Read the full transcript from HC Jeff Hafley's media availability on November 13, 2026.

So Aaron Brewer, is he out Sunday?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, Brew's in the protocol, so Brew will be out.

And Chris Bell, is he going to be able to play?

Jeff Hafley: Chris won't practice today. I would say he's doubtful, but I would not rule him out.

Is this something that is recurring?

Jeff Hafley: No, Chris got hit in his knee. The same knee, but has nothing to do with his surgery. So nothing long term, like I said. He's doubtful, but I don't foresee this – we'll see if he can go Sunday, but has nothing to do with his (prior) injury.

With Kyle, in terms of the scout team, where he's worked with other receivers like Reagor and Henning. Is there any thought to maybe elevating one of those guys or some of those guys because of his chemistry with him?

Jeff Hafley: Not because of his chemistry. We'll see how the wide receiver depth looks. So if we have to elevate anyone, those would certainly be guys that we would talk about elevating. When you're running scout team cards, you're, I mean literally you're looking at a card and you're going through the progression of the quarterback you're playing. So it's not like you're running your routes and your timing and rhythm. It's more this is the route, go here to here, so it's a little bit different. You know what I mean? So I don't know if that helps in that area, but we'll see tomorrow with how we come out of today and tomorrow with the wide receivers.

Would it be Andrew Meyer at center?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah. Meyer will play center for us.

And how has his week of practice been?

Jeff Hafley: He's done a nice job. I have a lot of confidence in Meyer. I love the way he works. He's got a quiet toughness to him. He's smart. I think in some regards, the center quarterback snap exchange, I think that helps. I think any quarterback kind of gets used to a center, right? So in that regard, I think that's a positive. That's not anything on Brew. That's just taking a half-glass approach to Meyer playing and thinking about your question.

Earlier in the week, you mentioned that young guys could step up from a leadership perspective. How do you know when a guy is ready? What have you seen over the past few months that give you confidence that X, Y, Z guys can fill that void?

Jeff Hafley: I think you watch, you observe. I think you can see some stuff at practice, in the meetings, on the field on game day. I think game day is a big one. And there have been a lot of young guys who have emerged. And that's been nice to see. But like I've mentioned previous times, I think you can develop leaders. I don't just think it's something that's innate and you either are a leader or you aren't. I think you can guide guys in their own ways, even if they're young, to lead and we need to keep cultivating leadership and developing leadership. And we're going to need a bunch of these younger guys, whether they're first or second year players, there's a lot of them. It's our job to guide them and help them grow into leaders and a lot of them are. There's some guys, truthfully, I don't want to overload right now. Some of these rookies have played a lot of football and still have a lot of games left and have a lot on their plate, so you don't want to overload them. But we need those guys to grow.

Who do you see kind of stepping up in the defensive line room? Obviously, Zach Sieler's been that guy for quite some time. Got a trio of second year guys, obviously, just who do you first see kind of stepping up in that?

Jeff Hafley: From a leadership role? Yeah, well one, I think Uche, he's the vet in the room now, right? I had a really good talk with Chop. The way Chop's playing and really practicing, I think he's a great example of what it's supposed to look like. And I think he's going to grow into one of those roles. I can say the same about Jordan Phillips. I mean, he's a guy, second year guy. The way he plays, the way he goes about everything in this building. I mean, he is a great example of leadership and whether or not he's a second-year player only, it's going to be his time now to help out those other players. And I think those are two really good examples of pretty young players still that will do that. And even a guy like Biggers who has really come on lately, second-year player. Again, I don't need him to lead in any crazy way. But within that room, he's a guy that we're going to count on because he's played a lot of football this year and he's doing a good job.

What have you seen from Kyle this week? I heard from a couple guys, he's comfortable enough with the offense to correct the alignment at practice whenever he sees it's off.

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, he's got a very calm confidence about him. I don't know how much you guys have spoken to him. He's got a quiet leadership about him. He's got a confidence to him. He's very calm in the huddle. And he seems to be grasping everything really well. And I think he's done a really good job in the two practices that we've had. Today's a big day again, getting more in the red zone and polishing up some stuff for tomorrow. But again, this will be a process, right? I'm not going to expect him to look perfect. There's going to be hopefully some really good moments for him and then there's going to be some that we're going to have to continue to grow in these next games. But I'm excited for him and I appreciate how he's worked, attacked the game plan and how he's kind of communicating and developing chemistry with the players around him in the huddle.

You mentioned on Wednesday that the four-game minimum kind of allows Kyle a chance to focus on his development over the next month or so. When guys are in that situation, do you see more of a tendency to let it rip when they're out there or have you seen more of a tendency to be timid and just try to keep the ship afloat?

