Q. You haven't had a lot of red zone trips, but you've been efficient when you've been in there. Is it more a point ever emphasis this year? You've worked on...
ARTHUR SMITH: That's the thing is the work never stops. Some years I've been around we've been really good, other years we haven't been for different reasons.
Every off-season, I mean, whether you're really good in one area or not, you still have to evaluate. You don't want to get stale. You don't ever want to become like Blockbuster, whatever, no shot to anybody that's got ties to Blockbuster here, but you get the analogy.
Obviously what you've got is different. What are your strengths, what do you set out, plan to do, how the roster's built. Obviously we're built different this year. We've got a lot of catch-and-run guys. I call them last-mile-delivery guys that are hard to tackle. Sometimes those are catch-and-run-type plays, whatever you scheme up. We just got to keep that trend going.
Same thing whether it's a number of attempts. Obviously you want more. I mean, we want more plays. That's a lot of things, too, that kind of skew some numbers. We need to keep that stuff going, though, in terms of scoring down there.
Q. (No microphone.)
ARTHUR SMITH: That's why we use both. Just try to be practical sometimes. We game plan. That's the thing. When you've got smart players like we do, there's things, core stuff, that you carry. You may dress it up different week to week, but there's things you need to game plan for. It's a long evolution.
You get two weeks. People put a label on somebody: this is the best offense, this is the best defense. Every week's a different challenge. Your number one objective is how do you win that game.
Obviously different challenge the way Minnesota was built, the way they played. They had changed. Different when I had gone against Flo when he was first year at Minnesota and I was at Atlanta. He was in Miami in '21, I was at Atlanta. There's an evolution to him, too, some core principles.
Wouldn't do it if we didn't think it would give us an advantage. Not like you just copy it because you think it's cool, somebody else did it. It's got to be logical or give you an advantage.
We're unique. I think the old adage, I think it was a George Young quote about the Franco Harris debate that's in Chuck Noll's book, yeah. This was settled two thousand years ago when Alexander the Great came riding in on elephants. Kind of what it looked like.
Took the tackle over, a thousand pounds over there, Troy, Spence. A thousand pounds, tried to knock the edge off the defense. That doesn't mean schematically that's the best plan of attack this week. Could be. You just got to be smart.
The other thing is, where I'll give Spence credit, you have a jumbo tight end, heavy tight end, whatever you want to call him, extra linemen. The guy's limited because he's really just a phone booth guy. Spence is a hell of an athlete. So is Darnell. I'm imagine Spence, he could tell you he was a great basketball player. He's coming along as a guarding tackle, too.
Sometimes game to game that can take away. Just the way the game went, it worked. But doesn't mean it's going to work this week. We got a different challenge.
Q. (No microphone.)
ARTHUR SMITH: Yeah, we've used some packages where him and Jaylen are both out there. They're both unique players. They're not, in my opinion, traditional running backs.
Jaylen is a very unique guy. Just his yards after contact, that's an interesting stat. I've had different players. Just go back to different guys I had like when I had Tyler Allgeier, we drafted Tyler, he was second behind Kenneth Walker in yards after contact.
His is just no fair dodging, just run you over. When we took Bijan, yards of contact, the way he did it, it was more balanced. Put him in a phone booth, I've never seen somebody that can make somebody miss in short quarters, whether they got a handle on him, it was different.
Tyler is just like get out of my way, here I go. With Jaylen, same thing. Guys balance off him. He's got a feel, guys that can take a check-down or a schemed-up bubble screen, go 60. That's unique in space. Or Kenny in space. He's just a unique athlete.
At that position, there's been a run of guys out of Memphis that have been backs and wideouts. He's one of them. Had a good run down there in Memphis.
When you get injuries, sometimes you're limited with what you got. Sometimes it's one for one, but then you can get into some of the two backs. Again, because he can do it, he's a legitimate threat at wideout. Gives you flexibility. You try to get the ball in your productive players' hands.
He's been an asset. Obviously with Jaylen, morning of, can't go, his role became bigger as a traditional back. He did a heck of a job. Gives you a lot of freedom going forward.
Q. (No microphone.)
ARTHUR SMITH: Jaylen was just not available. Now you get into it where we play both of them at times. Again, we just need to get more plays. Been unique this year. There's a lot of different variables, seriously.
In a four-game sample size, historically 65 is the average. Usually the stat is if you're winning, whether you call more runs in four minute or not, if you're 30-plus carries, how do you want to divy those up in that traditional running back role. There's other ways to get them the ball in the passing game, as well.
