Bill Belichick addresses the media during his press conference at Gillette Stadium.
Q: In this Tony Dungy style of defense, is [Larry]Tripplett going to spend more time over [Stephen] Neal or Logan Mankins?
BB: It depends on which front they have called over or under and it depends on which way the formation comes out, right or left. If they had an over called and the tight end was to the left, then he’d be on the left. If they had an over called and the tight end was to the right, he’d be on the right. If they had an under, it’s just the reverse. It depends on how much they call over, how much they call under, it depends on who they declare the tight end. In a formation like we have, with two tight ends in the game, they could theoretically declare either guy as the tight end, or if they just declared one guy as the tight end, then it would always set to him.
Q: He would be over Steve’s right shoulder?
BB: It depends on where the tight end is and that’s if they’re in an over, that’s right. But if they’re in an under, which they do play under, then he would be on the other guard. We don’t know exactly where he is going to be and they don’t know exactly where he’s going to be. When they call under, they don’t know if he’s going to be a right or left, or if they call over they don’t know if he’s going to be right or left. You could play the percentages, but you don’t know for sure, unless they check it in the huddle and say, over left or over right. But I don’t think they’re doing a lot of that, but they could.
Q: Did they show anything in the preseason?
BB: That’s what it is. I don’t know how else I could explain it. You’re asking if he’s always over the same guy and the answer is it depends on what they call and on top of that it depends on what we’re in, in terms of where the tight end is. Those four valuables, two and two, that’s how you get the alignment.
Q: After Tripplett leaves the defensive huddle, does he have to stand there and see Daniel Graham and Ben Watson go?
BB: It depends on how they set it up. I don't know. They could always say, if there is only tight end, pick one, throw where you want. That guy is always the tight end, or it could be, ‘Well if one guy is on and one guy is off, then we’re always going to go with the guy that is on. If both guys are on then we’re always going to go to the left or the right or to Watson or to Graham or to [Dave] Thomas.’ Whatever rules they set. That’s what you do defensively. You set up whatever rules you want, so that once you see it, you can identify it and play it. No, he’s not going to stand there and say, ‘What do I do?’ They’re going to have a rule as to how they’re going to treat a different formation, whether the tight end is on or he is off or he is to the left or to the right or whatever their rules are, and that’s how they’ll set the defense up. It’s the same way we set it up. It’s the same way everybody sets it up. That’s the first thing you have to do is set the fronts, so you have to have some kind of rules on how you’re going to set your front. Then you have to decide, at the same time, how you’re going to set your coverage, what trumps your coverage calls. What’s the strong side? What’s the weak side? That’s two-by-two. What’s three-by-one? What isn’t? How you want to treat a slot, even though it may not be a slot, but you might want to say, we’ll we’re going to play this like a slot because that’s what they do. That’s what defensive game planning is, is figuring out basically what you want to call but then how to adjust it against the different looks that they present to you. That’s what defensive coaching is. You don’t have any control over that. You can control what your rules are, but you can’t control where they come out.
Q: Is Tripplett a good player? Explosive? Does he have that penetrating ability?
BB: Yes. That’s what he is. That’s what he did for Indianapolis. He’s quick. He has good playing strength. He’s good on the move. All of those players are good on the move.
Q: It looks like they have Takeo Spikes playing that Sam linebacker like Derrick Brooks in Tampa. Skill set wise, is Spike similar to Brooks?
BB: I don't know. Again, in their defense it isn't really a Sam or a Will. It's the guy that's with the three technique and then the other guy goes away from the three technique. So if it is an under and the three technique is weak, then Spikes is going to be weak. If it's an over and the three technique is strong, then Spikes is going to be strong and [Angelo] Crowell is going to go opposite of Spikes. Crowell is to the one technique, or the open side, and Spikes is to the three technique or the tight end side. Exactly. Whether it’s Sam or Will, again, it depends on what they’re in and what you’re in.
Q: So they’re not always playing to the strength of the formation?
BB: They either set the line over - three guys to the tight end or under with three guys away from the tight end, whichever way you set the line, you have to flip the linebackers the other way to balance out the formation. That’s what most teams do that play that, whether it’s the coverage scheme or whether it’s an over/under front, if you set the line one way, then the linebacker has to go the other way.
Q: How much did [Tedy] Bruschi do in practice yesterday?
BB: Enough.
Q: Are you happy to have him back?
