What has this process been like for you? Going from when you left Miami and you thought about where you’d be next, was this at the top of the list? How did you get to this point?
“It was a very interesting process, it was unique to my career in that there was a lot of opportunities out there. I thought it was important to not get ahead of myself and to take each opportunity, fully digest it and I figured when I come to a place there would be a certain feeling attached to your gut, that you’d know, ‘I don’t want to leave this place and this opportunity.’ It was a hectic week for sure, that first week after I left Miami. In that process, I think it was a week and a half in when I came here and I hadn’t overthought it all. I really kept a clear mind that each opportunity. I had heard all the things that each organization had to say and assess each and every option then got here meeting Mr. Spanos and having time with Jim and Joe. It didn’t take long for me to have feet on ground, to feel this is kind of what I was looking for. You just want to be a part of a hungry organization with like-minded football people that are doing anything and everything to win. For me, the opportunity to work with Coach Harbaugh, it was too good to pass up. It felt like I was extremely fortunate to be afforded this opportunity. It felt [like] something I could easily get behind in terms of ambition to go and attack the next thing. Those things, coupled with the spirited attitude of my daughter and my wife, made things pretty easy as a girl dad and a husband to have your family in a place where they can get behind too.”
Have you spoken to Justin?
“Yes, about a week ago. It was good for me, you’d have to ask him if it was good for him. I’m pretty sure it went well. He was in high spirits and just excited about attacking something. You lose in the playoffs, in the first round, it’s a lot of work that you feel kind of like you have an empty stomach. That hunger, I could hear it in his voice, he was excited to start a new chapter and to really attack the process of the offseason to be our best versions of ourselves come next fall. It was enthusiastic. I was in a room talking in a really loud inside voice out of passion and I think he recognized that. We were both geeked for the future and the possibilities that it brings.”
That play that he had against [Miami], his pass to Ladd McConkey in Week 6, what did you think about it?
“I’ve been in the National Football League for 19 years. In that process you are fortunate to share the field with guys that can just, in an 11-on-11 game, they can really take over and really put the team on their back. That was the latest and greatest example of that, on the short end of the stick. I think that’s what’s so exciting about the horizon, what we have in store for ourselves moving forward. It’s rare that you can come up with football plays that has an answer if the defense, gets paid too, and they make the perfect call. I think not replying too heavily on Justin’s ability to do above and beyond, I think is critical to maximize those types of opportunities. It’ll be one of the first things that we’ll try to do, take a little off his plate so he is free to do that when his greatness is required. There’s probably a plethora of examples, you guys can go in your rolodex, as far as plays he’s made that you assume others can’t. In those situations when you’re on the sidelines and you’re playing against it, it’s a lonely feeling when there isn’t a play call defensively that can take this guy’s game away. So if you can’t beat them, join them I guess.”
You’ve observed Justin mostly from afar, outside of the conversation you were just speaking of. A big part of this process is going to be getting to know him, what he likes, what he doesn’t like, how he operates. What are you most interested in learning about Justin as you get to know him?
“I think that’s one of my favorite parts about starting anew. I try to take, in a similar fashion that I approached my last new job, where you let the tape take you to your own conclusions. You deep dive three, four, in his case four to five seasons of watching all his plays and patternizing things that he doesn’t necessarily tell me. He can confirm verbally, but I like to draw conclusions from the tape itself as a student, kind of removed too much from anything but execution. Then you go through that and it’s a reverse engineering problem-solving formula that you find ways to best suit some of the things he does best as you’re learning a new offense. It’s key to have a quarterback maintain confidence in his craft. You can find that by making sure that some of the best things he’s had the most success with for years, making sure those are part of the install process, really problem-solving all sorts of verbiage, all sorts of things. It’s really exciting because for instance, the concept of the RPO that we ran the most, Tua [Tagovailoa’s] most run play in Miami, was a play that I’d never run previous that was part of that process that I think is important to meshing an offense to the skillsets of the players, particularly the best players. Which in this case, and what every offensive coach would like, is to have their best player be the quarterback because they touch the ball every play. It’s an exciting time, I think the biggest thing is you have people with the appropriate intent attacking a problem, hungry at where our football can go and not satisfied of the past. That’s the biggest thing, so I’m excited to get to work with all of that starting with this press conference.”
You mentioned Coach Harbaugh a couple times. What have you admired about him from afar as a Head Coach and what’s the last couple of days been like working with him up close?
“I think winning and adaptation, I would say are the two things that pop off. It’s hard to have success in football, particularly the National Football League. I’m sure when you’re leading a gigantic program, such as Coach Harbaugh did with Michigan, it feels the same as the National Football League. You have all these problems to solve and to have success over time that means there’s an adaptability that I think is super important in life in general, but particularly the state that football is in and how you have to evolve to keep a competitive edge. I think I always admire being in the profession of coaching, you can see when players are better served with the time spent with a coach, when you can tell you made a difference in their lives, who they are as people, those things are why you get into coaching. There’s only a certain amount of people that are actually able to execute that and capture that. Coach Harbaugh has done that over an extended period of time. Multiple times I’ve been on the losing side of it and been able to feel what his teams play like in 2011 versus what they play like in 2025. That consistency and commonality with those teams over that vastly different period of time I think speaks to who he is and his bottom lines and where his compass is and his direction and everything that he does, where it comes from. Selfishly, I think the end result is me being a better coach, better father and a better husband. I think those things work hand in hand to how you’re executing professionally.”
You talk about new voices that come into a locker room, what kind of a new voice do you want to be?
“The loudest, the loudest voice. You want to add value, you want to bring stuff out of people that maybe they are aware that they have inside of them, maybe sometimes they aren’t. I like to come to work and impact people not with what I’ve done in the past or what I’m going to do in the future, I like to impact that day. I’ve always attacked life in that manner. I think people are inspired by that. Team sports, to be a part of somebody, each individual or the collective, they work hand in hand. To be a part of a journey where they get better and you’re a part of that, that’s what my appetite is and that’s what I was very confident I can supremely capture here.”
