There’s rarely a day that goes by in which Arizona Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon doesn’t say the word “violence” in describing what he wants from his players.
So, it was no surprise that new offensive line coach Justin Frye echoed those words when he was asked Wednesday about the style of play he expects from his group.
“When you press play and you watch, you want the physicality and the violence to be palpable,” Frye said. “If you look at any great offensive line, you look at championship teams and what people have done it, it all starts and ends up front. The beauty of football is, I say this all the time, is it’s not the scheme, the tempo, the new rules, the new penalties or lack thereof. It’s blocking and tackling. And so if you block them then they can’t tackle you. They can’t sack the quarterback and they can’t get to the ball carrier and you have to do that with violence. There’s no other way to do that. So physicality and violence. Like I said, that’s a palpable, tangible thing. You want to see it on tape and then when they leave the field after walking off the 53 and a third (width of the playing field), no matter who you play, they know they played you.”
When asked about moving up from the college to the pro game, Frye was matter-of-fact in his assessment.
He said, “The beautiful thing about football is that when you walk on that field, the 53 and a third, it doesn’t care. Some people can take that like it’s scary. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, but I like to look at it through a different tone of like, it’s a beautiful thing. As I said, it’s blocking and tackling. So the jump from college to professional football. This is their job. These guys are truly vested and all for the right reasons, and so being able to make sure that they are performing at their best. And giving them the tools, giving them the fundamentals. And then being able to win.”
It’s very basic in Frye’s mind.
“It goes right back to you got to run the football, you got to protect the quarterback,” he said. “Whether you’re playing on Sunday or you’re in college football. Now the people that you’re blocking are obviously significantly better. Schematically you gotta be smart that way, but at the end of the day, like if they just cut me open, lay out who I am and what I’m about, it’s improving the player. From it being a 17-, 18- to 21-year-old kids, now, it’s grown men. But the foundation and the basis of that is still the same. And so they’re going to feel and sense that from me that, you know, I’m not an old curmudgeon guy that’s just going to sit back and yell and do this. And I’m not the new-age guru that’s got all the answers. I’m in it with them.
“That was the way when I was a college coach and that’s going to be that way as a pro coach because there’s a center, two guards and two tackles. And all five guys have to do their job. And it’s my job to make sure that I maximize who they are, that we get the right people doing the right jobs. And if you keep it that way, then when that new curveball from pro football shows up that may be new for me, you’ve got a really good foundation or something to fall back on saying, ‘OK, good, we’re going to handle this together and figure it out because we’ve got to block these two guys. We’ve got to protect these three guys.’ If you keep it that way, that’ll be a good bridge when you sit down and talk to somebody. These older veteran guys that have played a lot of football, they will get a sense and a feel for
that as opposed to I’m not coming in to change the game or to reinvent the wheel because we gotta block.”
So far, Frye likes what he has seen from watching the play of the Cardinals line.
He said, “You try to critique and you clean up some things that weren’t good, you scratch what itches and then you enhance and supplement. What was really good? And so I think coming into a system now where they’ll be going into Year 3 and I’m jumping into this and just learning the terminology and those things, but having an identity of who you are and what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, that breeds confidence and confidence breeds success.
“And you can see that on the tape. See who was up, who’s down, who was injured, who was playing. There was still an identity of what we were going to be and how we were going to do it. And they executed at a high level.”
Frye’s passion and emotion is easy to see and he showed that in a light moment when he was asked the reaction of left tackle Paris Johnson Jr. after being hired. Frye was Johnson’s coach at Ohio State for his final season in 2022.
“He was ecstatic,” Frye said. “I was in the airport flying back. Litte bit of tears, a little bit of excitement. Having a good relationship with him before. And I know we get a chance to get back and work together and improve and grow together. So he was excited.”
When it was asked whether the “tears were from you, though,” Frye quickly said, “Just me. He’s a tough guy. We’ll put that on the record. It was just me.”
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