BB: Sure. You bet. It’s great to see him out there. There’s a lot of guys that it’s good to see them out there. We’re getting better.
Q: What kind of extra dimension does Spikes add to their defense?
BB: He’s a good player. He’s a physical guy. He runs well. He’s a good blitzer. He’s a big, powerful guy. A strong tackler. He’s a good player.
Q: How much uncertainty do you have typically the day before the season starts? Do you really know what your team is at this point?
BB: I don’t think anybody knows. They might say they know, but they don’t know. The regular season is a whole different ballgame. Teams game plan you and they scheme you and they try to attack your weaknesses and that may not have been done to that extent in preseason. You try utilize your strengths and matchups you think are favorable to them and you try to compensate for them. You try to emphasize the ones you think you have. It’s a whole different ballgame.
Q: Did you ever go into a season saying, ‘Okay we’re all set here,’ and then it blows up?
BB: It’s like I said, the guy falls off the building, everything is fine until he hits the pavement. Absolutely. Until you get out there and start playing the regular season, you matchup against different teams and different schemes and different players and let them try to go after your weaknesses. I don’t know if you really know how weak they are or how strong they are.
Q: With Willie Andrews getting experience on offense, defense and special teams, how has he handled the responsibilities that come with learning all of that in addition to the general rookie transition?
BB: He’s working at it. He has a full plate. He has a lot to do. He’s working at it and I think that he’s done about as well as you could expect, especially because we didn’t really make that transition until we were into training camp. We didn’t start there from day one. He has some positive attributes in each one of those things and he has a lot of work to do and he has a lot of learning, but he has some skill to be able to be competitive at it as well. We’ll see how it goes.
Q: What do you see in JP Losman that has improved from last season? Is this a better offense for him?
BB: I don’t know about that. Last year he was kind of in and out. We didn’t really see him leading up to the first game. He played prior to our second game and then played in the second game and that game got kind of out of hand early, played in the snow and all of that. He’s a good athlete. He has a good arm. He can make the throws. He can run around. He has really good receivers. I think offensively they’re a very explosive team. All of their skill players have big play ability, all of the receivers. The tight ends run well. Of course [Willis] McGahee, those guys can hit the homerun. He has good weapons around him. I’m sure the extra experience has helped him. They’re a good offensive team and he’s a part of that.
Q: He’s been shuffled in and out a little bit. Can that hinder a player’s development, especially at the quarterback position?
BB: I don't know. If you're not really part of the organization or the team, it would be hard to evaluate that from a couple hundred miles east of Buffalo, how those things affect good or bad. I think sometimes it could be the right thing to do and sometimes it might not be the right thing to do, but I think unless you're really there and you know everything about the situation and know what's going on, it would be hard to make an evaluation. I'm sure they’re doing what they think is best and they've done what they think is best. We really have no control over that, so we just have to be ready for everybody.
Q: I know with [Phil] Simms, he had a few rough years with the Giants and then he finally came around. Why is it, at that position, it seems like the arc of development seems so different from player to player? Is there just a psychological factor there? Is it finding the right fit for certain guy? What is it about that position?
BB: It's probably a combination of all of those things and each situation is different. Each player is different. I don't think there's any just straight line development, ‘This is how it goes for everyone.’ Some guys adapt quicker or the system is a better fit for them or whatever they’ve done previous to that is closer to what they’re doing than another system. Sometimes the quarterback’s play a lot of times is evaluated based on how the team does and that may not necessarily be true of his individual development. It may be reflective of it, but it may not. It may have more to do with the people that are around him or the situation that he is in. Just to throw out a name, Brett Favre. Just to pick a name. I think each case is different. Certainly there is more going on at that position in terms of learning and understanding and processing after the snap and all of those kinds of decisions. The guy handles the ball for at least half of the plays of the game. That’s a lot of decision making right there, no matter who the receiver or tight end is, not that they don’t have to make decisions, but they don’t have the ball in their hands that many times like the quarterback does. Each one of those decisions gets magnified. So definitely they have a lot to learn. Phil Simms, some of those issues were injury related and the team when he came there was a bad team.
Q: Did you see the game last night when Nick Saban threw out his red challenge flag and the referee didn’t see it and Pittsburgh got the snap off?
BB: No.
Q: I noticed that when you throw that flag out there, you make sure to get it out there and…
BB: Try to hit them?
Q: [Laughter] Exactly.
