Assistant head coach/ special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone (11.9.23)
How has James (Proche II) changed the punt return game for you?
“James has done a good job the last couple of weeks that he’s been here. I liked him when he was coming out of school. I thought he did a good job when he was in Baltimore. Very good judgment, good hands, smart kid, very hard worker, detailed, and is a guy that is going to get downhill. By the way, you jinxed me. You jinxed us on the penalties. You jinxed us. You jinxed us. We’ll be cleaner this week. We’ll be cleaner this week.”
When Andrew decides to go after a guy who’s practice squad and you know him, does he come to you? Do you contribute to that?
“I mean, they’ll tell me what they’re thinking or possibility… guys that we could possibly bring in. So, yeah, they’ve asked me about a handful of players.”
Was Proche one of them?
“Yeah, that was a guy that we had talked about.”
Is Ced (Tillman) someone who can return some kicks for you?
“He has done some of that for us. We’re always looking at the guys on the roster that can do more. So felt like that’s a thing that we can look at moving ahead.”
Returners, is it sometimes just innate skills? Is it just that some guys get it and others struggle to kind of figure out the nuance to being a good returner?
“Yeah, there’s a lot of – when it comes to punt return versus kick return, you don’t see as many guys that are able to track, judge the ball, have the hands to be able to catch a punt. It’s not an easy thing to do. There’s a lot of variation on it when the ball is coming off the foot. So, there’s really only a handful of those guys on each team that can do it. Fortunately, we have a good one right now.”
He’s sort of compared it to playing center field in baseball. Would that be an apt comparison in terms of fielding punts?
“Sure, I think so. When he first came here, the first day that we went out and caught balls off the live foot, he had mentioned that he had played baseball a lot and that helped him with his ability to track and judge the ball. So, yeah, I think that there’s definitely some similarities there.”
I don’t know anything, but it seems like Mike Ford is really good at covering kicks.
“Mike Ford? Yeah, Mike Ford is good, he’s a good coverage player for us. The thing about Mike is he’s relentless. He obviously has really good speed and he’s tough. And when you have those traits in the positions that he plays for us, you’re going to have production and he’s done a good job and he would have even more… like he’s missed a couple. He missed one at Pittsburgh. He’s been close on a few others. He’d be really at the top of the league, honestly, and he’s been a disruptive player for us and excited that we have him.”
How about the tradition of the Baltimore Ravens special teams and just how good they always are and what challenges does that present for you this week?
“Yeah, I mean, since I was a player here, Coach (John) Harbaugh had been the coach and obviously he has a special teams background, so they take a lot of pride in their units. They’re really at the top of the league, near the top of the league every single year. They put a lot of time and effort into how they practice and how they prepare. I saw that firsthand in the joint practice whenever I was in San Francisco against them. They practice hard. They’ve spent a lot of time on it each day. I’ve heard that from a number of players throughout the league and it shows up consistently. And they’ve had good specialists over the last however many years. Obviously, they have an elite kicker, one of the best, if not the best ever to do it.”
Just the idea that they’ve been so consistent for so long, whether it was under Jerry Rosburg or Chris Horton now, when you look at a special teams unit that is as consistent as Baltimore is, are there commonalities that you point to? And you’re like, ‘Hey, if we want to be one of the elite special teams units in the league, we need to follow this kind of formula that they seem to have done well.’
“Yeah, I think that the groups that have had consistent success over the last however many years, you look at the foundation of the unit, right? It starts with footwork. The basic fundamentals of blocking protection. All of those things factor into that. You see teams like Baltimore, New England. I’m hoping that I can take, I feel like I’ve taken on those types of things with my units where you just turn on the film, you’re like, ‘oh, yeah, I can see it. I can see it in the fundamentals and the footwork and the technique,’ and just understanding how to really play the game, being able to use your hands, defeat blocks, set up your avoids, things like that. You know, those guys have done a really good job in Baltimore since Coach Harbaugh’s been there, and, yeah, just hoping we can show up on Sunday. And then back to your penalty question.”
I think you have said in the past that a lot of penalties happen when you’re out of position. Is that what happened?
“Yeah, I think we just got to do a better job playing a little bit more, I would say poised down the field in our technique and understanding how to execute a little bit better a couple of young guys had just some mishaps that we’re going to get cleaned up. It was addressed on Monday. So, we’re going to get those cleaned up this week.”
Is a 73-yard net the best that Bojorquez can punt it?
“Yeah. And I had asked him what his career long was. I think his career-long is 82 as far as the gross. No pun intended, Tony (Grossi). But yeah no, it was a great play in the game, flipped the field. Corey’s (Bojorquez) been a weapon for us. We’ve covered pretty good on that unit as well. So excited that those guys are stepping up when we need them.”
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