the tight end coach. That was the Matt LaFleur year.
Q. What has he meant to you?
ARTHUR SMITH: I've been lucky and had a lot of great mentors. I hate naming them sometimes, a lot of guys with Pittsburgh ties. A lot of these old coaches, I'm really thankful. I've taken something from every one of them.
A lot of guys that have been through here, played here. Mike is another guy that's played here. You asked about Mike Vrabel, I could go on and on. He'd get pissed at me because he hates getting complimented. Maybe I want to compliment him more so he gets pissed. In all sincerity, one of my closest friends in this profession. He's extremely, extremely practical and a really, really smart football coach.
Certainly if my sons were competing, I'd want them, a guy you trust, you want your son to play for. To me, that's the highest compliment I can give.
Q. Referring to Metcalf and the two-point play. Is that a matchup specific thing that worked at the time, or that something you go to --
ARTHUR SMITH: There's so many things that go on at the line of scrimmage. You're playing percentages. There's certain guys, certain teams that are play callers. You talk about 70 percent of the time, and as you build things, what's your answer? If it's something different, the other 30 percent, because it's kind of -- you've got to have answers to it. Some of them are matchups. Some of it depends on the coverage.
The one you're talking about he caught that was a two-man combination going on between him and Jonnu, that's something else on the back side. You're talking about DK on the front pile-on?
Q. Yes. And then the two-point play.
ARTHUR SMITH: Again, it's just matchup. Throw it to Shaq in the post. It's kind of -- I mean, you see Darnell out there. He's not small. He did it in Denver last year. I think we got a DPI against Cincinnati. Certainly it's -- you've got to answer in other spots, but you get those one-on-ones, and it's tough to take advantage. Throw it to Shaq in the post. That's what he does.
Q. Is that something you can try more often, or do you have to get the right look before you do?
ARTHUR SMITH: I try it all the time. We've got guys that can play above the rim. You're looking at Darnell. You're looking at DK. You're looking at Jonnu. Calvin who could have fit in, but he said he couldn't. Didn't want to fit in Calvin.
In all seriousness, it just depends, what's the coverage? You get those matchups, you put a guy out there, they can double, they can crowd, the ball's got to go somewhere else. There's a lot of variable that's go into it.
You get those matchups -- that's another thing in the Seattle game. They weren't giving you a lot of one-on-ones on the outside. When we didn't get them -- again, that's not blaming the player. We've got to do a better job of taking advantage of that. That starts with me.
Just to get on when there's an option there, why didn't we take advantage of them? You can blame this guy or that guy, that's not how we operate there. It's shared accountability. Those are things that you constantly improving on as an offense.
Q. You had Shaq matched up with Coby Bryant. Was that intentional?
ARTHUR SMITH: I'll give you props for that one. I appreciate that humor right there. I wish I could take time for the irony there. Like a lot of people do, have a vision of history. I'll run with that one. I'm not giving you credit, though.
Q. The Patriots have the worst pass defense so far in the NFL.
ARTHUR SMITH: Two game sample, huh?
Q. Only two games, but does that change your approach knowing that you need to get this run game going?
ARTHUR SMITH: I know, that's the thing about, to me, whether you're using analytics or whatever souped up term, you're studying tendencies or matchups which you're trying to exploit certainly plays a factor. There's certain things you see on tape, but sometimes, especially early in the year, you look at our Jets game, that's total yards. We had a pretty efficient offensive day, scored 34 points, great. Then you have total yards, the outliers, look at the Baltimore game, they scored 41 points and played 7 off of a defensive turnover, and they only had 240 yards. They were all pretty happy in that building. If you're selfish, oh, we didn't have 400 yards, whatever it is.
I think here there's a lot that can be manipulated. Sometimes what's happening in that game, the guy may have just had a catch and run. It could go for 65 and skew your numbers. When you're looking at the totality of how the game flowed, certainly what your advantage is on matchups, yeah, I think that's -- especially when you get in the middle of the year. If you've got a team that's really damn good against the run, unless you're just trying to slow the game down as a team philosophy, that's not an advantage. It goes back to that.
You get pass happy, that guy rushes the passer too. That's how they ended up getting out of the stadium in Miami when they closed the game out.
There's a lot that goes into it. You look at it all. You look at the numbers and look at the film and offensive strategy and you look at team philosophy. I argue sometimes too, when you get into time possession, especially when you have a lead, that changes the whole dynamic.
Look at the Seahawks game, we come out 14-7, if we don't convert that third and two, worse if you can get a field goal, they're up 10 points, that changes the dynamic going back the other way. We don't get anything. Then it becomes 14-14, and we lose I don't how many points with a tipped pick. Those are the moments in the games, and that changes the whole dynamic.
If you can get a two-possession lead in the second half, that's the thing, you've got to make those plays. We didn't make those on Saturday, which changed the whole outcome in terms of you're running calls and everything else. Sorry for going on a soapbox.
It's a good team we're playing. Regardless of the strategy -- and I want to answer your question, but again, these guys in stretches, little hitch will be looking at this, and I don't want to give away too much either.
Q. Without giving anything away to the henchman, what are your thoughts on the tush push and the latest innovations of snapping it to non-QBs? Seems like it's usually tight ends, and the potential for that to be kind of a new way to run the play?
ARTHUR SMITH: Again, without giving away all the strategy, I imagine like -- I always joke, like seriously, everybody's got the one-back open side run, whatever you want to call it. Every defense has SAL-0 whether they show it or not. I would bet you 32 teams have that play. Now, whether you get to it or call it or the situation comes up -- certainly Seattle did it. Baltimore's done it. I've seen so many people do it. That's become like an internal joke.
Everybody, the open side run, what do you call it, whether you call it wanna or belly open? Everybody's got one up. Every offense, every defense has a goal on defense whether they get to it or not. Every team has SAL. Every team has that play now.
I would take a strong guess that every team, there's probably 32 teams that have that play.
Q. I just wanted to ask about Landry and what makes him unique, and how you feel Troy's played so far through a couple of games?
ARTHUR SMITH: Harold's a good player. I was with Harold when we drafted him. He's a guy that's in the prime of his career. They paid him a lot of money up there, and to see his game develop. And Troy's going into his fourth start, had some good moments. There's always things you want to work on.
Just like week 1, Broderick wasn't happy. I thought he played a little bit better. We need to continue to -- that's why you work. You've got to continue to get better. Harold's a good player.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports