Michael Clay

Q. What do you think about the kicking balls? (Jeff Neiburg)

Michael Clay: (Jokingly) I think you got all the answers from [Defense Coordinator] Vic [Fangio]. He obviously jokes with me when he retires that wants to be a special teams coach, so he is well-oiled for that. In terms of the kicking balls, yeah, the ball is traveling, it’s still warm out. Shoot, it was 102 degrees feel on Sunday. [Tampa Bay Buccaneers PK] Chase McLaughlin is a really good kicker. He was able to connect on that end-of-half situation and it’s just the trend of the league right now.

Q. Can you specifically say what is different about the kicking ball? (Merrill Reese)

Michael Clay: We just get to work on it a little bit longer than we used to. We used to only have an hour, now we get the whole week to fill it in, and the kickers get to pick what ball they feel pretty good about. You only get, I think, six balls. If you lose one of them, and one gets scuffed up and the NFL deems it’s not playable, then it’s out. You’re down to five. So, you just have got to make sure those balls are primed and ready to go come Sunday.

Q. Who works on the balls? (Brooks Kubena)

Michael Clay: I think it’s a lot of people, a lot of EQ guys, and they get feedback from [Kicker] Jake [Elliott] and [Punter] Braden [Mann], and everyone’s in cahoots in terms of what the ball wants to look like.

Q. Do you think this is good for the game? (Bob Brookover)

Michael Clay: The NFL wants more points? There it is.

Q. When do you want the balls to be ready? Usually, you have that an hour before the game. Do you by Friday? Saturday? (Brooks Kubena)

Michael Clay: Yeah. [Punter] Braden [Mann] and [Kicker] Jake [Elliott] are able to work through it throughout the week to feel it, also with the long snapper and everything like that. So, by the end of the week, we feel good about the six balls ready to go.

Q. What has TE Cameron Latu brought to you? (Dave Zangaro)

Michael Clay: Yeah, he’s brought a physical presence, obviously some athleticism, and a lot of energy. You see it on the sideline; you see it after some plays with the special teams unit. They’re getting up, they’re celebrating, and it’s not just Cam. I know you just specifically picked out Cam, and like I said a couple of weeks ago, it’s a heck of a story kind of bouncing around the league last couple of years to find a niche, whether it’s a fullback or tight end, but also playing special teams. He’s helping out the unit in any way he can, and obviously, he started with the tone against Tampa Bay with that huge block.

Q. How much was that him finding that crease done throughout Pre-Scout? (Jeff McLane)

Michael Clay: Yeah, I mean a lot of it goes into all the work that Tyler [Brown], Joe [Pannunzio], puts into scouting. But again, at the end of the day, everything looks great on paper, everything looks great on my whiteboard until we could properly execute it like we did on Sunday. It’s all to the players. I mean it doesn’t just start with [TE] Cam [Latu]; it starts with [S] Sydney [Brown] biting the eyes of the PP, it starts with [OLB] Patrick Johnson getting a wide look on that guard, making sure that post arm isn’t stopping Cam. Then Cam with his handwork to block down the hands. You could see the long snapper try to hold him for a dear life right there. Then he slides his hands off the table, take the ball off the punter’s foot without really hitting him was pretty good. Then fortunate enough, we got a nice little hop right to Sydney and he was able to do the rest.

Q. Head Coach Nick Sirianni was apparently saying, ‘I told you’ after that one. Can you tell us about the backstory there? (Tim McManus)

Michael Clay: We go through our game plan early on in the week, and have an inkling when we could possibly get one. It was the same thing that was said on the field goal block against LA on that last one. You think you could get one? I told you so we could get one, and fortunate for us it executed in a good spot for us.

Q. How much work goes in, we saw K Jake Elliott have the one touchback, the short touchback. How much work has gone into trying to perfect that kickoff? (Dave Zangaro)

Michael Clay: Yeah, I mean Jake does an unbelievable job in trying to perfect anything he does. Whether it’s field goal, whether it’s kickoff, a lot of work goes into it in terms of behind the scenes. We went out there, I know it was raining last Wednesday, but we were still able to go outside and just get a feel for it. Then a lot of it just comes down to confidence. Jake was able to say at the end of the week, ‘I’m pretty confident in this kick.’ That’s all I needed to hear to implement it, but also it’s a good changeup. You saw a couple low liners, then you saw some up in the air. The kickoff team has done a really good job thus far in the first four weeks of covering down. Any way we could get the starting point for the defense inside the 25 on kickoff is pretty good for us, so we’re going to just try and keep evolving it, try to keep getting better at it. Just because of the kick, we have to keep working on our technique and fundamentals from a kickoff cover standpoint.

