Hollywood Herald | Interview
It's been 3 weeks since the 2020 MFL season started and we're starting to see some tendencies about the teams and their play. Today, we were able to get an exclusive interview with Rams HC Pulse about the state of the franchise and the current season.
HH: Coach Pulse, welcome and thanks for being here to answer our questions! After seeing your team play for 3 weeks, what is your impression about this team so far?
Pulse: Hey guys, thanks for the invitation! I have to say I did expect us to be in a better position after 3 weeks. A 0-3 start is rough and certainly won't help our odds of getting to the playoffs. We have a lot of work to do as we're nowhere near to my vision of what this team can be. I have to do a better job calling plays, the players have to do a better job executing. I'm mostly pleased with our offense so far. Jared (Goff) has to do a better job protecting the football when playing from behind, but he's shown a lot of talent managing the offense in general. So Goff gets a + from me so far. We worked with 3 different playbooks in the first 3 weeks and he was very fast at picking it up. I'm sure we'll talk about other individual players later so I'll just say I'm pretty pleased with our passing offense, we have work to do with our rushing offense and our defense is just horrible right now. The most glaring issue is our run defense. I'm a little bit surprised about that to be honest as we have studs with Donald and Brockers at our interior but teams were able to just run and run and run all day against us. Sure, those teams had good OLines with the Cowboys, Eagles and Bills, but giving up around 200 yards per game on the ground, is inexcusable. We were constantly forced to play with heavier personell than we'd like to do, like coming out in a 3-4 base against 11 personell, which we usually play Nickel against. We did that to even have a chance at stopping the run, otherwise we probably would have given up 300 rushing yards a game or more. So we had to do that because we couldn't stop the run in Nickel against 11 personell, however that left the door open for the passing game, because now we couldn't match one of those 3 WRs with a CB. That's mostly why our passing defense struggled as much as it did. So if our rushing defense improves, our passing defense will improve too. We'll have to figure that out in the next few weeks or it will be a very rough season.
HH: So let's talk about that rushing defense. It seemed like it was surprisingly superstar DE Aaron Donald and star DE Michael Brockers that struggled with closing their gaps. Especially for Donald, that's a big surprise and he's been mostly invisible in all 3 games. What's going on with him?
Pulse: I don't know man. He's the best player in the league but he's not playing like his talent suggests. I don't know if it's the scheme that doesn't suit him, if he has some mental stuff going on or if it was just 3 unfortunate games for him, but he has to figure it out. We pay him for being a disruptive force in the interior and he hasn't been this so far. We have to focus on the weaker players like our LBs and we NEED Donald to be an anchor in that defense to rely on, just like we need to rely on Ramsey in our passing defense. And right now Ramsey delivers, Donald doesn't.
HH: So let's talk about the offense which probably will need to carry the defense to victories in the future until Donald and Brockers figure it out.
Pulse: Sure thing! As I said before, I think Goff is doing a good job overall. His picks came mostly in situations where he HAD to try to make plays because we were behind with not much time left. I rather have him throw a pick there while trying to make a play instead of checking it down and basically giving up on the game. Our passing offense is very good. We have to include WR Cooper Kupp a little bit more but it's been good to see TE Higbee making a big jump and being basically a Mini-Gronk for us. Our OLine has to do a better job runblocking and give RB Miller and RB Akers better holes to run through. We'll implement more PA passes from now on, so that should help the offense a bit too. We'll be fine in that area. Again, we experimented with 3 different playbooks, but nwo I think we'll roll with the one we used last game, so more experience with it should allow us to open it up a little bit.
HH: With Aaron Donald struggling.... is there a chance he'll be traded? Would you listen, if a team calls about him?
Pulse: No. No chance. Next question.
HH: How are the new players you signed through Free Agency or via Trade doing so far?
Pulse: So we traded for CB Chidobe Awuzie. He's doing okay thus far. Not great, not horrible. But he'll be fine, just has to get some time adjusting to a new defense. K Aldrick Rosas, our Waiver claim.. well he struggled last game. Not gonna lie, that was rough. He played good before that so we hope that last game was a fluke. LB Dawson is starting and doing well. QB Allen hasn't played yet but in practice he looked sharp. We hope we won't need him of course. WR Nelson was great in game 1, couldn't get much done after that. But that was due to his matchups and deep safeties too. If the situation is right, he'll do a lot of damage. More of a situational player, keeps defenses honest. TE/FB Murray has done a great job so far. The running game worked much better with him on the field. Maybe we'll implement more I-Formation in the future to keep him on the field.
HH: What's your goal for the next games?
Pulse: Figuring out how to stop the run. Plain and simple. We're losing small right now, next step is turning that into winning small, so we can win big in the future. We have a tough road ahead, but we'll figure it out.
HH: Thanks Coach Pulse for your time. We'll talk again soon!
Pulse: Always a pleasure with you guys from the Hollywood Herald. Bye!
