Bill Belichick
Bill Belichick
William Stephen Belichickis an American football coach, and the long-time head coach of the New England Patriots of the National Football League. Belichick has extensive authority over the Patriots' football operations, effectively making him the General Manager of the team as well. He was previously the head coach of the Cleveland Browns...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth16 April 1952
CityNashville, TN
CountryUnited States of America
(Finding a team's identity) is probably an ongoing process. We're a little bit of a team in transition.
When people say they're slowing down, I don't know what games they're watching. I'd like to be able to go out and average 35 points a game.
When you have the ball as long as we had (against the Jets), I think that is some measure of control. But we'd like to have more rushing yards for the number of attempts. There's no question about that. There were some positive things in the game about our running game. There are certainly a lot of things that we can work on. We'd like to be more consistent and gain a few more yards. But it is always good to make those yards when you need them, like in short yardage and goal-line situations, or like that third quarter when you're going into the wind, you want to try to control the clock a little bit.
There are 11 people out there playing defense. What makes a difference is how those 11 people play. That's what defense is about. It's about team defense. You are always trying to isolate it into one player, one situation or one thing, and it just doesn't work that way.
There are 11 guys on the field, including the coaching staff and everyone else on the sideline,
When you have a football team, everybody has a role on it. And Ro's role, for the most part in the last couple of years, . . . was to get the defense ready. Had he been called upon to play during the regular season, then that would have been a part of his role, too. But, for the most part, it wasn't. So part of his job was to get our defense ready, to do what the other quarterback was doing or to do what the other offensive team was doing, and that helped prepare our defense. In no way can I minimize that.
We've got the same amount of time that Jacksonville has to prepare for the game, so we're on a level field there. We just have to do a better job. You've got to play your best football in January. It's that time of year.
When we turn on that tape, we see them beating Cincinnati, we see them beat Pittsburgh, we see them beat Seattle. There are not a lot of teams who are saying that.
You go to the draft board and think, 'Here's a nose tackle. Who needs a nose tackle?' Well, eight teams in front of you need a nose tackle, and there's two nose tackles. It's something you have to figure out where you can get the players to play in your system.
I think that's part of building your team is trying to anticipate where your team is going and to a certain extent where, especially defensively because you have to react to what they put on the field. Defensively you have to be able to defend those things.
Bavaro's probably as tough of a - physically and mentally as tough a football player as I've ever coached. So, I would put him in the rare category there.
Game management, game decisions, adjustments, seeing things during games - it's all important.
I grew up watching my dad scout games live. They played on Saturday. Sometimes they wouldn't get the films until Monday. Sunday air shipping from wherever the college team was located - Starkville, Mississippi, or wherever the film was coming from. It took two days.
We prepare for everyone like they are going to be 100 percent.