Q. Michael, what are the instructions to P Braden Mann before that last play? The safety? (Reuben Frank)

Michael Clay: Yeah, it goes all the way down to our situations, and not going to too much depth into it. But Coach Sirianni does a great job putting us in any of these situations throughout the week. We talk about it a lot. This is my 12th year. I’ve never had to be in the take a safety situation, and it came up. I can now check it off my bucket list of things to do on special team situations, but Braden did an unbelievable job to waste those six seconds, protect the ball, get out of bounds so he doesn’t take an unnecessary hit, so he executed at a high level.]

Q. Those conversations, like from your perspective end of game because P Braden Mann’s not used to handling football, so what were your thoughts going into that? (John McMullen)

Michael Clay: My thoughts were that we’re going to execute at the highest ability we possibly can. I really don’t have any worries about Braden handling the ball because we put them in so many of these different situations, end of game, end of half. Little things you really don’t think about could happen throughout the game. So, when the snap from [Long Snapper] Charlie [Hughlett] got to his hands, I knew what exactly what he was going to do. He did a great job being able to run out that time, so the confidence doesn’t just happen on Sunday. It happens from Wednesday when they get into the building and throughout the training camp and OTAs.

Q. Looking at the clock, how do you make sure he does run the clock out? (Reuben Frank)

Michael Clay: We have a set of parameters, and we time it out in practice with the scout team going out and chasing them. How many seconds can we waste off of that? And it fell under those parameters where we felt good about possibly wasting the clock at that point. Then at the end of the day, if there is one second left, it’s 90-something degrees out there. You don’t feel awful about having to kick from the 20. If there is one more second, get us all down in another situation, but like I said, Brandon did an unbelievable job of wasting all that time, and it’s just kind of like the internal clock and some guys have the wherewithal to look up at the screen as they’re leaving like ‘All right, I’ve got this much time to waste’.

Q. Is there a number of explosives plays you aim for from special teams in a season, and how many, there’s some obvious ones, but how many have you guys made already this year? (Bob Brookover)

Michael Clay: Yeah, I don’t know if there’s a set quota on explosive plays that we want throughout the year. I think for me, personally, I just want us to go in game by game. Can we help this team win in any way possible? Whether that’s flipping the field in the punt coverage, which I think we could do a lot better at. Coaches have the misnomer; they only remember bad plays. There’s only two plays that really stick out to me. But to take a positive turn, just start off that game with a punt return touchdown off a blocked punt. Obviously, that just gets the juices going, and it’s able to allow the team to feel confident in a hostile environment that at times we haven’t played well in. But for me, it’s just how are we going to make this, how are we going to help this team from that third phase? I thought they did a pretty good job starting the game off, executing our field goals. Our kickoff coverage was really good, and even our kickoff returns outside of one, where we just misplayed the ball, getting out to the 40 one time with Will [Shipley] and 35 by Tank [Bigsby]. So, any way we could help out the team, shorten the field for our offense, and lengthen the field for our defense.

Q. Following that, it’s been since 2014 that you’ve had this volume of big plays on special teams. You were there in ‘14, there was such an emphasis that year on adding those types of players. In camp this year, did you have a sense that this group could do these types of things? (Zach Berman)

Michael Clay: You always think from a coaching standpoint throughout camp, you want to have an explosive special teams unit. To put it in terms of like, did I know it? No, because you don’t know who you’re going to get week in and week out. But the work they put in from Wednesday all the way up to Sunday, you get a sense like, all right, we’ve got a chance, we have an opportunity to hit one of these. Things of that nature. But again, everything looks great on the whiteboard upstairs until we put it on the field. Kudos to all the players to executing that game plan, going out there, and changing the dynamic of the game, with that blocked punt or another big play.