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
I don't think we had any major problems on the offensive line. We were all at the game. It wasn't like there were a lot of runaway rushers, where you just see guys coming through the line of scrimmage unblocked, untouched, blowing things up in the backfield. There were times when we got pushed back. There were times when we pushed them a little bit. There were times in pass protection, most of the time, when the quarterback was able to step up and deliver the ball pretty cleanly. In relative terms, it was OK. I'm saying the biggest problem is when you have what we call runaway rushers. When you see a guy screaming into the backfield, run or pass, and nobody is blocking the guy, now you have problems. You certainly want to avoid that.
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 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.
There certainly was room for improvement there. I'm not saying that was any masterpiece.
We're treating this like a regular week. Put it in the headline. Bold type. It's a regular week. The players know that, the staff knows it.
We knew it when he went there that he was going to make them a powerful team and a force in the league and a force in this division. He already has. That's no surprise to me, believe me.
We thought it would be in the best interests of the team to be in here. This is probably similar to the conditions we'll be playing in, in terms of wind.
We thought he'd have a smaller role. Turns out he has a bigger role.
We're not on a sightseeing tour here. We have a job to do. We all have something that we want to try to accomplish. That's really what we're going there for. Understanding what the setting is and what the stadium is and all of that, yes, we are all aware of that.
Why? Because he is slightly less than 100 percent.