Offensive Coordinator Tommy Rees (12.18.25)
Tommy, what was, I mean, when you kind of look back at Shedeur’s (Sanders) performance against Chicago, what was the thing that maybe in that game, I mean, for all the bad, maybe that you saw the positive step forward?
“Well, there were some explosive plays there. Like I thought the third down where he hit IB (Isaiah Bond) down the middle of the field, the drop was really good, the timing was good. That was a look that we kind of had prepped for, knowing how they were going to play and just felt like there was a real improvement there on seeing the coverage, recognizing the timing that it needed to come out on and making that explosive. Had a good alert there on the post. IB versus zero, stayed in the pocket, threw it on time to a spot, getting hit, evades the rush well, was able to extend and you know, there’s always positives to draw on. They don’t always result – drive home results, but there’s always things, little things within the game that you’re going to have positives on and you look to continue to build upon. And then look, there’s going to be ups and downs, there’s going to be things that you want to coach. That’s certainly across the board for our players right now. So, it’s important to find those both positive reinforcement things that you’re doing well and then find the areas that we need to continue to improve on. But he’s been really good this week in terms of taking all that in and being excited to go out and continue to improve and continue to build upon the things that he’s doing well for us right now.”
He talked yesterday a lot about his completion percentage. It sounds like it’s a teaching point he’s been given. What’s the problem there? He’s 20 points down from his college numbers. I know there’s going to be a drop off there. What’s the general problem?
“Yeah, I think it’s different. You know, there’s different levels, right? And there’s different types of throws, you’re being asked. I think for any young player, for any young quarterback, the adjustment of playing in this league of what is open versus what’s not open, what does timing look like versus waiting on things, when is the time to try to extend versus taking what might be there. You know, the completion percentage is – we talked about the sack numbers very early in the year and talking about how that’s not solely on the offensive line, talking about the run game not solely being on the offensive line. The completion percentage is also, not solely on the quarterback. There’s other areas where as an offensive unit, we need to improve and help him out. And then there’s some areas there where we can take completions and find completions that are accessible, and then we got to finish the play at other spots. So, we want to be efficient, but we also want to be able to create explosives, which he’s done a nice job of. And finding that balance is something as a young player that we’re going to continue to work on.”
There’s been a couple of times that in games so far with him this season where he has pressed when you guys fall behind and he’s trying to get you guys back in the game. So how do you find that balance between hitting the next explosive and not going too far with pressing?
“Yeah, it’s similar to what we talked about a week ago. I think you gotta allow the defense and your eyes and your progression take you to where the ball’s supposed to be, take you where the completion’s supposed to be. So, I think, look, you’re not going to get it all back in one play. And I read this week Kevin O’ Connell was talking about JJ McCarthy, and I think he was talking about, like, finding completions and that’s an area to improve upon and an area that he has improved upon. And so many times we have players on the outside, players that we get their ball in their hands and things can be created that way. I think it’s continuing to harp on those and follow the defense and allow them to help dictate where the ball should end up and listen to your feet and eyes as you’re working your progressions.”
Hey, Tommy, your name has come up as a candidate for that Michigan job. Where does that stand?
“Yeah, similar to what I said last week. I’m here and I’m focused on this job and focused on the improvement of our players and the improvement of our offense, and that’s really all there is with that. I’m excited to be here and working to improve our guys.”
But have you been contacted by Michigan or anything?
“Again, I don’t want to get into a lot of that conversation. It’s really just about, my focus is solely on, being the best I can for our players, for our staff, for our organization right now.”
Going back to the completion percentage thing, obviously you talked about the deep accuracy, and he’s shown that time and time again. But then besides, the throwaways right, there’s just misses on other things. Like, have you identified like a fundamental that he kinda lapses to that causes him to miss the goal?
“Yeah, without going into the detail here, there’s certainly fundamental things. When you’re not, there’s difference between like a physical error and a mental error, right? And, when there’s physical errors, you always look at the fundamentals across any position. If a tight end misses a block, are we fundamentally doing the right things with our hands or our feet? If the receiver loses at the top of the route, are we doing the right thing fundamentally on the release or at the break point? For a quarterback, it’s no different. Like, is there something with our feet? Is there something…very rarely do you talk upper body. A lot of it, you talk, you know, lower body, being in the sync, using the right drop. Your eyes allow you to be on time and be in rhythm. And again, like you’re a young quarterback playing in this league, like, there’s going to be some ups and downs there. And, you know, as often as we can, we want him to feel confident and comfortable. And when he does and he lets it rip, he’s as accurate as you’d want. That’s one of his greatest strengths is his accuracy. It’s just about sometimes putting the mental side and the physical side together so that you can play on time and play free.”
