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
There are 11 guys on the field, including the coaching staff and everyone else on the sideline,
My father was always just part of the team. He willingly accepted whatever responsibility he was given, whether it was coaching the linebackers or the junior varsity.
I think the coaching staff is going along OK.
We made too many mistakes in all phases of the game. We've got to do a better job of coaching and a better job of playing.
I could tell you that in my entire coaching career I have never talked to any player, staff member about football air pressure. That is not a subject that I have ever brought up.
I've learned a lot about the process. I had no idea how the balls got from the officials locker room down on the field and so forth and so on and all of that. That's not something I have ever thought or concerned myself about [on] game day. I've concerned myself with preparing and coaching the team.
Dean Pees has done an outstanding job coaching our linebackers. When he joined us, Dean brought a wealth of experience into this system and has been a significant part of our success over the past two seasons.
It was special and I knew that at that time. I told the owner (Modell) that several times too, when he had some questions about how the coaching was going.
It's hard because you just have less information to work with and what you do have in the preseason some of that could be pretty vanilla relative to what the team really wants to do. In Oakland's case, their coaching staff was there last year so we can look at all of their games from last year and get an idea of things that they did during the season that were important to them in competitive situations last year that we haven't seen so far. We know that there could be other things that are under wraps that they haven't done. We just have to be ready to make some adjustments during the game. I think that's the way it always is. There's no question that this is the hardest 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.
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.