Jeff Hafley: I think it depends on the circumstance. I want Kyle to be himself, and I want him to let it rip. I think that's really important. And we've talked, I think there's certain situations, there's certain times I want him to let it rip and I want him to be confident. Then there's certain times he has to take care of the football and he has to make really good decisions, whether that's in the red zone, whether it's end of game situations, end of half situations. We talk about third down and long situations when we're in four-down territory. So those are the things I want him to be really aware of. But besides that, I want him to go through his progression, I want him to have confidence and I want him to throw the ball. I want it to come out on time and I don't want him to overthink anything. And he has enough ability where if it's not there, he can get some yards with his feet and I want him to be aggressive and play like that. But I want him to be fearless and I want him to rip it and I want him to have that mentality in every game that he plays. I don't want him to be cautious or timid at all.

You've operated with a low blitz rate defensively. Is that how you want it? Does it come from not wanting to leave young DBs on an island or what's your general philosophy on blitzing?

Jeff Hafley: It's just game by game. I think you say that statement as a whole, in the last two games we blitzed a lot. I mean, there are a lot of stunts. There's a lot of pressures. It depends on, really how we feel like we can attack an offensive line, how we feel like we can attack a quarterback, who the receivers are. But we pressured quite a bit in the last two, maybe two and a half games. It's all game plan specific, to be honest with you. I think I mentioned to you earlier that this has been a gradual install of our defense because of fundamentals and technique and communication and confidence with all the new players. You can't just throw everything in. And I think you're starting to see more and more in the last two weeks of whether you call them stunts, pressures, simulated pressures, overload, six-man pressures, zone pressures, but you're starting to see more of a variety of things. And hopefully we can continue to install as we go. That's very important as we go throughout the season.

I want to follow up on the stunts because Zach Sieler, I've noticed just kind of anecdotally he seems to be really good anywhere, he frees up either Uche or Chop coming over the middle. How much of that is lost without Zach or can kind of anyone come in?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, I think Zach does that as well as anybody in the NFL. So of course, when you have a guy who's really good at something, you're gonna need other people to step up. I think Austin's really good at teaching the stunts, the pit games. Now, I think just like any other group, when you run those games and you run those stunts, the continuity of having the same guys run them together is very important. So we've been working really hard on that to have other guys do it. But that's the fun part now, right? To develop these guys. So this is a great opportunity to develop the young guys without Zach there to learn how to do this together, right? And hopefully, now again, it's development and it's coaching, and hopefully as we go a couple weeks from now, we'll say, you know what, these games are getting pretty good. And then by the end of this thing, it's wow, we've got another guy who can really control this and these guys work really good together. And that's our job, we have to coach that.

To that last point, you and JB had spoke last game about how the communication was the best you felt it had been from the defense. Is that an evolution where you feel it kind of click into place and then it just kind of takes care of itself the rest of the way? Or is that something you constantly have to process the way the coverage and rush marriage together and how guys see it holistically?

Jeff Hafley: Well, I think it takes time. Usually any season with new guys in a new scheme, it's always going to take time and guys to get comfortable and confident and have cumulative reps over time. So they're more comfortable with it and understand their assignments so they're not thinking, they're seeing and talking and reacting. And you got to keep pushing them. You got to keep pushing them, you got to coach them and you got to stay on top of it. You can't overload them because, getting back to what I just said, if all of a sudden we start to put too much in and you start to hear it go quiet, it means there's too much in and they're thinking too much. So there's a fine balance between, all right, I want to get this and I want to get this, but all of a sudden you go out to the walkthrough and it's not as loud and it's not as fast and it's just quiet. Quiet's not good. So it's going to be a fine line, but we need to coach that too.

Do you expect to have Kacmarek on Sunday?

Jeff Hafley: I do expect to have Kacmarek, yeah.

What happened with Jared Wayne, he popped up on the injury report?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, Jared will be out. Leg injury. So he'll be out. He won't practice today.

Jahmile Addae told us yesterday that Darrell Baker has looked really good. He said it's not just coach speak, but would you like to give that process more time? You're only three days in, you got 21.

Jeff Hafley: This is your Friday go-to, isn't it? Baker's done a good job. I'm not sure we'll see him this week, but I would see him helping us down the road. So yeah, he's done a really good job. You forget, he's played, he's a smart player, he's very mature and he's constantly trying to learn, picking our brains, talking, and he has stayed really locked in. I really love the way he's approached it. And I will be excited for when he does get his opportunity.

What is the update on Trey Moore? We've seen him rehabbing. Obviously, we thought it was an ankle injury. I think it was an ankle injury. Was it one of the ankle injuries that's a little bit more serious than others?

Jeff Hafley: I mean, serious enough where he's been out. Some ankle injuries, you're back in a few weeks, a month. I mean, obviously, it was more serious because of the time that it's passed, that he's not back. I'm hopeful that we'll have him back at some point this year playing and I am still hopeful on that. That's the best update I can give you because I'm really not sure of a timeline there.

Was the Chris Bell thing just in practice on Wednesday?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, just in practice. He got hit in his leg. Again, I reiterate, nothing major. It does not have to do with his prior injury. We'll see if he can go on Sunday and I do not expect this to be a long-term thing because I know that question will come up.