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Q: At this point in his career, how much more prepared is Matt Light to deal with someone like Jason Taylor than when he came into the league?
BB: I think experience is a great teacher and Matt has played against Jason a number of times and I'm sure that
he's learned from every one of those games and individually some of those plays. It's not just how to block a guy, but how to block them on a particular play, whatever the backfield action is, and what the design of the play is, and how to handle that.
I'm sure Matt has learned a lot.
Q: I know guys like Jason give everybody some trouble, but guys like Jason and Dwight Freeney, speed rushers, seemed to be the guys they gave Matt the most problems. Are there adjustments that he's made over the course of his career to be better equipped to deal with those guys?
BB: Like you said,
I really can't think of a player that Jason Taylor hasn't given problems to. I think he's one of the hardest guys to block in the league. Guys that have great upfield speed and quickness and explosive power, speed is one of Taylor's assets, but it's certainly not the only one. He has plenty of other things that are a function, or a compliment, to the skill that he has, or that move that he has. I think if you take that away, that's why he's such a good player, because if you take one thing away, he has other things that he can complement that with. I think that other players that have the same attributes that Taylor, or Freeney, or [John] Abraham, or guys like that, have speed but speed only, I think you can neutralize that or certainly you have a better chance of neutralizing that than you do if it's that plus three or four other things.
That's what makes Taylor, to me, as good a player on defense as I've seen this year.
Q: How were you able to do so well against him the first time around?
BB: I think he gave us problems. He gave us plenty of problems. Again, first of all you have to block him. That's the most important thing. You try to set up things that minimize his strengths and try to attack what you perceive are, I'm not saying weaknesses, but there are some points of his game that aren't quite as strong as some others. I wouldn't say they're really weaknesses. He's great at some things and very good at some other things and so you try to get the very good range more than the great. But that's kind of how you have to deal with him and try to utilize things that your team is comfortable with and schemes that you're familiar with that you know you can execute against him. He's hard. He's a great player and it's hard to find him. You don't always know where he's going to be. They move him around a lot. He's equally adept at playing a number of different spots and they use him enough as a decoy where you kind of load things up for him and then they bomb you from the other side. They do a good job of keeping you off balance and Jason does a good job of keeping you on balance because he has a number of different techniques in his repertoire to deal with different problems so you don't always know exactly what he's going to give you.
Q: Are they still standing him up some and dropping him into coverage?
BB: He does drop into coverage. He's not up on his feet much. Very, very little. But, that doesn't mean he won't drop. You have to treat him as a down lineman. At times he'll play as a linebacker, so then you have to make that adjustment once that happens. I don't think you'll know too often until after the ball is snapped because they don't really give it away.
Q: Do they move him around before the snap? Will they shift him inside before the snap or anything like that?
BB: I don't know exactly how they organize it, but he has some degree of freedom as to where...he can line up pretty much anywhere. I'm sure it's organized in their mind, but from an offensive standpoint, he could be in any one of three or four spots and is lined up in those spots at various times. There's other times where he'll line up in a spot, but it's not always the same spot. Sometimes it's the tight end. Sometimes it's the open side. Sometimes it's the right side. Sometimes it's the left side. It's just a question of how they call it. There's other times where he just kind of floats back there and could end up in a lot of different places and I think anytime you have a player like that, I went through a similar situation with [Lawrence] Taylor in New York. Sometimes he was strong. Sometimes he was weak. Sometimes he was left. Sometimes he was right. Sometimes he was tight end. Sometimes it was the open side. However you want to solve the rules for that particular game and that particular opponent, but you have a lot of variety in you can get into the game and say, 'Well they're doing this, so we'll just do that,' and you're comfortable doing that. With a player like Taylor -- Jason or Lawrence, or whoever, you could make those kinds of moves and I'm sure that it's not a problem. Your team can handle it.
Q: Moving him around a lot, could that be the other team's effort to avoid the other team getting a double-team or a key on him?
BB: He's a player that you have to account for and if you don't know where he is, it's harder to account for him. It's harder to scheme for him if you want to run to him and you don't know where he is. If you want to run away from him and you don't know where is. You don't know exactly where he is. It is. It's hard to set up a play. Sometimes you can set up a play, because you know where a player is going to be, and say, 'Okay this is what we want to try to do to this player. We want to screen him or we want to run away from him or we want to double-team him,' or whatever, and you know he's there and you can set that up. In this situation, it's harder to do. You can say, 'Well, we want to run a screen to him.' He might be to the side of the screen. He might not be to the side of the screen. He might be somewhere in the middle. Or you might want to run away from him and just try to run the play away from him, but he might not be away from the play. So then the only way you can do that would be to check the play at the line of scrimmage, come up and say, 'Okay, we're going to do this or that depending on where he is,' and there's a place for that too. If you want to absolutely be right, then that's what it forces you to do. It forces you to identify the defensive line of scrimmage and then try to figure out what you want to do.
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