Head Coach Todd Monken (8.17.26)
You’re really training Dylan Sampson as a third-down receiving option, which he didn’t do much last year. How’s he filling into that role?
“Well, he’s electric with the ball in his hands. So how do we get that to him? I think over time he’s going to be a guy that’s a tough matchup. He’s learning how to…wasn’t really what they did at Tennessee. Great point where we can get him to, when he gets matched up on a linebacker, be an advantage for us. I think he has that in him. You saw the catch he made on the sideline on a scramble here a week ago. So, there’s a lot there to like, now as we get to practice and get into games. Can he hold up in protection? That’s the biggest thing. Because it’s one thing to say you’re a matchup. It’s another to say, okay, how am I going to hold up when I’ve got to protect a blitzing linebacker, a safety off the edge? Kyle Hamilton comes off the edge, and we need you to really stick him. That’s where it’ll come down to.”
With KC (Concepcion Jr.), we saw him at punt return on Saturday, do you have a sense of how much you’ll be seeing from him in season and how you balance him as an option?
“Well, from what we saw when we drafted him and then getting him here, I hope we’re trying to get him the ball as often as we can. I mean, that dude is explosive. He’s tough, he’s got great contact balance. He understands situational football. Part of that is punt return, we talked about it before the game, like, do we want to put him back there, do we want to put him at risk? Well, it’s our only away game, if he’s going to do it in Jacksonville, let’s get him one there. Even if we want to have him fair catch it, thank God we didn’t go down that road. Let him be explosive. We’ve got to find a number of ways to get him the ball with his explosiveness, his quickness, his contact balance. So, whether that’s punt return, kick return, screens, shallows, down-the-field routes. He’s going to be a real weapon for us.”
With a guy like him and ones similar you’ve coached, as play caller, do you go into a game with a number in mind for how many times you have to get a guy the ball?
“You do, and then games change, right? You have a certain amount, and it goes a certain way, and you end up running it more than throwing it, or it goes the other way and you’re behind and the wide outs are happy and the running backs are pissed. It’s one or the other. So, you go into it saying, ‘okay, who are our touch guys?’ But a lot of times the defense decides that. He’s one of those guys; the reason you can use him as a touch guy is because you can use him in a variety of ways. You can hand it to him, throw a screen to him. Certain other guys aren’t nearly as much volume because they’re more route-running guys, they’re not really return-type styles. So that makes it a little bit harder to say, I want to get this many touches.”
Going back to Dylan, how valuable are those kinds of multi-purpose guys when you’re hunting matchups, even for more traditional players?
“Sure. Well, our job is to find out what our players do really well, what do they lead at? They made it to the NFL because of a trait that they had. Now how do we develop and round out their skill set? That’s what coaching and development is. So, how are we able to get players with an elite skill set to do what they do best without being so tendency-oriented that that’s all you do when they’re in? Does that make sense? How do you get them in your rotation and utilize them in a way that allows you to function at a really high level? And that’s what I really like about Samp. I think he’s going to be an explosive player. You just got to get him in space.”
You mentioned that you were talking to Joe Brady yesterday about the joint practice schedule. Did you talk about starters playing, and if the starters aren’t going to play in the game, how might that impact things?
“We both talked about that if we see out of our ones, our older players, what we want to see on Thursday, they would not play in the game. We agreed upon that. The plan is that we’ll play our ones a significant amount against each other on Thursday in a controlled environment. Not that the other guys aren’t going to get reps, but in a controlled environment, and see where we’re at. I would assume if it’s anything like we’ve practiced before, it’ll be on point with what we want and what we see. And then we get to see where we stack up against one of the premier teams over the last 10 years making the playoffs. I’m excited about that because in that practice we get to see our ones against ones. So, that’s going to be fun. I’ve got a lot of respect for Joe the staff there and what Sean (McDermott) initially started and where Joe is trying to take it, and hopefully they’ll have a lot of respect for the way we play and practice and handle ourselves.”