Does he need to not go to the ‘Harold Fannin well’, as often as he has been and develop some trust with a few other guys?
“I don’t think it has a lot to do with the lack of trust across the board. I think the ‘Harold Fannin well’ is a pretty good one to be at. I would say, we have trust in our players. Shedeur has trust in the guys that are out there. You know, Harold, a lot of the times you’re going to find him, within the progression. Harold’s done a nice job of winning consistently for us as other guys have as well. So, this is not like a force feed to Harold. It’s just, sometimes the coverage dictates it and Harold’s done a nice job for us.”
Early on, it looked like some operational problems. Was that due to weather?
“Yeah, a couple issues there. Early, you get backed up, you’re far away, headset goes out. There’s some things there when it’s real cold, we just got to better as a collective group. You know, there’s not one person at fault. There’s not one player at fault, one coach at fault. We just got to better as a collective group. I’ll shoulder the blame. That starts with me to make sure that everybody’s communicating the way we need to.”
Tommy, we were talking to Shedeur and Jerry (Jeudy) yesterday about some of these like late rotations that a lot of teams are showing. Like, I think that a lot of those looks that Shedeur saw in the Baltimore (Ravens) game kind of resurfaced against the (Chicago) Bears. How much of it is something that like you can really prepare for? It’s tough to tell what a defense is going to do post snap. But how much of it is like you can prep for and how much of it is just kind of getting a feel in-game and making those adjustments and just seeing things quicker?
“Yeah, Bears certainly had some things early on that they showed that we adjusted to that they hadn’t shown on film. You know, some of the things upfront that we saw against Baltimore have resurfaced. You know, we have a good plan there. I thought our O-line staff did a really nice job in-game. You know, we got pressure on the very first third down of the game, like a free pressure and then the rest of the game we were assignment sound on where we wanted to be protectionally there. So, I thought we did a nice job of adjusting to a new look. You know, so much of what we talk about at the quarterback is where you’re putting your eyes, who’s your key? And if you can, you want to simplify it as much as possible when a defense is doing a lot of different things. You wanna keep their focus pretty narrow at the quarterback position to try to find specific areas on the field that you’re trying to key.”
Tommy, when you look at the Bills, the passing defense is second in the league. How do you guys utilize the run game to help open up those opportunities in the pass game and create that balance?
“Yeah, look, they do a lot of good things in coverage. They got veteran players in the back end that have been in that system a long time. Obviously head coach is a defensive back guy by trade and they take a lot of pride, in their ability to have a vary of coverage, to have disguise in their coverages and trying to keep you off balance. They do a really nice job there. They focus on coverage. I think we have to find a balance. We have to find the ability to run the ball. You know, it’s kind of been hot and cold for us throughout the year, and we got to really rely on that and find ways to get Q (Quinshon Judkins) going and allow our offense to be complementary like when you can run the ball well, it really opens up a lot of things and you can stay efficient and it keeps you in better situations on third down. So definitely a huge point of emphasis for us.”
So Judkins has literally hit the wall. A lot of times, there’s a wall of blockers in front of him, but do you think figuratively he’s hit a working wall?
“I don’t. No, I think Q’s been really good for us. Mentally he’s engaged. Physically he’s doing well. You know, we got to support around him and we got to do a good job of giving him opportunities to find seams like we were doing there kind of in the midpoint of the year.”
Tommy, off of Daniel’s (Oyefusi) question just a little bit, there’s been a lot of commentary lately about the coverage versus progression reads kind of going on around the NFL lately. I’m curious from your perspective, especially having coached in college too, how do you, what do you see from like a young quarterback in terms of how do you teach that and how do you sort of, how hard is that to sort of adjust from one to the other?
