Linebackers Coach Jason Tarver (12.27.24)
I know you can’t give us really necessarily a health update on JOK (Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah) I know that’s really not your place, but can you give us any idea at all? I mean, are you in contact with him? Is he in good spirits or is there anything that you can share?
“Yeah, we text all the time and talk as much as we can. He and the linebackers have their little text going too, so he’s involved. When it gets closer to game time, as any of us would be, he gets excited and he stays into our linebacker things where I send out the pieces of the game plan and comments and he’s even offered some coaching points to some of our other younger linebackers, which is outstanding. Which is good and says what he sees. So, we’re all just rooting for him to be able to figure out everything that needs to be figured out with his travel schedule to see different doctors and things, just making sure he’s good. But good spirits, not hurting. All that’s good.”
With him out, it just seems like Jordan (Hicks) at least has been healthy down this stretch of the season and he’s been playing really well. Just how impressed have you been with him? And I mean, he just seems like his effort is 110% all the time.
“Well, I tease, but I’m not really teasing the linebackers when I say I’m the hardest grader of the coaches. And Jordan’s grades have been some of the highest that I’ve given. We grade them in certain ways, like just did you do right on the play? And his are really high there. But also factor grades, meaning if the play comes to you, do you make it? His factor grades have been really, really high. So just proud of him for doing that. He’s doing a great job of working with who’s ever in there with him, which is one of our challenges right now. Ou challenges as a linebacker group is it doesn’t matter who’s playing around, you’re one of 11, do your job. And our job is to be the nerve center like Coach (Jim) Schwartz says and Jordan is doing a great job of that. Help him when Mohamoud (Diabate) is in there with him or Devin (Bush) or Winston (Reid) or whoever’s in. He’s done a great job of tying everything together and he’s impressive in that – I know I’m going long because I’m excited for Jordan – But to get his body back, to be able to do what he’s doing at this level is amazing. And he works and everything is just a great process to make the play and then go on to the next play.”
I know you like everybody that fills in for you, but how much do you think you’ve missed JOK and just everything that he can do schematically and all that kind of thing for the last two months?
“Well, I think where Jeremiah went, and we spoke about this a little bit, is he really went to making himself the every-down-linebacker. Having the headset, making the calls, to saying, ‘Hey, whoever, Myles (Garrett), move over,” or whatever it is, he went to that point. And when players get to that point, it’s very exciting for a coach because there wasn’t anything that he can’t do and there wasn’t anything he can’t do athletically, of course, but he had taken himself, his preparation and his performance was just going like this. So anytime any player gets to that level, you’re going to miss that because he was playing at that high level. Especially in those last [games]. He’s just going like this. It’s just the progression. Like all the things we talked about with the two things that I said every time I came up here, his body and then going play in and play out to make the next play the best play, he’s doing that. So yeah, you’re going to miss that. But you also know in this business, we need everybody and our guys, in that room, we’ve taken it as a challenge, and we’ve stepped up.”
When Mohamoud jumped offside last week at the one-yard line, Kevin (Stefanski) said it was so uncharacteristic for him. How do you deal with it? Afterward, what are the conversations like with him and obviously he should have known better because they’re trying to get him to drop, like what do you tell him?
“Well, any time you flinch on defense, they’re going to stand up and touch you. So that’s the thing is like, he was conscious of the situation and everything like that, but you can’t get that cute near the line of scrimmage. So with any young player – and Moud (Mohamoud Diabate), I’m proud of where he’s going, he’s doing a great job. We’ve spoken about this with Jeremiah’s progression in the past – is you get into the new environments and you have to go through that, you have to go into each…that’s his first time playing – He played a little bit down there last year – but meaningful snaps on the road, first time backed up, okay, cool. And like Kevin said, he’s going to learn from it for sure. That’s the best part. One of the best things about Mohamoud is once he experiences it, he goes, ‘Okay, I got this, I’m locking in’. And he really is a one-time correction linebacker player and we’re proud of him for that and we’ll keep him going. But that’s all you do. Because if I’m preaching, ‘you got to go to the next play as fast as possible’. I got to be able to do that too. Now you might get a little hand gesture on the sideline from me, like, ‘What the heck are you doing?’ Or we have hand signals that we use. Okay, so, you might see the guy in the orange shirt do a little acting job. But then I’m onto the next play right away and we coach it that way, ‘Hey, this happened. All right, cool. What are we going to do next? Where are we going? Let’s get this done’. And he got better playing as that game went on.”
With Devin coming in, what have you guys seen from him this year knowing some of the adversity he faced earlier in his career, how he’s embraced the role he’s been given here?
“I’m saying proud a lot – maybe it’s because it’s Christmas time or something – but we’re really proud of Devin as he has given himself to the system. He hadn’t been in this type of a system before, and he’s just gotten better and better at it. And you can see him, he’s tackling really well, edges, getting off of blocks. He’s playing –
he’s doing what my hand gesture was for Jeremiah. He’s getting better every week. And so I’m really proud of him because that isn’t always the easiest thing to get into a new place, third team, new system, and then just be like, ‘All right, I got you, coach’. And then just same thing, ‘Oh, yeah, coach told me to be wider on the time this happens,’ and then he does it and then he makes plays doing it. But his tackling in the hole and chasing whoever has the ball has really helped us. And we need him to continue to do that against this team because they have some speed.”
I was going to ask about speed, Jim was talking about it yesterday. How does that make life really difficult for your guys? From (De’Von) Achane to the rest of the guys.
“Not only does speed help, this system uses their players. I have experience coaching with Coach Mike (McDaniel) and Kyle (Shanahan) at the (San Francisco) 49ers and how they do a great job of blurring positions and moving people to get angles on you. So that not only the speed of the players when they have the ball, but the speed of the motions, the speed of their formations. We have to be able to move and leverage things quickly and effectively. Whether we’re bumping things or locking things or whatever we’re doing. They do a great job of that and that’s where we’re going to have to function and it will come right back to that, ‘next play is the best play’, we’ll have to have our mind right. But they do a nice job of using that speed in that, ‘All right, there’s a quick throw over here to one of their fast guys’. If he doesn’t have it, they spread you to the other side and you’ll see a lot of times where the quarterback will look, look and then just throw it wide. So, their people call them checkdowns. A lot of times it’s like touchdown, checkdown in the west coast offense where the vertical and then the checkdown is right in front of the quarterback, they do a good job of spreading the field for their checkdown. So specifically, scheme wise, not only can the quarterback see it, but that can get their speed guys in space. So their system’s a little different in how they distribute their speed.”
A lot of running backs can catch the ball, but what makes Achane unique as a receiving back?
“Yeah, he’s really good. They’ve done a nice job. If you look just – I was talking a little bit about blurring the positions – they’re all kind of built the same and they’re fast and then they can all run all the routes. It’s similar to what we faced last year with the 49ers in that everybody can run all the routes. And so, with him, he’s got good hands and he’s fast. So, they blur the line of that. So again, where they put him in the formations and how quickly they’re moving things, we got to have the correct leverage to send it to our help.”