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Offensive Coordinator Nathaniel Hackett**
Training Camp — August 7, 2013
Q: Has this always been you? Can you tone down the enthusiasm at all?
A: No. I can't do it. Always has been. You should see my son. My son, all my kids are wild, I don't know how my wife does it. I'm telling you, you think I have energy? You put all the Hackett's together, oh my goodness. Then you add my dad in there; he's still the same way, too.
Q: A practice last week ended with a touchdown bomb, which led to two chest bumps by you.
A: I almost pulled a hamstring. That was a long, long run. Those throw and catch by 88 (Marquise Goodwin) and 3 (EJ Manuel), that's something I hope we get to hear a lot. Then you get to hear that sweet song, Buffalo "Shout" song and be in there. I can't wait to hear that and see that go down. I'll be up in the box though and I won't be running down the stadium to go give them a chest bump, so I'll have to stay up there for that one. Anytime you score a touchdown, it's unbelievable. It's hard to score a touchdown; I don't care what anybody says. In practice versus defense, on the field, it doesn't matter. Anytime you score, you can celebrate and you should get used to it. The more you celebrate, the more you want to do it, the more touchdowns come.
Q: What can you say about the play of EJ Manuel so far?
A: I can't compliment that young man enough. I just can't. He's having so much fun out there and from a coach to be able to come in and give him a new system, something he's never really done before and not only see him really work hard and try to get it, but his enthusiasm about it. Just the want and the desire and the work ethic. Then the fact that he can come out here and he can put it on the field. All those things are things that as a coach, it's great to work with him and Jeff (Tuel) and Kevin (Kolb). All those guys are doing a great job. We still have a long ways to go in my opinion. I think that we can still get a lot better.
Q: What can you say about his ability to throw the deep ball?
A: It reminds me of me when I used to throw deep like that. Like I said, especially with 88 out there and 11 (T.J. Graham), when those two guys are on the outside, I mean literally you've got to go back there and you've got to throw it as far as you possibly can. We actually were having a bet who could out throw one of these guys first and it actually ended up being Kevin actually overthrew I think it was Marquise, overthrew him, and we were like "Oh we did it! We can actually out throw them", but that's probably not a great thing. You're just excited to see that we have some arm strength there.
Q: With Stevie (Johnson) down, the focus has turned to the young receivers. What has been your impression so far on them?
A: It's going to be a constant evaluation. I think that with even the young guys and the older guys I think the way we do it, the way that Coach Hilliard does it, he's doing an awesome job of getting a lot of guys in there at a lot of positions. Just so we can evaluate and we can see what they're going to be capable to do out there and what routes they're good at and so forth. So I thought Brad Smith had a very good day, number 10 (Robert Woods), 88, 11, all those guys they've really been thrown in to this. They're going out there, we're going fast. Those guys run a lot. I can't say enough about that crew. It's fun for a quarterback and a coordinator to be able to dial up another throw when you've got guys like that out there.
