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Kyle Shanahan Full Transcript: 09/12

On Thursday, September 12, 2013, Redskins offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan addressed the media following an afternoon practice at Redskins Park in Ashburn, VA.

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On getting back on track following the first few series against Philadelphia:

"It took a while. You've got to start getting a couple of first downs before you get a chance to. Starting off that way is probably the worst start to a game that I've been a part of, then finally when we did get something going, we finally get into a second-and-1, it seemed like we'd get a holding call to get us into a second-and-long, so it really took us until about the third quarter to actually get any momentum and get into the football game."

On if the team game planned to not feature the read option heavily:

"No, we really never got to do our game plan, to tell you the truth. We had some stuff in there early, but it wasn't just that that we didn't get to do, we didn't get to do about 90 percent of our game plan. It turned into a two-minute drill pretty fast. In the first half, we wanted to set some things up, which is kind of what we always do in our offense, but when you can't get a first down, we really weren't able to set anything up, and we didn't want to just come out and just run it to run it."

On his surprise by running back Alfred Morris's early struggles and improvement as the game went on:

"I was shocked by everything. You never go into a game anticipating that. It was frustrating for me, frustrating for all of our players and something we had to deal with. I was proud of how they came back; at least they didn't give up, kept fighting. It was definitely something that we've got to get corrected and can't let happen."

On play of wide receiver Leonard Hankerson:

"Hank has done a good job. I think he's gotten better every year since he's been here. He's had some games that, to us, are real good games that you guys don't always get to see, because really I think everyone only sees the receivers when they get the ball. Hank has done a pretty good job separating in a lot of games that he hasn't gotten the ball in. This game, he did have a good game, and the balls came his way. The coverages got him the ball and he capitalized on them."

On how much work they have done on fundamentals this week to prevent mistakes:

"It's something we work on all the time, especially when you have a game like that where it just seems like we weren't detailed in anything. It becomes a huge emphasis. Any time you have a loss, and especially one like that, you are hard on yourself, you look at everything and you work all week to correct it."

On why they never got to use their game plan:

"It was because of the score. It's hard to get into a game plan when you're not getting first downs. I don't know how many we had in the first half, it's like two or three, and then we start the third quarter out with a turnover again, we really never got into the game plan, and by the time we started moving the ball, we were in the two-minute drill."

On how much they look at what Green Bay's defense did last week:

"That's all we do. That's all coaches do is study what defenses do versus each team, what their plan is, how teams adjust each week. You try to guess how they are going to adjust to you. No one really shows you the same stuff twice, so that's really what our job is."


On tight end Jordan Reed:

"I was happy with how Jordan played. I thought he did a real good job. Every ball we threw to him, he separated, caught the ball, got up the field fast. He showed us out on the field in practice, he showed us in college that he's got a chance to be a hell of a player. It was good to see him come out on Monday Night Football and show us that the game wasn't too big for him. You never know with a rookie in his first game, with the bright lights and everything, how they will react, and he seemed the same as he did on tape in college and how he has in practice and he was encouraging."

On people saying quarterback Robert Griffin III was 'rusty' to start the game:

"It's obvious that people will say that. I think any time that you have three turnovers in the first six or seven plays they should say that about everybody. When Robert doesn't play in the preseason and you know when anything goes bad we are going to get that, I don't think that was it, but I think everybody looked rusty. Everybody struggled. No one did a good job and it took a while to get into any part of the game."

On Griffin III's footwork:

"It was up and down. He had some plays that were good and he had some plays that were bad. That was the same last year. It's the same for any quarterback. I don't think I've ever gone through a game where a quarterback has perfect footwork, so there's plays we take and we try to get him better at and there are plays that he did good. I think overall he was all right and can always get better from it."

On play of the offensive line:

"They didn't do great just like all of us didn't do great, but anytime you throw the ball that much it's going to happen. That's the NFL, that's football. When you get into a one-dimensional game and you are dropping back 49 times or whatever we had and the D-line can tee off, I don't care what your offensive line is, it's going to be tough to protect and keep your quarterback upright."

