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
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.
We've got a short week this week with New Orleans, ... It's a team we play in the regular season, so we'll try to put more attention in this game than a normal preseason game because it will come up in the regular season.
There are no shortcuts to building a team each season. You build the foundation brick by brick.
For the short amount of time he was here, he worked hard and picked up things pretty well, assignments and all that. It's tough to bring a guy in here off the street who's not familiar with your system and then put him in the game for a significant amount of plays. To his credit, I thought he was competitive.
I don't rate them, but he's pretty good. There really isn't much that he can't do. He's good in the passing game. He runs inside. He runs outside. He runs with power. He has a lot of speed. He turns short gains into long ones . . . he can throw it. I think he has a pretty good complement of skills.
It?s always good to make those yards when you need them, like in short yardage and goal line situations or like that third quarter (against the Jets) when you're going into the wind. You want to try to control the clock a little bit. Those are important yards, too. I think we can do a better job in running the ball than we did. I hope we can.
I thought there were some good things defensively. It was nice to see the turnovers. I thought we played more competitively in the running game and on third down. But we've only been in camp for three weeks. It's not like we're three or four months down the road.
I thought Tom did a good job managing the game, especially opening night where you know you're going to get a couple of different (defensive) looks. He showed a lot of poise.
I think we have some players who are versatile. We have some depth at linebacker, on the defensive line and in the secondary. What we need to do, hopefully we'll have the flexibility to be able to try to do it.
I think that Nick has done enough in his opportunities this year in preseason and in training camp to earn some playing time. Whether that continues or doesn't continue, I don't know. That will be determined by the way he plays, the way other people play, and again, that just builds a little bit of our versatility.
I think we would have been OK in the 3-4. We just got off to a rocky start.
I think Wesly's experience in the kicking game has definitely showed up here in training camp. Between his experience and his playing ability, his toughness and his desire to be a good special teams player, all of those are weighing on the right side of the scale.
I think any player that hasn't played football for a while, and then comes back and tries to catch up to a lot of guys who have been playing on a regular basis, they're behind. They have to be. If they weren't, then we should cancel all the practices and just show up for the game.
I think there were a number of times when they had trouble with the running game. At times, they had trouble on third down.