Defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley
On fifth-round pick Collin Oliver‘s possible role:
It’s about taking the skill set and putting it to use rather than saying, ‘This is our defense. Where is he going to play?’ So we’ve got to get creative and figure out what he can do, what he can do well, and how much (he can) handle in his first year. Right? How much can we teach him? He’s a sharp guy, but we don’t want to overload him so then he gets on the field and he’s thinking, because then he’s not going to be playing fast and he’s not going to be ready to play. It’s our job, though, to get him ready to see what he CAN do, to help us win football games. But I don’t just see him as a DPR and a special-teamer. I’ve watched him closely, and I see a skill set that we have to figure out how to put it to use. And that excites me. That’s the fun thing about coaching.
He’s had a lot of success inside, and I thought his tape outside was equally as good. He is competitive, he’s tough, he is physical, he plays the game fast, you can tell he loves it. It just jumps off the tape. I don’t know if you guys watched any of it, but it certainly jumps off the tape the way the guy plays. And he’s been a great addition and he does give you that versatility where you can move him around and again, I’m a big fan of that.
On reviewing Year 1 and expectations for Year 2:
This offseason, looking at what we did well, looking at really how we evolved in where we started and where we ended, really to pick up in where we’re going, there’s a lot that goes into that. First I would say, I’m proud of the way the guys played in Year 1. The thing that I’m most proud of, I do believe we got better, and I think we played our best football late in the season, and that was the most important thing to me. We were playing really hard at the end of the year. Like we were really physical, we were really running to the ball, guys were playing confident, guys were communicating and I just felt like we came alive and … throw out the numbers, the statistics and where we were … I think we played harder than our opponents at the end of the year and we were more physical.
Expectations? In a perfect world you want to get back to where you left off as fast as possible and build from there, so how fast can we do that? We have guys who have played in the system, we have some new pieces we need to add, we need to evolve, we can’t just do the same…
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