BB: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m sure whatever Nick did was what he thought was the right thing to do. He’s a smart coach and he’s a good coach. I’m sure whatever he did, whatever decisions he makes are the ones that he thinks are the best.
Q: The broadcasters were saying that you can actually run out onto the field and throw it out there to make sure that the ref sees the flag.
BB: That’s true. You're normally restricted as to how far you can go, but you can go beyond that to call a timeout or to throw the flag to kind of get their attention. In the past, they've always given latitude on that when they’re down at one end of the field or the other and they’re not looking back at what's behind them. They're looking at kind of what's in front of them. Although there are some guys that are looking the other way, ‘I don’t know. I didn’t really see the play, so I don’t know exactly what happened.’ It sounds like a good question for [Mike] Pereira and whatever Nick had to say after the game.
Q: Is your offense limited at all just because you have new receivers and guys getting back out there after missing some time?
BB: I don't know. I don't know what we would do if something else happened. It isn’t, so our offense is what it is for this week. It will be what it will be for next week and it was what it was when we played Buffalo last year based on whatever those factors were. I don't know. If there was something else in place then maybe it would be different. I don't know what that is or what it would be and obviously we don't think about it.
Q: Does Corey Dillon seem reenergized this year? It seemed like last year maybe wore on him.
BB: I think it was a little bit of a frustrating year. He missed some games and that frustrates any player. I think Corey has had a really good camp. He came to camp in good condition. He’s had a good training camp. He’s had a good preseason. I think every part of his game has improved - his pick up, his route running, his running. He's been explosive. He's run with power. He has his quickness. He has always looked good with the ball in his hands and I think a lot of the other parts of his game he's worked hard at and they look pretty good too. I think all of our backs look like they’re ready to go. I hope that they’ll be productive.
Q: How has his dynamic been with [Laurence] Maroney?
BB: I think it's been great. I think that position is a great position in terms of those guys working together Kevin [Faulk], Corey, Patrick Pass, and Laurence, those guys all work together, communicate together, pull for each other, help each other out. It's a very unselfish group. They're great to work with. They're good for each other and they help each other and they really support each other. Really all of those guys, they’re really a pleasure to coach. I don't think you could ask any more from them in terms of them being teammates to each other and working with each other. It's impressive.
Q: What do you remember about your first game as a head coach against Dallas?
BB: It didn't go great. They were a lot better than we were. We were in the game late in the third quarter, but we really couldn't stop them and we really couldn’t move the ball. It was a bad combination.
Q: You jumpstarted the Dallas dynasty in that game. Emmitt Smith and Michael Irving rushed and caught for 100 yards each respectively.
BB: I'm glad you reminded me of that. We knew when the schedule came out that that was a good football team. I think they were maybe like 10-6 the year before. They had a good team and they were good all the way around. They were well coached. They were a lot better than we were. Jimmy [Johnson] and I have talked about that game a couple of times. They played a game that they needed to play against what they were playing against and they did a good job. They didn’t give us many opportunities and we didn’t create very many. They were just pretty much in control the whole game. I don't think that the score was indicative of probably the difference between the two teams, in terms of the quality of the game. What was the score?
Q: 26-14.
BB: It was pretty competitive on the scoreboard probably I think through three quarters, close to three quarters. But we never really had a chance to win. It wasn't like we were a possession away at the end of the game. We were never really in that spot.
Q: What did you talk about with Jimmy?
BB: I forget who they played the second week, but I think they were a lot more concerned about that game than our game. I forget the schedule.
Q: How about your second week as a head coach?
BB: It was here. [Michael] Jackson made a big catch and run, it was like a 60-yarder. I don't know. That was kind of the key play in the game. Obviously it was a good feeling to get that first one under your belt on the road. It gave our team a little bit of positive reinforcement, which we needed.
Q: Do you still feel the same now, nerves-wise, as you did way back then or is it totally different now?
