Q. You're keeping six or seven wide receivers on the roster in a given year, and then how do you assess how Cephus has played so far?
PRESS TAYLOR: The roster is always kind of fluid. Who do you risk losing if you put on waiver wires versus who could you potentially bring back, that all comes in play. Ideally you've got three guys that you know are going to contribute most of the pass game to, a fourth guy that can be versatile and have some sort of role, and depending fifth, sixth, a lot of that comes down to special teams. We're not throwing the ball to the fifth receiver a lot of times on game day when there's five guys out. It's the top three guys you're going to roll on through plus tight ends, running backs, whatever the matchups determine, and then that guy has versatility to play multiple spots or thrive in a certain role, but probably gets a game day jersey because of special teams most likely.
Then we have a lot of guys like Cephus that you were asking about that kind of fit that mold. Where do they fit in fourth, fifth, sixth? What's their value as a receiver and special teams, as well.
Q. What do you want to do with Engram this year?
PRESS TAYLOR: There's a lot of things. Evan is such a dynamic ball carrier. A lot of it is get him the ball as quick as you can running away from people. But I think an element that he's always had is getting down the field really. Sometimes it's trying to find what the match-up is. You can get him on safeties, you know that. There's certain looks. We don't get a lot of match-ups with him against linebackers necessarily. We get a lot of safety carry looks. So then is it worth the tight end match-up against the nickel or a safety when you could get a receiver in that match-up.
There's kind of a give and take. If we give him this, we're taking that from somebody else. There's a lot of those elements. He's done a good job particularly when he's in the core blocking second level. When we have a couple schemes where he gets on the second level quickly he does a pretty good job on that stuff.
That's something we're trying to evolve, but getting him the football quickly. Things happen quickly and happen pretty well for him. He's a good ball carrier.
Q. He has the skills to be able to make those plays?
PRESS TAYLOR: He does. He's a good guy to contest catch guys above the shoulder, as well. Kind of those half back shoulder, half contested catch types of situations.
Q. Pushing for more work down the field a little bit talk to you about?
PRESS TAYLOR: Not necessarily, but I mean he'll do anything we ask. As we go and look at our offense, attacking all parts of the field, whether it be vertically or horizontally, he's certainly the guy that can give us that.
Q. (Indiscernible) few guys that he's either coached with or they've played for him. How much does -- as a coordinator, how much does familiarity with people you have on the staff coming in sort of exacerbate the process of transferring that knowledge, transferring the philosophy you want for the players and ultimately getting to a point where you're winning games?
PRESS TAYLOR: I mean that's a big part of it. I think you're comfortable with the people that you've been around and shared experiences with. Now there's value in outside voices, people you don't know. Ultimately it's how you work together. Whether that's new people that you mesh well together or you've been through the fire with and your personalities mesh. Ultimately that's how it's going to work. It's people working together.
But certainly, if you have shared experience with somebody, that's going to help tighten that bond and be able to lean on that at the right times.
Q. (Indiscernible) you took the offense as a group, I think you phrased it, down to the studs or something like that a week or two. How has that process gone? Are you pleased with the growth?
PRESS TAYLOR: Yeah, really more so than anything it's a run game of the just the terminology, the structure, the progression of the way we teach it. That's something we haven't been as good as we want to be. What's really important to us? What have we been good at? How do we rebuild this thing from scratch? I think that's where our main focus was. I think the way we've taught it so far through the offseason has really stuck with guys. There's probably a clear understanding of things fitting in certain families where the rules and the techniques are carrying over from play to play. You obviously have no idea if you can run the ball until the game starts.
Preseason only give us you so much. Offseason doesn't give you a whole lot. It gives you targeting and landmarks and footmarks and technique, but there's not physicality. We talked about that last time. Even into training camp. There's only so much you can do. You'll get a handful of days that are full speed, but there's really not a time. You have to get a hope that your training has taken you to the point that now where when the bolts are flying, we know how to respond.
Q. Have you noticed a difference in Parker Washington?
PRESS TAYLOR: Parker is playing a lot more confidently. I think he's a lot healthier than he was this time last year when we got him. They're not worried every time they break the huddle about what I'm doing, where is my stance, how does this route change? Now it's he's heard it a hundred times.
So we give a play call, we give a route, we move him around. He knows the expectations of that particular player in that particular concept and so now you just see the skill set start to come out.
That confidence is a big thing. He'll continue to grow. He was put in the fire last year was moved around a couple spots, made some plays. I think that certainly contributes to some confidence from the play making itself. He's continuing to go.