Q. (No microphone.)
ARTHUR SMITH: Certainly. I mean, things like Myles, it's a lot like T.J. really in this division, 'cause you've got three of the best edge rushers in the league. With Hendrickson in Cincinnati, Myles, obviously T.J. here.
They're different. Call them game wreckers, but they're game plan players. They've seen every trick in the book where people try to chip them every way, double them every way, try to cut 'em. Whatever they try to do, there's nothing new that you can do. It's more about executing. Whatever your plan is, you've got to account for those players every day. It just takes one time and you're off, the guy makes a game-changing play.
There's a lot of great players. The guys that really, like, alter-your-game-plan players, there's certainly three of them in the division, fortunately one is on our team, yes, however we decide to block Myles, whether two guys. People do three guys.
Sometimes it makes me laugh. You guys ever seen the clip where it was Calvin Johnson that went into a pump block. They just jammed him on the line. All right, we'll play nine guys to defend the other 10.
It's a challenge. That's a credit to him. They do a great job with him.
Q. Like 10 plays in a row, to get it down the field, do you have to manage a little bit more trying to take the occasional deep shot or...
ARTHUR SMITH: Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question because that's the thing, that's the one thing refreshing about Aaron. He's got an opinion, shockingly, on it. Thankfully somebody laughed (smiling).
At the end of the day he's got a lot of reps. You may call a play, and again you trust him. Sometimes whether you're trying some three level or double move deep, you may get the look you want. There's plenty of guys. We've got enough guys, too.
I call it the Uncle Rico. You see guys launch one. Might have been a single high, the guy goes up there, takes the ball out of his hand. There's one way to do it. You scheme it up, you get the look, they bite, launch it that way. May hit the second level.
Sometimes if you're just feeling in rhythm, credit to our backs, it's like you clear the paint, it may be there. Heck, sometimes it's just, Hey, get one through the hoop, I'm giving the ball to Kenny or Jaylen in space with nobody around them and 10 yards. Those are good plays.
There's a lot that goes into it, like you said. You certainly make sure they feel it. Whether you hit it or not, at least the DBs feel it, they're not just sitting there sitting on everything, because that becomes a problem.
The way you want to be built is you can go deep and you got guys that we call a strike route. That to me makes you really explosive, when you can multiple ways, not just go balls, launching 'em like Uncle Rico style. There's different ways to hit 'em. Certainly you want to hit some guys on the grass. We've had some one on ones that we've hit in man. We'll keep working on it.
Q. Saw the guy motion out in Ireland...
ARTHUR SMITH: Which one?
Q. The big run, behind the linebacker.
ARTHUR SMITH: Yeah, it was just something. Again, you've got plans. Not to get too deep in the weeds, but you want things to set up, certain looks. If you've got players, like I don't want to waste this play if we don't get this look, so you package things.
Whether you want to call it an audible, can, check, kill 'em. There's a million terms you can use how you want to design that. We had the look we wanted. It was a call. Different ways. You're just trying to rip space open if you're going to play that shell coverage.
He got in that window. Obviously, that's one of DK's strengths. Pretty impressive. It was cool to see. I haven't felt that honestly since I watched from the sideline, I'll never forget some of these runs that Derrick would make. You're just calling it a simple run. Wasn't any guru call. He gets that first level, he runs by you. You're like holy hell. That's what I felt. It was on our sideline. I said on the headset, He's gone. Almost like appreciation of the guy. I couldn't do that.
But again, as we're building this, we need to stack wins, we need to play well and get better. As you stack those wins, we need to get more plays. Again, how do you want to defend this, if you're able to do this. We got enough speed to go down the field, underneath, whatever we do.
Q. (Question regarding improvement on third down.)
ARTHUR SMITH: You want to cut it up. Ironically, we got five snaps in that medium window, you're looking at what are you calling. That's what I always look at. I look at myself first. What are we calling? What happened?
The obvious thing was, hey, we didn't hit him. Okay, if we get flushed, issue in the protection, the way we're doing something there, or somebody got beat.
Yeah, like I said, it's a weird sample size. The numbers are what they are. So you just got to keep working through it. What are we doing? Do we need to adjust here? Hey, this is working. We just got to make sure we execute it better. Those are the conversations you're always aware of those numbers.
Yeah, I mean, I could sit here and chop it up and say, Hey, we're really good on running the ball on third-and-three. But it's the totality of it. Whatever it is, you don't want to be in too many third-and-longs.
But percentages, we got to hit more of those, for sure. Convert them, however we do it.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports