Bill Belichick Quotes (217 Quotes)

This is a good opportunity for us this week to go up against another good team, a very hot team, and continue to get ourselves ready for the following week's game, whoever that might be against. We're going to approach this as a normal week.

Eric worked his way from the most entry-level position to a position of great responsibility during several successful seasons. The opportunity Eric has now earned is truly an example of good things happening to a good, hard-working person and I wish him well.

We'll get a good evaluation of where we are going against a different type of team than we played last week in Cincinnati. We'll have some different challenges that we'll have to meet. Theyre a good team and they have a lot of talent.

It was certainly a positive having him out there. I'm sure he'll play a little bit better the next time. It was his first time out all year. He's got a little bit of catching up to do, but he still gave us a good lift and performed well.

We thought he'd have a smaller role. Turns out he has a bigger role.

Fifteen years ago, it wouldn't have been the case. When you don't have free agency and all of that, then you can keep the player in your system and keep developing him and keep him as long as you want. Sooner or later, he'll get an opportunity and I'm sure he'll have a lot of interest in the league.

I felt that once we got to the 31, 32 yard line, we were in field goal range. We didn't want to get in the situation where we throw a couple incomplete passes and Pittsburgh had another timeout. It's like basketball we were playing for the last shot.

We'll take a look at Tom's situation and we'll make an evaluation there. We'll talk about that and make the decision later on in the week. We'll just have to wait and see.

Overall, it's the first game, we've got a lot of work to do, in all areas, laying, coaching, just general execution, you name it. There's just some things we need to do better and I need to do better and we need to do collectively better as a football team. We're capable. . . . We've done it before.

Any time a player goes from one system to another, one thing that could be a problem is breaking old habits. It's not that you don't understand what the new responsibilities or plays are, but just the fact that you've been doing something a long time - it's a habit - and that's not what's required in the other system. And that means kind of undoing something before you can even start to do something new.

Overall, we gave a little bit more of a competitive effort than we did the other two games. Some of the things we had problems with the first two weeks I thought we did a little better.

It's unique. He's like a little kid, running around out there. He's got a lot of energy. In competitive situations, that flows over to other players. It's not the most orthodox way of playing, but he's productive.

We have a lot of guys in that category. It could come down to some game-time decisions. But I think we're heading in the right direction. How quickly that will all come together or not come together, I'm not sure.

It's been brought up many times, but the league refuses to do it, ... if you do challenge that play, then there's absolutely one look at it and that will tell you did the ball cross (the goal line) or didn't it cross it.

We're certainly giving up too many big plays in the passing game, ... Some of it was the technique ... our judgment on the ball, sometimes we just didn't use our help, or where our help was supposed to be, it didn't get there quick enough. ... Some of it is tied into the rush, the timing of the rush, when the ball is thrown. ... The quarterback stands back there and pumps three or four times, that's hard for anybody to cover those routes. We just need better overall team defense.

He made a great catch. That was a huge play. Changed the field position, put us in position to run the clock out. ... He did what he was supposed to do. Tom read it, laid it out there, and Bethel ran it down. I mean, we always tell Tom just throw it out there as far as you can and make him run for it. He can't overthrow him -- he almost did -- but Bethel ran it down.

Tom did a nice job. He did an outstanding job. I thought it was good team play, pass protection, (the) receivers. I thought that the receivers caught the ball extremely well (Sunday).

Cedric is a guy that has a lot of talent and has had some big time production at Arkansas. He missed a little bit of time but we feel like at that point in the draft that he was a real good value there with the pick. He is an explosive guy that runs well.

Every season undergoes changes. I've been in the NFL over 30 years and it has been like that every single year in one way or another. Sometimes when it seems like we've had the most changes, those have turned out to be some of the better years.

I appreciate a compliment, I'm not saying that, ... But what it comes down to is how our team performs against the opponent we're playing against. There's a lot of things in this game that I can't do. There's a lot of things in this game the players and other coaches can't do, either. They just have to do their jobs, and collectively we have to do ours a little better than Denver is going to do theirs, and that's a big challenge.

