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
Really, that's the best we've played in the red area all year long. We made a couple of stops after a sudden change, after we turned the ball over offensively. We came in there and didn't let them score a touchdown. We held them, based on the field position that we had, so, I mean, there were some positives to build on.
It comes back to team defense. I think you have to be careful about trying to stop one guy in this league. There are not too many teams that you play that have only have one player. The Raiders are a team that has, when they're on offense, 11 good ones and you better be ready to stop all of them. Not just one guy.
I think you have to be careful about trying to stop one guy in this league. There's not too many teams that you play that have only one player. The Raiders are a team that has, when they're on offense, 11 good ones and you better be ready to stop all of them.
We're going to do what we think is best. What we did against Oakland may or may not be what we think is best against Carolina. Last year we played Indianapolis in one type of a defense. We played Pittsburgh in another type of a defense. We played Philadelphia in another type of a defense. We're going to do what we think we need to do to try to match up and stop the opponents. I'm not making any promises to anything or anybody about what we're going to do.
If you don't stop the running game, it doesn't matter whether you can stop the passing game or not. They don't ever have to throw it if they don't want to. To me, against a team like Atlanta, if you can't stop them from running, it doesn't really matter what else happens.
They haven't given up many long drives. They're not in the red area very much. They're not at the goal line very much. They usually get them stopped before people get down there against them. They don't give up many points. They're good.
He can get down there and stretch the inside of the field. It's always good to be able to stretch the field vertically at both your exterior positions and in your interior spots because, as a defense, if you only have one thing to stop, it's not nearly as big of a problem as when you're trying to stop five or six or seven things.
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.