On Kris Jenkins

Kris is a dominant force. Both in the run and the pass game, we've got him moving all over the field. There's some teams you're going to play, they make it a perimeter game, they a make it a down-the-field game, you're not going to have the kind of production you want in certain games. I think teams have been pretty strategic, they know we're strong upfront, they know it's going to be challenging to run the ball inside. You saw Minnesota, they were running a stretch play and they were making adjustments. Games like that, production for defensive linemen will go up when teams decide to run the ball tight inside and involve a guy like Kris Jenkins or Mason Graham, Kenneth and those guys. I'm very confident that Kris is still one of the best defensive tackles in the country, if not the best defensive tackle in the country. I know production doesn't show that. Eventually, we're going to play a team that has to run the ball at us and eventually, we're going to play a team that has to drop back and run the ball. We've yet to really face that. I know our stats aren't really what fans would want them to be but eventually somebody is going to have to throw the ball. Not play-action, not boots and things like that, not 7-man gap protection. They're going to have to get their skill out and I believe we'll be ready for that when that happens.

On Mason Graham

It was pretty remarkable, actually, no one really knew what to expect with him going out there with that big club on. Minnesota actually had an offensive lineman with a similar situation, the left guard played with a club on the last three games. We scouted them and he was hit or miss with his ability to do certain jobs but Mason went out there and with his athleticism, his twitch and explosion, he was able to get off blocks remarkably with just one hand and the club. Very encouraged, only to get better as he goes with this thing.

On the third quarter dominance this season

Number one, I would say our conditioning. The things that Coach Herb does with the guys in the weight room. We come out of halftime and we still have focus, we're still locked in. It goes to Coach Harbaugh's program and the culture. We make some adjustments but it's not a crazy amount of adjustments, I would say. The guys, they know the mistakes they made in the first half and they clean it up. We have really smart players. We can go into a gameplan with some levels to certain things. We have really smart players that can make adjustments when need be, whether it's after a drive or in the locker room at halftime. We have really smart coaches that make those adjustments and see it in the box and on the field. I think it's a combination of a lot of things and, obviously, we have a very good offense that insulates the defense within the third quarter with drives. Sometimes those drives go for 6, 7 minutes on the offensive side of the ball. We're sitting over there and still being able to make adjustments and catching our breath and do some things. I think there's a great amount of working together with the offense, defense and special teams.

On whether he's trying to get certain pairings when rotating players

Yeah, there are moments where you want to do that. For right now, what we're just trying to do is make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to go out there and compete. There's certain guys, there's a combination of guys that go in at the defensive tackle position. You don't want two of the same positions on the field at the same time. For the most part, we're not limited in that way and the edge players, same thing, there's not a limit. You can see a combination of four different guys. When you start to get into the third downs and situational football, you're going to see more skill, more speed on the field, things like that. On a first and second down rotation, not normally a big deal for us. Just trying to get guys fresh and play three, four, five snaps and then rally a group in. The good thing about rallying a group in is you make a mistake on a play, I can turn to the guys who are going to be heading in the next three or four plays and say, hey, did you see that? We just made a mistake on that, clean that up when you guys get out there because offenses, if they find a play that works, they're not going to wait for the next drive to do it. They're going to keep running it. Once you get them on the sidelines, you'll make an adjustment. Until then, that's the great thing about rotating guys in, you can make that adjustment before the drive is over.

On coaching batted passes

At the beginning of fall camp, Coach Minter implemented with the staff these four pillars that we work on every day, we talk about them every day. We get up and present in front of the group each day. One of them is ball disruption. For a defensive lineman, we're going to get our hands on the ball when we're tackling somebody and try to punch it out. We're going to get our hands on the ball when we're sacking the quarterback. We always talk about tackling the throwing arm. The third way would be getting a mere hand up when we're in engaged in a block. We drill that every single day, that's something we do pre-practice every single day along with throwing arm and punch-outs and things like that. We spend a lot of time on it and it's starting to pay off along with the other pillars that we do, you're seeing them on the film every single day. It's just drill work that we do and there's not a situation in practice where maybe we're going against the offense and we get a mere hand up and knock the ball down. That frustrates the heck out of J.J. McCarthy but that's game. That's why we're trying to incorporate the mere hand in and we're doing a really good job of it in practice and it's carrying over to the game.

On how a team prepares for a team that made a midseason coordinator change

That's a tough one. We won't know until Saturday what they're going to do. We're preparing for a lot of things. The biggest things for us is we don't change a lot from week-to-week. We just fall back on our pillars, fall back on our training. More of a first game of the season type of mentality. Sometimes you don't know what they're going to run, either, so it's not the first time it happens in a season. Whether you call it a training camp game where you're coming out of training camp and here's your opponent, maybe they had a new offensive coordinator and you don't know exactly what they're going to put on the field. You do some research and you try to piece things together and I think that's what makes our defensive staff and Coach Minter really good. This isn't our first rodeo, this is something we've spent a lot of time on. It is challenging and we'll know on Saturday what they've decided to go with. To change an entire offense in two weeks is what I would think to be pretty challenging. There will be some wrinkles and things this coordinator will feel strongly about and so what are those things? That's something we have to piece together.

On Cameron Brandt and Trey Pierce

They're great. They're both really driven young men, they work hard. They're up with a group of guys—they're very intentional with their work. They're hardworking and there's a lot of pressure on them from the upperclassmen when they go out on the field to make it look like its supposed to look. They're very prideful in that and it's invaluable the amount of experience they're getting right now. It's only going to carry over for when their number is called next year in a meaningful time. I'm very happy with where they are and they'll continue to improve. They're with us every day getting a lot of reps, even in practice. When it is time for them to go out in a game to show what they've learned, they do a really good job.

