Read the full transcript from OC Bobby Slowik's media availability on September 10, 2026.
There's some aspects of this offense that are similar to Mike McDaniel's. Was it important to you to add your own wrinkles, not from an ego standpoint, but just in terms of teams, opponents not being able to anticipate and think it's the offense that was used last year? How much time do you spend thinking about that? And were there a bunch of wrinkles you've added?
Bobby Slowik: Yeah, that's a good question. There's a lot of facets to answer that. I would say starting off, me and Mike are pretty similar, as far as people from what I would consider like Kyle's tree – Kyle Shanahan's tree or the Mike Shanahan tree, we're pretty close to that. We all kind of have our own little ways of doing it, but we generally see the game in a fairly similar way. And then as far as what you would expect to see us do, I think a lot of the core components of that are going to be the same. But at the end of the day, when you're watching an opponent and you're game planning and you're creating things you want to attack, even though we're really trained to look for the same things and kind of diagnose things the same way, you still notice different things just as an individual. So how you would go about attacking that is gonna be different from individual to individual. Like I'm gonna attack it different than McDaniel's gonna attack it, different than Kyle's gonna attack, it different than Sean McVay and Matt and Mike LaFleur, like all the way down the line. We all kind of are very similar and yet very different, you know? And I would say the same thing when everyone's about to watch the game and the season. You know, there's gonna be a lot of things that are very much gonna be the same and there's gonna be a lot of things that are very much different. I can tell you one thing, I'm huge on, and that's just beyond scheme in general is like style of play is a huge deal to me. And it's a huge deal to Coach Hafley. I know he's made that very clear to everybody, but like we want to play with high effort. We are going to play physical and we are going to make sure that at the end of every game, we're held to a high standard in that regard. So like the scheme is the scheme, there's going to be some different stuff, but the style of play to me is always going to be the starting point.
What should we look for from an evaluation standpoint from this young receiver core?
Bobby Slowik: Yeah, I mean again, generally going to be looking for the same thing all the way across the board. I would say, you know, you got a lot of rookies playing for us. Generally, we're a young offense. I'd be shocked if we're not one of the younger offenses in the NFL. Your first game's on the road, you got to deal with crowd noise. Obviously, there's pretty good players on defense that you're going against. What happens during the game that creates adversity? How do you respond to that? And do you rise to the occasion or do you sink? That's what we're going to be looking for. How do we help pull guys out that maybe get stuck in a little rut? And how do we get guys that have the right intent and attitude when they're in that atmosphere, how do we keep them going? And that really is going to be the number one thing for me. Like there's going to be a lot of adjustments in this game. There's going to be a lot of things both sides are going to have to do just from not having much to go off of before we kind of get into this thing, which is why we really got to hang our hat on the style of play. And once that starts to fade – and it happens sometimes to young guys when they get in that environment. It's our job as coaches, we got to bring them up.
People expect you to want to run the ball a lot and want to use De'Von Achane as much as possible. On the other side of that, defenses will probably expect that as well and look to stack the box. How do you value the balance between trying to dictate what you want to do, but then also maybe taking what the defense gives you?
Bobby Slowik: Yeah, I'd go back to kind of what I've said from the day I was hired here. Like my goal and our goal as an offense is we want to be efficient, we want to make sure we're moving forward, we're gaining yards, but we want to keep the defense off balance. There's a lot of ways to do that. Like we can run the ball against a loaded box that for us could be a really good look. We get what we want and we can have an efficient run play, but it might be offsetting it with certain passes, certain screens, like anything else you can think of, you know, an around, a reverse, whatever to get guys just off balance, get them thinking something different than what they're expecting. And then, from there, we could talk loaded boxes, but as much of an issue as anything in offensive and defensive football these days is pressures. They might not load the box, but we could get some front movement, some different backer movements, and some different blitzes that create some issues for us. So we know that that's something we're going to have to react to and prepare for, and we're doing that right now. Then we'll see where it goes.