On the injury front is there a reason to be concerned about (Carson) Schwesinger, or are you just being overly cautious?
“I would stick to the latter. Just being overly cautious. We’re hopeful that we’ll get him back next week, but we’re just being overly cautious.”
So he won’t be in the joint practice?
“Do not see it then.”
Luke Floriea caught that nice pass, what have you seen from Floriea here?
“Well, all he does is come out and practice his rear end off and make plays when called upon. A few weeks ago, we ran that little route to him, and I didn’t even know he was in until he caught it, until he got it ran away from dudes. I’m like, well, this guy’s pretty good. I just love the way he plays football. The guy loves football, and all he does is come out and compete every day and make plays when given opportunities.”
Quinshon’s (Judkins) probably a guy you want to get the ball to a lot, also want to keep healthy and ideally he peaks as the weather gets worse. How can you do both of those things?
“It’s hard. Luckily, we had a really strong offseason when the guys came back, we’ve practiced hard, and I think what we’ve seen through that is we made it through the game the other day pretty unscathed. Again, I shouldn’t say anything because we’re playing again this week, but I think we’re calloused. And you can see that. Quinshon played a little more than we would have wanted Saturday. We went three-and-out on the first drive, unfortunately, so we wanted to get him back in there for one more drive with the O-line, and then once we got the next drive, we took them out, the older players. We wanted to see Spencer (Fano) and some of the younger wideouts. But Q’s a real weapon, man. He’s a bull, he’s tough as hell. We didn’t really block anybody and somehow he got eight yards, so that’ll tell you.”
Hearing from Jared (Verse) today, we talked to him about his talking and how it motivates him and how he hopes it motivates his teammates. The sort of talking he does coupled with the way he rushes with power, is he just a guy who can wear down opposing offenses?
“I think that’s a good way of putting it. I do think he’s a guy that backs it up. He’s not a phony. He’s highly competitive, and it gets him going, his juices start flowing. He’s a self-made guy, and he just wants to be great, he just wants to be elite and help his team win. It’s fun to be around. It’s contagious because he backs it up. He only knows one speed, and that is what’s fun to be around, a guy who backs it up.”
He [Jared Verse] also mentioned the difference he’s seen in this camp to the other couple he’s been in is the heavy load, he mentioned physically and mentally. How do you think your mostly young roster has handled everything you’ve put on them these first couple weeks?
“First of all, they’ve been awesome. I’ve said it before. What’s really cool is they let me be me. They just do. I’m not perfect, but they let me be me, coach them, be authentic and honest with them, and they’re honest with themselves. That’s been really fun. Yeah, it’s going to be a little bit harder just because that’s what I know. I don’t know the other way. It’s not that the other way is better or this one’s better, I only know what I know. So you’re always trying to look at other ways people do it, but then, okay, where are we at? I’ve pulled back on days. We’ve gone helmets, we’ve gone an hour and a half. We haven’t just stayed with the schedule of what I set up, but our guys have really accepted it. Our coaches have done a great job managing the reps. I like to keep the practice the same, just manage the reps. It’s fine. We don’t have vet days off. Come on out there, put your gear on, and then we’ll manage your reps, because we’re a team. That’s what a team does.”
As you self-assess your own performance on Saturday, what did you like or this is something like, “I’m in my first game as an NFL head coach, what do you still need to adjust to?”