Q. Combining a couple of things, Gabe and Brian have both said that they're -- they value blocking. They understand that Brian said that at LSU, if you couldn't block, you couldn't get on the field. How has that maybe shifted your view of that six or seven wide receivers you'd keep on the roster? Additionally, having those two players as you take this down to the studs, how does that skill set maybe force you to completely alter what you did a year ago?
PRESS TAYLOR: Yeah. I think, I mean obviously we want to be -- we feel like kind of the interior, the core unit is going to help us efficiently run the football. Efficiency turns into explosion when the receivers are blocking. You get those four yard runs turn into 14 yards runs because we have hats on the safety, we're carrying corners out, whatever that may be.
We're not going to ask those guys to block middle linebackers. That's not part of -- there's going to be a time an a place. May be a front side pen pull, may be a back side cutoff. It may be getting to the second level on a toss crack series, but for the most part we're blocking four safeties, we're blocking cloud corners.
Things we think those guys can do, certainly they're size helps. They're both strong, physical guys. Gabe has done it in the NFL which is a big deal. Brian, we'll get him working on certain concepts, but everybody has to block. We ask Christian to block. Christian blocks a point of attack, Christian blocks the backside of things. Sometimes it's the changing pitch is where it gets hard. You have to block four safety. Well the four safety could be frontside, could be backside. Could be somebody blitzing off the slot. And so you trust those guys that know how to do that really well.
So having more of them helps us. Now we're less into this guy is on the frontside, the run is to him, this guy is on the backside, the run is away. It just helps you eliminate tendencies having more guys to do more things.
Q. What are your thoughts on Mac Jones in this offseason?
PRESS TAYLOR: Mac's done a great job just getting in here and learning the offense. He's a sponge. He loves learning football, talking football. He's constantly in the building, he's constantly asking questions, he's constantly talking, which one thing, like, hey, shut up, I have to give you a play call real quick. He just runs his mouth all the time, which is fun. It makes practice fun. He's chirping with the DBs all the time. It's hard right now when we don't have helmets on so there's no headset communicator. I have to physically get him to come talk to me to give him the next play call.
He's done a great job just learning. You see his experience. He's played a lot of football. All the concepts we run he's run at some point in time. Some of it is translating and then you try as quickly as you can to get away from the old language you have. You can't keep telling yourself, oh, this is this. Well, this is this and at a certain point it's got to go away and it's got to be this is this. This is how we communicate. This is our language. He's done that. He's playing quicker each day that he gets, every rep he gets.
We're glad we have him.
Q. We always like to talk about that change of scenery or a player. Is that real?
PRESS TAYLOR: I think so. I think there's certain times it just gets tough and it's nice to have a breath of fresh air. It's fun to have a new system and talk new language with the group and I think you're kind of seeing that with him right now.
Q. (Indiscernible)?
PRESS TAYLOR: I think we've established a tempo in and out of the huddle. The way we want to meet and establishing our standard for this is what it looks like. We'd love to say we established his physicality that we're going to be, but that's just real right now. So there's certain things in the tempo, the way we communicate in and out of the huddle, playing at the line of scrimmage. There's a couple different things that I feel confident we've been able to do.
Then like we talked about, just start running progression of this is our starting point, this is how we build on this, this is how it all fits together to where there's more understanding. It's not memorization. It's now we understand why this word means this, how this relates to that and hour blocking schemes are the same and our combinations are the same.
Q. How much of that is Trevor?
PRESS TAYLOR: A big part of that is Trevor. A big part of that is familiarity. 75, 85 percent of the group has been here before. So they kind of understand why things went away, why things change the way they were called, why we do things we do. You know, it helps when your teach tapes are now our guys. There's no more Indy clips, Philly clips. It's us for two years whether it's training camp, offseason, joint practices, games, whatever that is. I think that certainly helps guys watching themselves on tape as well.
Q. What do you look for from young offensive lineman this time of year? How do you figure out where they're at this time of year?
PRESS TAYLOR: That's hard because a lot of it for them, there's so much more learning for offensive linemen than there was in college. We have a number of different calls. We're trying to build their toolbox. You face this sort of rusher, this is how you're going to approach it this week and it changes every single week. They're seeing that throughout the offseason just based on whether you're playing Josh Allen, De'Shaan Dixon, Travon Walker. All these different types of rushers, you start to see how that changes. So you start to see how to handle it, how they adjust.
But a lot of it, you're just trying to get them to learn what they can do, what the tools are. Really one of the big thing is they haven't heard things at the huddle and they haven't used cadence at the line. A lot of it was no huddle, you got a signal, you heard the quarterback clap, let's roll. We have to bury the cadence, we have a lot more play calls you hear in the huddle. So there's a whole process that you're just trying to get them through really to now their skill set flourishes.
Going back to, like, Parker. Parker settled in. He's more confident now. You want to get them through that as fast as possible so you can see their skill set take over.