When it comes to Chris Bell specifically, what is he showing you? I mean, he was activated on August 17th. So what is he showing you over the past three, four weeks that let you guys believe that he's ready to start from Day 1?
Bobby Slowik: I could tell you only kind of what I've seen since he's been able to be with us, which is once he was cleared. He's had a great mindset in meetings and everything all the way up to that point. But first of all, it's a really cool story that he's even in a position to be able to play. I think that's incredible. I think that's a credit to the kid. It's really special to be around something like that. Now he has a lot of catching up to do, like physically, just he's well more than a month behind everybody else that had OTAs and then had probably a good two, three weeks of camp under their belt before he really was with us getting back into the football work. So I think that's part of it. He's way further along now than he was the first day we saw him as coaches. And I'm sure he's voiced like getting back into football shape and keeping that going longer is a big part of kind of where he's at right now. But when he's fresh, when he's good to go, he's explosive. He's aggressive. I mean, he's a big man that's moving really fast. I mean, he gets rolling. He's got good change of direction. He plays with the right mindset. So like all that stuff is really exciting. It's just getting his legs under him as we keep going through this and as he keeps kind of recovering.
Regarding Malik Willis and his running ability, do you go into a game saying, I don't want him to expose himself that much either through plays or scrambles or is it the game just dictates that. I mean, is there a set number or it's just whatever the game offers?
Bobby Slowik: I'd say usually game dependent. When you got a guy that's mobile and can run, I think this day in the NFL, like there's not many teams that don't use that. You make football 11 versus 11, which it rarely is on offense these days. So especially with someone as athletic as Malik is, through the course of the year, everybody's going to see him carry the ball in some way, shape or form. It's more like, how do you talk about protecting himself on it? And then how do you coach the people around him to make sure that he's protected? Because the reality is, even if he's not a running quarterback, he's going to take blows like you are. If you're a pocket quarterback, you take some nasty blows in the pocket. A lot of times when you're actually out on the edge and you're running, you're a little more protected than you would think. But we still go into large amount of detail about when to go down, when to stay up, how we block for him to make sure that he's able to slide if he needs to, he can go out of bounds if he needs to. There's a lot of layers to that. At the end of the day, we do look at it as, I mean, Malik Willis is our quarterback. So we need to win the game and we're going to do everything we can to win the game. We also need to make sure he stays healthy. And that balance is always going to – that's going to fluctuate as we go through the whole season.
Has there been anything about him that has surprised you from the point where you've gotten him to where he is right now?
Bobby Slowik: Yeah, I mean, I've heard he was fast. He is fast, fast. I mean, that guy can fly. I mean, we got some guys on the team that can run – De'Von can run, J-Wright can run, Bonner can run, but I mean, Malik is up there. He can roll. Outside of that, like specifically as it pertains to the quarterback position, I've really been impressed with his pocket work and his footwork. I think he has a great feel in the pocket for navigating like the subtle movements that you have to make just to get enough space to navigate a throw or to see a window to see if it opens. And really things you spend a lot of time talking to pocket quarterbacks, like getting them to do and feel that, he's there, like he does that. And then his feet are in a really good place right now. When they're in a really good place, he throws the ball very well, very accurately.
Have you seen that many arm angles from a guy that you've coached before?
Bobby Slowik: Probably not quite that many. Malik can throw it any which way and I don't even know if he realizes when he's doing it. He can get it up, he can drop it down, he does it all.
You think he doesn't realize when he's doing it?
Bobby Slowik: Not all the time. I think there's sometimes that it's intentional and there's sometimes he just is making a pretty natural movement and knows that that's how he's got to get the ball around somebody. He plays the game in a really fluid manner. He's been impressive to watch. He's been really impressive to watch.
Where is the offensive line from a chemistry standpoint?