On whether he did anything to keep Graham engaged during his time injured

Mason took it upon himself, he didn't change anything he did. He prepared like he was going to play. He was in the meetings, he was taking notes, he was asking questions. Even if we installed something and he knew he wasn't going to be out there, he asked questions to verify. OK, what are we doing, why are we doing that? He was totally engaged. He took care of his body and got his mind ready, never let it wonder. He was heartbroken he couldn't travel out to Nebraska with us but he didn't change his approach and I think that's what allowed him to go into this Minnesota game and really not miss a beat.

On the '7 week rule' with his younger players

I think when you look at the freshmen that are sophomores now like Derrick Moore and Mason Graham, Kenneth Grant, they really started to peak as they got further into the season last year. Coach used those guys as example and I believe that Cam Brandt played his best game this last game, which was the sixth game. Trey played his best game. I think that they'll only continue to improve. There's the fall camp stuff where you're drinking through a firehose trying to learn everything and then you're overwhelmed. You do some good things and more bad things. You start stacking days and stacking practices and stacking games, pretty soon you catch up to all that and you're able to slow things down and execute at a high level and put together all the tools your coaches are able to teach you. Totally agree with what Coach said, he's been doing this a long time and I see it in our guys as well.

On the inside and out players being in sync helps when making adjustments

We have the big guys on the right, the edge guys on the left and I kind of sit in the middle and we make—whatever I say to the D-tackles, I make sure the edge guys hear it or vice versa. You have to work as one unit along the front. We saw it last week, Cam Goode made a great pass rush, he gets through clean very fast, Jay's hitting an underneath move on the tackle and we're losing contain and we cost each other production on a sack. It's very critical that we are all on the same page, all four guys understanding what the right side is doing, what the left side is doing. Understanding what both sides of that side are doing. We can't be disjointed. Everything that we do is about trying to be on the same page and communication. Whether it's a four-man rush, a blitz, a pressure, a line stunt, whatever it is, we have to be in lockstep with each other.

On seeing the cumulative effect of being in year three of the system on the field

There's a tremendous amount of confidence. The guys know where to be, they know how to do it, they know what it should look like. I think it's paying off. We make tweaks here and there, Coach Minter has different things we implement throughout a gameplan here or there. For the most part, there's consistency. It's amazing when you can play fast, play violent and play quick and be decisive. Then the production comes.

On whether he thinks that's the cause of the increase in turnovers

Just like I was talking about with the four pillars, ball disruption being one of them, I think that's played a huge part. Coach Jay Harbaugh presents to the team on ball disruption every single day, all the different techniques we want to disrupt the ball. I don't know there's anybody else in the country doing it like we're doing it and as descriptive and as detailed as Coach Harbaugh gets. I think that's one of the major things of paying off on pass breakups and ball disruption, interceptions, turnovers. Last year, we didn't have one time that we got on a throwing arm of a quarterback and disrupted the ball. This year we've already had a couple. There's a lot of things that are paying off based on those presentations and the emphasis we've put on certain things.

On constricting the pocket

It's very frustrating, you break down everybody you're going to play. You break down your third-down protections, you break down what their tendencies are and very few teams are seven-man gap protection or a heavy protection team and when they play us they change their identity. That's understood, we have some really dynamic players up front and you certainly don't want your quarterback throwing the ball from his back. We have some things that we can do for a seven-man gap protection but there's seven guys but four rushers. The math is not in your favor. You have three receivers out in a route so if we can do something to convert and get a little bit of pressure on the quarterback and collapse the pocket on him and there's no run lanes, it's a win for us. Like I said, there's going to be teams who have to drop back and throw. I think you'll see the heat we have to bring and the pressure we have to bring. We have things that we can do to bring pressure but, also, if you look at Nebraska, Rutgers, Bowling Green, most of those teams ran the ball on third down. They weren't dropping back and throwing the ball. You can call it all you want, when you think about pass they run the ball, that can be frustrating for a defensive lineman. Protections are unique against us and different against us. We've planned for that.

On whether he's pleased about keeping quarterbacks in the pocket

Yes. We've let the quarterback out. Again, if you have six guys in the protection and you have four rushers, there's two gaps so you're trying to collapse the pocket and people want pressure, they want sacks. Well, if you get too far up the field, guess what, you've opened up an interior rush lane. There's a fine line in that. There's an unselfishness that our guys have that they're going to sacrifice a little bit for getting up the field and cutting it loose and then just collapsing the pocket on the guy and not letting him take off and scrambling.

On the frustration of the defensive line

I don't know what else to say about it other than what I've already said. There's a lot of quick throws, there's a lot of seven-man gap, there's a lot of boots, there's a lot of sprint outs, which is smart. That's smart by the opponent. I don't want to say our guys are frustrated, they're not frustrated. It's what you have to do against a front that can be very dominant when you drop back and throw the ball. I know some people don't think that way, they want to see sacks and things like that. I do believe when teams will do that, I believe that we will have the production that we all want. We can't ask the offense to do that, right? They're smart. Minimize and neutralize a strength of the defense by moving the pocket and putting more guys in protection. We don't feel like we need to bring, 6, 7 guys to create pressure. I believe when teams drop back we won't need to do that.

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