Q. What has Brian done right to help his adjustment to the NFL?
PRESS TAYLOR: I think he's just really diligent. One of the things, we're trying to get him to talk more, just ask more questions. He's not a big talker. So you're not always sure, you're searching for feedback. Are you picking up what we're saying? So far it's always translated over the field pretty good. So he's getting it in some, way, shape or form. We want more out of him communication wise just so we know what he's thinking. Does this make sense to you? How do you relate this? For the most part, he kind of nods and looks at you and goes out on the field and does it right.
So that's encouraging. At least he's doing it right, not wrong. You're looking for that. He does a great job. However he's getting it, whether it's from the meeting room, extra studying at night, carrying it over the field, he's done a great job of that so far. We're trying to expose him to as much as possible so if he misses a signal or an alert, if there was something real subtle in a huddle it doesn't happen twice. With him, so far, he's not repeating any mistakes.
Q. When will he start to communicate with you guys? At what point are you kind of like all right, man, we really gotta know what you're thinking at this point?
REPLACENAME: Hopefully, we just really annoy him enough until start talking back to us. We're encouraging him to start talking more. I think it's just getting comfortable in your surroundings. He's living in Baton Rouge forever, now Jacksonville, staying in a hotel. You're finding your way into work, you're finding out where the cafeteria is. There's so much new for these guys. You're just trying to get them to settle in and eventually we hope that takes over a little more.
Q. What do you like as a coach, how do you approach when you see the schedule actually come out, the order with Miami and Cleveland non divisional teams? When did you start like to working on them? Do you like to wait or --
PRESS TAYLOR: Quick as possible. Throughout the summer, I'll spend time just kind of watching through. We're fortunate. We played Cleveland, we played Baltimore. Which is kind of where we are going off with Miami so far with Anthony Weaver over there. Same idea. You go through, you watch your past, you watch as much as you can throughout that. We'll spend time in training camp when we have those free moments of searching through certain things. There may be days when we show Cleveland blitzes. We may not even tell our guys it's Cleveland blitzes, but as coaches, we'll put these in, kind of introduce it a little bit and work on that here and there. You kind of look at those first four opponents. We'll start there and then everything kind of flows from that.
Q. (Indiscernible) until July. The proposed new schedule for the offseason that potentially could happen where there would be no OTAs. From a coach's point of view, do you like the schedule the way it is now, and what would that mean for younger players to not have the OTA, perhaps, but to have an earlier training?
PRESS TAYLOR: They come back mid July and just start two weeks on the front end. I don't know. This is really all I know, so I like it the way it is.
I went through the COVID year where obviously there was no offseason. The next years in Indy, we had a two-week agreement with the players. We just did two weeks. That was all different. There's good and bad with it. Really, just tell us what the rules are and we'll figure out how we're going to adjust to it. I don't know if I'd necessarily have an opinion. It would change our schedule from the get go. As long as we have some summer break or something, it would be nice.
Q. Do you think it would affect with younger players, like for example the Josh Cephuses or these undrafted free agent rookies? Would that be unfair to them to perhaps only have two preseason games even if it's an extended training camp?
PRESS TAYLOR: Yeah. They're swimming. A lot of these young guys right now, they join at Phase 2. They get one week of Phase 2 with the vets and then they're kicked into the deep end and it's OTA and we're practicing against each other. So you kind of get those kinks out of the way early, and they come back for training camp, they know the speed, we're going through the install again. That process would be hard. I would assume you'd pick them, get them a playing book, whatever it is, but then they don't come in for two months. Yeah, that would be tough probably for young players, but I think that's -- they don't really have a seat at the table at CBA. The young guys don't and the old guys like the way it is that they know it.
I don't know how that plays out. Just tell me when I need to be here and we'll figure it out from there.
Q. (Indiscernible) 2020 COVID season. (Indiscernible) do you have any lessons learned from that offseason (indiscernible) easier to transition?
PRESS TAYLOR: Yeah. That was kind of make it up as we go. Things change daily, things change weekly. We were just plying by the seat of our pants there. I'd have to go back and really look at what we did and our calendar, what kind of use we got out of it. I think it made everybody more organized as coaches. You were at home all the time, all you had was video. So we all got our cutups in order and things like that, the teach tapes together. I'd have to go back and look at that.
Q. (Indiscernible) what do the quarterbacks do? Do you want them to make sure they take like a two or three week break where there's no football or talk about it at all?
PRESS TAYLOR: We more so give them a plan like here's what we'd like to see when you get back from training camp. How they go about that is different for each guy. Some guys want to train with their quarterback coach, some guys want to be here or play golf or go on vacation. For the most part, this is what we expect when you come back from training camp.
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