Bobby Slowik: I mean, as always, when you got new pieces in there, you're always working through it. The more reps, the more it helps. The continuity is a big deal. If we're able to stay healthy, especially early on through the year, like the more we can just stay together as a unit, that's always big up front, really big up front. It gets hard when you have to move pieces in and out. I would say right now, entering Week 1, considering there's a rookie up there and there's a second-year guard and a third-year tackle, like we're in a good spot. We're in a good spot up front. I think everyone up front is confident with where we're at and what we're doing. And Brew kind of leads the charge on that, Pat Paul kind of leads the charge on that and they've really done a good job, bringing everybody with them. That's in the run game, especially right now. I think they're rolling and I think we've gotten to a good spot and protection as well.
What are some of the things you can do to negate a player like Maxx Crosby?
Bobby Slowik: I mean, honestly, not much that hasn't been tried before, and some of it didn't work, you know? The guy's an unbelievable player. He just plays with his hair on fire. It's so fun to watch his film. I mean, it really is. He's everywhere. He could be on the backside of a pass or a run play 25 yards off the screen and next thing you know, he's like 30 yards down the field just laying out making the tackle. I mean it's unbelievable to watch. As a pass rusher, he's a very efficient pass rusher. Like I think he's a top 10 pass rusher in the NFL at least, that's at minimum. But what really is like impressive when you watch him, like his run defense is elite – and I mean elite, elite. We've talked about that as much as we've talked about the pass portion of it. He's just a very, very good all-around elite player. And for us and how we have to approach him, like that has to be at the forefront of our mind. Everybody on the field, it doesn't matter what position you are, you need to know where 98 is at all times. And there's things that we have to help try to negate his effect on the game – the reality is when it's an elite player, you're only going to negate it so much. And then when he gets you, he gets you and we got to get back up and we got to go play the next play. But we got to limit the amount of times that he's affecting the game.
With Will Kacmarek battling an injury, obviously you've got to get guys ready to possibly play in this game. What is their transition, the newcomers, in terms of their in-line work. Where are they?
Bobby Slowik: I'd say we're in a lot of areas with guys that have just kind of came to us since the cutdowns have happened. We're fresh, like you would expect it to be. We're coaching our tails off to get these guys ready because we know there's a potential for them to have to get into the game sooner rather than later. We're doing everything we can and the guys that have the chance to do that, we feel confident they're in a spot that they can do that. Specifically in the tight end room, like I think what we do at that position may be a little different than some of the things they did from where they're coming from. So there's not only the scheme adjustment, there's also the technique adjustment, the way we approach run blocking in general, which is a little different. So they're on their way. We still got a long ways to go though, which we'll be grinding through here over the next really two, three months.
And where is Greg Dulcich?
Bobby Slowik: I think Greg's been really fun to watch. I think he's made big steps compared to last year. In camp, there were times we really actually featured him and used him on the strong side of runs. We were running at him, and zone scheme, gap scheme, didn't matter. We were trying to see where he was at, and he's come a long way. I think he's in a really good spot. I think he's really taken his fundamentals and his technique in that part of the game to another level, but more than anything, Greg, he takes a lot of pride in it. Like he really wants to not just be a pass game player. He wants to be an all-around tight end. So we need to continue that growth in that regard and go see it on Sundays.
The mental part of this game can be as important as the physical. With a young group, how much time have you dedicated to have conversations with these young players if a play doesn't go their way to be able to shake it off and don't get stuck on it?
Bobby Slowik: Yeah, that's very real. We talk about it on offense all the time. It's a little different than some other phases of the game. Like on offense, mentally, if one guy isn't doing his job, the play's ruined. Like it's over, you can't even get it started. You could have the best play call in the world and our left tackle messes up and we lose 10 yards, you know what I mean? So everybody being on it mentally is huge. And when you have young guys that are out there, like we know young guys are going to make mistakes. It happens. Being able to flush it, go to the next play, keep playing with the same intensity that we played with before is going to be paramount to us. But equally understanding that you're one of 11 that's out there, and the other 10 got to be able to bring you along when needed and pick each other up when needed so we can stay together. I mean, to me, honestly, our play style, our effort and our ability to do that and stay together is what's going to wind up deciding the game on Sunday.