On when he turned the page to the Green Bay game:

"We don't have much time. That's the hard thing about a Monday night game in this league. You would like to do some stuff before it, but you don't want that to mess you up for the game at hand. We get home late Monday night, we come in real early Tuesday morning, we knock out all those corrections, we meet as a coaching staff and we watch it. Usually about eight in the morning we are done with it and then you have to get going on Green Bay because you only have a day to prepare for them where usually you have two days, so it has been a bit of a grind this week… My body still felt the pain, it's still tough after any loss, but you don't have a choice, you have got to move on; the time is ticking."

On tight end Fred Davis:

"I thought Fred played solid. I can't say anyone on offense played great when we have a game like that, but we have got a good group of tight ends. We rotated all four of them; three of them getting the majority of it. I don't think [tight end] Niles [Paul] had as much as the other three, but all three played. We are trying to get a rotation because we feel we have four good players and we think they can all help us. They all can help us in different areas too and with what we asked him to do, he did a good job."

On difficulty of working in four guys at tight end:

"It's tough to get a perfect equal rotation. What we try to do is do what is best for the team. Each guy has his plusses and minuses. When you have got four guys that can play, you want to get them all involved. So you try to get the guys in in what they do best, but you can't just put guys in in specific situations because then there becomes a tendency issue, so you try to get everybody involved. Our tight end coach does a good job rotating them. It's not something I can totally pay attention to during the game, but it's something we go through throughout the week, and we try to set it up, and each game that it goes I think it plays out a little bit more as the year goes."


On his impressions of Philadelphia Eagles Head Coach Chip Kelly's offensive system:

"It looked good. It looked like it has in college that I've watched for a few years. It looked like kind of what we expected. It's always scary watching [quarterback] Michael Vick and [running back LeSean] McCoy out there because they're as good as it gets."

On how to limit the impact of Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews:

"You've got to account for him. He's a huge challenge, just like a lot of outside backers and defensive ends are in this league. He's as good as anyone. I haven't played him for a while, but he looked great last week, had a good year last year. He's relentless. He brings it every play. He's never going to stop. If you ease up for one moment on him, he will make you pay. You just got to always account for him and never take a play off, because he won't."

On where he anticipates Matthews lining up on defense:

"I don't really know. I don't know what their plan is. He's usually on our left, but you never know. Some games he'll move around to the right, sometimes he's back and forth. Percentage-wise, he's usually on the left, but he's in a 3-4. You never know, especially with their coordinator. He moves guys over all the time, so we have no idea going into the game and we've got to be ready for whatever."

On how much more complete the team is at tight end:

"It gives us some depth. Last year, we had three and then Fred [Davis] got hurt, and bringing back [Chris] Cooley. We used two tight ends and we'd get Cooley in there sporadically. When you have four guys, you've got a lot more depth. It keeps guys fresh. It allows Niles [Paul] to really go off on special teams, which he is a real good special teams player. You're not so pigeonholed if you do have an injury, because you have four guys capable of doing everything. It just makes you a little safer going into games."

On the positives and negatives of running a hurry-up offense:

"My philosophy on offense is just execution, and it depends on what your scheme is. Their scheme, their whole thing is built on tempo. They're not running the two-minute drill. They're running what their scheme is at a hurry-up pace. When we've gone no-huddle, it's not our offense. It's a two-minute drill. I do think up-tempo does affect a lot of things defensively. It's fun to watch. I think there's an advantage to it, but it's not something you just do to do. You've got to work at it year-round, and you've got to execute your offense. Their offense, the plays they run, is a no-huddle package. They do a good job executing those plays. It's something that if you can fit what your scheme is into it, it'll always give you a bonus, but it is sometimes hard to fit a scheme into just a hurry-up tempo."

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