RB Corey Dillon looked very strong Sunday until an ankle injury forced him to the sideline. The injury is not expected to keep himout for long though. I think he'll be all right, ... I thought he ran the ball hard. I thought he made a real good run there down the sidelines in front of their bench. I thought it was a big-time run.

I have a lot of respect for what those (three players) have done, especially Rohan, who has been here for three years. He's been a great leader and has done, really, everything that we asked him to.

I don't know what normal is. You can go back and look at the past few years. There are always going to be changes.

I think the real key to having a good offense is having balance throughout your entire unit, not just one guy who can do something. You need a lot more than that to make it go in this league.

It's more of a little bit of a change in what the medical people feel is the quickest road to recovery.

They've taken their other defensive ends and put them to outside linebacker. You're really looking at what amounts to a 6-1 (six defensive linemen and one middle linebacker).

I found out about it the middle of last night, ... I coached this game with a heavy heart.

The thing I thought was Jerry's greatest strength ... was his endurance. I thought he was a guy who was able to go hard and run hard on virtually every single play of the game. It didn't make any difference if it was fourth quarter, in the middle of a two-minute drive or the third play of the game. He was always very, very close to his top speed. Nobody else was like that.

He never really got on the field for a significant amount of time. That didn't help him.

We got a lot of people an opportunity to play and you never know when that's going to be beneficial.

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.

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.

There were things that we could all do better -- coaches, players -- there's certainly room for improvement there Sunday night. I'm not saying that was any masterpiece.

We're looking at another really good football team this week in Denver. They're probably one of the hotter teams in the league right now. They're playing very well in all three phases of the game. They've been a good team to watch just because they're executing so well. They haven't had a turnover in three games.

There's probably more (quality) linebackers than we've had the last couple of years. Some of those guys have had a lot of production, have had a lot of playing time.

I think it's just a statement of fact. I agree with it. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. Nobody is holding any grudges on it. But I think that opinion has been expressed far and wide. I'm not really losing too much sleep over it. It doesn't really matter what anybody else thinks about our team, or thinks about us.

They have good players. Not just (Stroud and Henderson), but certainly they're a big focus of it and they're right in the middle. You have to deal with them every play. It's not like you have a corner where you can throw to the other side or you have an outside linebacker (where) you can run away from him. It's two tackles. There is no play where you can run that you don't have to block them.

This year, we have an extra third and an extra fourth. Having those extra mid-round picks in a full draft certainly gives you flexibility to move up, but there's only so far you can go in the first round. From 21st, you're not going to be able to get into

There certainly haven't been many times in the last few years where you release a player and say, 'Well, this guy couldn't help us. This guy just couldn't do anything,' ... It's more a case of you have a few spots and you have more people than you do spots. So then you have to make a decision as to where you want your depth. Do you want it on the offensive line, do you want it in the kicking game, do you want it in the secondary, do you want it at tackle, do you want it at receiver, do you want it at quarterback

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.

He's upbeat. He does have fun out there. He enjoys the competition, and I think he likes what he is doing.

I expect Tom to play. How much, we have to make that determination.

This is one of those great games that went back and forth. It turned into a track meet at the end. I'm proud of the guys for hanging in there.

He's had a tremendous career, ... He's been there 40-some years, whatever it is, six decades, (won) three Super Bowl championships. He's been the commissioner of the AFL, been a coach.

What difference does it make It's the same plays. Our system is our system.

Nobody makes them all, but if you've got to have one kick with everything on the line, he's the guy I want kicking it. It was a great kick, an awesome kick. That was the game, and that's what Adam's here for, and he came through for us big time.

They did a better job at everything than we did. Pass protection, throwing the ball, catching it, making the big plays, I am not really sure what happened out there today. Whatever, it wasn't good.

We have to advance scout all three of them. There are other people in the organization that are taking care of that. It's not really something that the coaches and the players are all that concerned about.

He (Moss) pretty much has all the skill you could look for in a receiver. He can do it all, intermediate routes, deep routes, makes plays after the catch. Just an exceptional athlete.

That guy's really good. He's strong. He's a very strong runner, he runs through a lot of tackles, he's got good balance, he's very aggressive, he's a tough runner. I like him.