‘“There were certainly some things that we can do better from this past season,” McDermott said when he was asked specifically at the NFL scouting combine about why he retained special teams coach Matt Smiley. “Through two seasons (with Smiley calling the shots), we’ve had one that I thought was pretty good and one where I thought that we could have done some things better there. In (2022) we didn’t have the kind negative splash plays like we did in (2023) so we’ve got to get that out of our game.”’