Head Coach Jack Del Rio
After watching a second productive day of practicing in pads, Head Coach Jack Del Rio is pleased with the physicality and effort he's seeing from the team. Del Rio and the coaching staff are focused on monitoring the development of the team as a whole.
Here are the quick hits from today's press conference:
Del Rio emphasized the importance of practicing with pads.
"It's good to be in the pads. We don't have a ton of padded practices before we leave here. I think it's less than a dozen. It's really important work for us. If we're going to be a physical football team, there's a certain amount of physical work that has to go in. I feel like two really solid days are in the book right now."
The offensive line has a lot of talent and is coming together nicely.
"I think it's going to be a really good group, but it takes time to come together. In particular with the offensive line, we're talking about that fist. You don't want individual fingers, you want a fist to be strong, to be solidified on the same page with communication, combination blocks. All those things take time."
Del Rio believes the offensive and defensive lines are the foundation of the team.
"I would just say there are a lot of different areas on our football team that have my attention, will continue to get my attention. Being physical in the trenches is where a lot of what we do starts. Really determined to insure that we have good, physical offensive and defensive line play and I think that's the foundation of everything that you want to do as a football team."
He noted that the coaching staff is still learning how to utilize the best qualities in their players.
"We're learning about these guys that are new to us. So as coaches, we want to make sure that we're really thorough with them, that we give them an opportunity to express who they are, let them compete, and then learn. We're taking notes and we're sharing the information. As a football team, we want to make sure we take advantage of the individual talents that we have."
Del Rio thinks the high level of competition during practice will continue to get better moving forward.
"We're going to use all of our guys. We're going to use all of the talent we have and we like to play all of our guys. Keep them fresh. We're going to count on both of those guys to play big for us this year and play a lot for us this year, but who rolls out first, we'll see. It's competitive."