“Yeah, the progression thing is interesting because I think as soon as like (Sean) McVay started talking about being in progressions – like (Matthew) Stafford’s played in the league how long and if they’re doing it, then the adage with a progression read for a long time was like, it’s great for young players. You don’t need to know the coverage or one, two, three, four, you’re across the board. You know, I think that’s all true. I think where you start to really see the success of it is like guys can eliminate progressions pretty quick based on coverage. So, when you have a pretty good idea of coverage and you’re in a progression read, you can get to the right side of the progression pretty quickly. You know, when you play these teams that play a lot of coverages, it gives you answers versus what you could see instead of attacking a specific coverage. And then you know, when you’re not sure because of disguise and you’re trying to pick a side or play those types of pass game concepts, then it’s easier to say we’re going to start our eyes on this defender, and we’re going to work through it. Look, there’s a couple different types of read families that have gone around, but certainly you know, with young players, with guys that are veterans, I think those still have a lot of merit of kind of having catch all for it all. Defensive coaches are really good. They do a good job with their coverage packages. You know, you want to have answers for your quarterback as often as possible.”
Tommy, what did you think of the incompletion to Jerry that led to that one interception when you watched it back? And just Jerry’s season as a whole, why do you think he hasn’t been able to get closer to that production from last season?
“Yeah, I mean, I think I’ve been pretty… like I love Jerry Jeudy. And I love what he brings to our group. I love what he approaches the game with. I love his commitment to football. You know, whether or not he’s made every catch that we want him to make, we’re going to still feature him. We’re still going to work with him; we’re still going to trust him. Like none of that on our end is wavered at all. That’s why we still want to find ways to utilize his strengths. And every time the ball goes to Jerry, we have trust that it’s going to be a completion, and we have trust that he’s going to win. And that’s what Jerry has earned with us. And we want to continue to pour into him and continue to make sure that, you know, fundamentally and mentally and the things we’re asking him to do, we’re continuing to bring the best out of him. And, we do have trust that he’s going to make plays for us moving forward.”
Tommy, on the second deep pass to Isaiah kind of motioned him and Shedeur kind of made like a change to his route, I guess, from offensive staff to offensive coordinator, just like how much of that is built into the offense and kind of like, was that something where, even over the course of the season, like you guys are giving the rookies more confidence to kind of adjust things on the fly when they see it?
“Yeah, we have a lot of – we want to have a lot of trust in our guys, right? There’s going to be stuff they see on the field. There’s going to be stuff that happened during the game and that’s something in the quarterback room we talk about. And we talk about having the trust and communication and being able to…certain looks can take you to certain things. So, you know, I would say there’s a trust level there with our players that when they feel confident in something that as coaches and players, we’re going to trust each other on that.”
The fact that Quinshon’s getting hit behind the line so often and Wyatt (Teller) yesterday talked about, you know, facing six men up front, you got to win all your one-on-one blocks. As a play caller, how do you combat that when they’re obviously trying to make the run away?
“Yeah, we got to be creative in ways to get Q going, right? Like if they’re gonna be heavy in certain areas, we gotta find ways to access the part of the field where they’re not. And you know, against Chicago, kind of…you start backed up and then you go three and out, and then there’s a swing in the game there where all of a sudden, you’re off script, you’re off openers, you’re off…you know, what you intended to be at. And we got to find ways, even within those times, to continue to focus on allowing Q to – he’s created a lot of explosives for us. He’s carrying games for us, so finding ways to continue to have him impact the game.”
Tommy, your jumbo package was obviously affected by depth in Chicago. I mean, you got guys off the street. It’s tough, I guess, to integrate them into your jumbo package. But you get the fullback back now.
“You love Adin (Huntington), man.”
I’m just wondering if that’ll help Quinshon.
“Yeah. Like I’ve said, Adin does a great job in the things that we ask him to do. You know, we’ve had some injury issues, we’ve had some depth issues, tight end, O-line. I do think it helps our group. You know, we’ve been effective in that personnel grouping. Adin’s done a great job for us. I’m sure that breeds confidence into those situations for the rest of the group. Adin’s got a lot of energy. He comes in the huddle, he’s ready to go, he’s hardheaded. I mean, he definitely instills some juice into the group when he’s on the field. So, we’re excited to have him back. He’s provided a lot of value for us this season and it’s good to get him back healthy for certain.”
Can I ask you one more about that Jerry Jeudy play? He said he should have slow balled it or something like that. What is that?
“Late hands, maybe? Yeah, like not allowing the DB to know when the balls come typically is what late hands would mean.”
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