“Well, first I got to get a gauge before they pull the flag out of where the 50-yard line is, because I wasn’t sure. You know, the people holding the flag, they pulled it out, and I didn’t know I was at the 45. It was almost like the quarterback going under the guard instead of the center, I was trying to figure that out. So that was pretty cool, figuring that out to get that straight. Joking aside, calling, it was not that difficult. We’re on the field, that was not difficult. The interesting thing is, and I saw Ken around here, he’s sneaking around somewhere, and I was telling him that when you’re in between series, it’s the same as when I was at Southern Miss, okay, you’re in between series. You’re trying to balance, this was really cool, like alright, I’m on the headset with Rudy (Mike Rutenberg), he’s our new defensive coordinator, what are they calling? I want to be dialed in, do we need to throw a flag? I want to hear the offensive staff. What’s the next drive going to look like? You want to look at the surface. What just happened? You might want to have a comment with the quarterbacks or the receivers. There’s a lot more actually when we don’t have the ball than when we have the ball. Once you’ve decided, just pick one and go at that point. But it’s in between the series where you’re like, ‘Alright, there’s a lot more.’ Luckily I was paying attention and hell, I threw the red flag. So those are the things you work through, just being honest. It was cool. Obviously being back home, I felt very calm, everything was fine. Didn’t finish the way we wanted, but I loved the way our guys competed. There’s a lot of those things you work through. There just is. Whether it’s how you warm up, how you prepare, certain things we did during the game.”
How would you feel about adding Za’Darius Smith?
“I’m not going to comment on that. I really don’t know where it’s at, so I’ll leave that to Andrew (Berry).”
Joint practices have become more prominent over the years for teams this time of year. Are you somebody who subscribes to the idea that the joint practices are a better evaluation tool for your team than preseason games?
“Somewhat. They’re both, to me, important. If coaches weren’t afraid of getting their guys hurt, there’s no way they would say that a joint practice is like a game. There’s no way, because everything matters when you’re stacking plays, unless we move the ball, which we’re going to at the end against them, there are no consequences. There are consequences for a trip. Luckily, we overcame it, but there isn’t a damn game or being down on the clock, or coming out of the tunnel as a rookie, taking the field, the jitters of that. Number one, KC catching a punt, does that make sense? There’s so much value in it and then you have to weigh the injury factor. You just have to weigh that. I think Coach (John) Harbaugh in one year they lost J.K. Dobbins and Justice Hill in the preseason. Well, what are you going to do then? You sure as hell aren’t going to play your starters anymore, you’ve been scarred. We all get scarred in life, but no one’s going to say that a controlled environment is better than a game. But if you’re going to play one-on-ones, it’s going to be pretty damn close, if that makes sense. You’d love to play your guys. It used to be, what, play a quarter, play a half, start the third quarter and then no one plays, and I thought that was really cool. You get a little bit of both. I know I rambled there, but you’d want to see them against the ones, and you’d love in a game environment to really get it all.”
Do you intend to use the third game as a dress rehearsal?
“Not there yet. I’m leaning towards that, but I’m not there yet. We’ll see how we practice Thursday, and then we’ll see how we play Saturday.”
So, a follow up question to that, would it be fair to expect that a decision is looming at quarterback?
“You’re putting words in my mouth, I wouldn’t say that. Would I like to have a decision today? Of course. Would I like a decision by next Monday? Of course. I’d love to have that decision. We’ll see. We’ve got a lot of football this week, we’ve already had a lot of football. We’ve got four days of practice and a game that all adds into any decision with the roster and who the starters are. Some are further along than others. We already know, that’s part of it, and I’m okay. By the time we get to next week, that’d be great, we can start planning that way, have some practices, and then here we go against Jacksonville.”
Will (Deshaun) Watson play the third quarter?
“He will, yes. It’ll be Shedeur to start, just like we did the other day. And if one continues like Shedeur went into the fourth quarter, we’ll do the exact same thing. He was so excited, he went back out there again, I said, ‘No, Dillon (Gabriel)’s out there, get off the damn field.’”
Is there a world though in which if he gets enough really good one-on-one versus the Bills on Thursday, could you possibly pivot from Deshaun playing in the third quarter?
“No, that’s the way it’s going to go. It’s probably going to go that way. I’m not going to pin myself in a corner. Shedeur is going to play the first half, Deshaun will play the third quarter, Dillon will play the fourth quarter as we speak right now.”
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