BB: No, I would say it's the same. Because when you’re a coordinator, or when you’re calling plays, which as a special teams coach I was going back to ’79, I pretty much had done that all the way through, not the first three years, but from ’79 on I pretty much called plays either as a special teams coach or as a defensive coach or as a head coach or been involved in that. I think anytime you're at that…there's a lot of butterflies when you're trying to make the right call. It's a little bit different when you're not calling plays, not that those jobs aren’t important, but you don't have the play calling responsibility. You coach your players. You get them ready to play and then something happens in the game then you make the corrections or you make suggestions, but it's not the same as making decisions and probably you have maybe 15-20 seconds to make a decision. You see the ball spotted, you see the situation and you have to make a call. Once you've made the call, it’s out of your hands. The play hasn't been run yet, but it’s pretty much out of your hands at that point. So, yeah, I think the butterflies of opening day, again, it's a tough game to get ready for. It doesn’t make any difference who you are, who you're playing or what the circumstances are, you have a lot of things on your end, the other teams is showing a lot of things on their end, you know they’ve held some things back that you haven't seen. You're trying to run the stuff that you know how to run the best and get that right, but at the same time you've held some things back that you think will work good against what they're doing, so you want to be aggressive and try to attack, but not be too vulnerable and get off to a bad start and all of that. So you're just trying to balance those things off.
Q: Is the first game tougher because maybe you have less of a confidence in your talent level, just because you don’t know what you have yet?
BB: Yeah, because you haven't played. You haven't played. Every football team is a better team in October than they are in September. Every team is better in November than they are in October in terms of their execution and their reps, their assignments and all that. Now other teams may improve more than you do, so you may be competitively losing ground, but you're still gaining ground, it might be at a slower rate. So your team always improves. All of these meetings, all of the practices, all the games, if you can’t learn from those and improve...again it's relative to the rate of improvement of your opponents and competitors. You'll always feel a little bit better about what you're doing because you're definitely doing it better. Now, again, how that stacks up to the competition, that's another story. Just like we’re a lot better now than we were two or three weeks ago in training camp. Whether that is good enough to beat Buffalo or not I don't know. I'm sure they’re a lot better than they were two or three weeks ago too. That's why we play.
Q: Do you get a good night’s sleep before a game?
BB: Yes.
Q: Do you get butterflies?
BB: I get them before the game, but sleep is not a problem. Pardon the pun, but I can put it to bed. Do what you do and the hay is in the barn and you put it to bed. My Dad talked about that and said that a long time ago. A guy will come home at the end of the week maybe and ask how did practice go on Thursday, how’s the team doing on Friday, or whatever. He always was, ‘The hay is in the barn. Hey, we either have it at this point or we don't. We’re not going to change the outcome of the game between now and kickoff and 24 to 48 hours. You go through your preparations and finish it off, but if you haven’t go it done by then, it's probably too late to start.’ I think there's a lot of truth to that. We still go through our preparations. I do it. The players do it. We do it as a team, but the bulk of that preparation work has already been done. Hopefully that's been done at a good enough level and there’s always a little bit more you can do, I'm not saying that, a big percentage of it. Put it to bed, be confident in what you're doing and go out there and be able to execute it on Sunday.
Q: Is this first game maybe harder to prepare for than the Super Bowl?
BB: When you're preparing for a game late in the year, it’s the flipside of that. You have 10, 11, 12 games and you start looking back at, let's say you're an offensive coach, you start looking back at 700, 800 900 plays of the other team on defense. In those 900 plays you can find a lot. There's a lot of things that would pretty much stop any play if it happened to match up right. You could talk yourself into anything. Pretty much anything could look good and anything could look bad when you have that body of work. So you have to try to boil it down a little bit as to what you think they're going to do and how you want to try to attack them, but then you know your team has enough experience hopefully at that point to whatever adjustments you need to make, you can make. Another thing that's usually fairly predictable about games later on in the season, especially the good teams, there’s less of a tendency for those teams to change anything. Teams that won a whole bunch of games at the end of the year, I don't think that's when you want to say, ‘Okay fellas, we’re going to run the wishbone this week.’ Why do that? You've had too much success. If you've been successful blitzing, then you might as well keep blitzing. Why change and go to something else at that point if you’ve been very successful with it? In some respects things are more predictable. Now anytime a team has, later in the year, an experienced team, they could always pull out a handful of plays that could be tough on you and they could probably execute them fairly well because of the experience level of the players, so you have to be on your toes, but to some degree, you can be a lot more sure of the things that they like to do and things they’ve been successful with, again, when you start looking at every game they've played and every play they've run, the volume can get pretty high. You look at a scouting report like that and if you’re not careful, the team or the coaches can get paralyzed. ‘Well here are 80 things they could do. What if they do this? What if they do that?’ Once you get into one of those mentalities, you’re probably going to have a hard time doing much of anything. You talk yourself out of every play or every call. So you have to boil it down.
Q: Could you really tell that Tedy was ‘bearing down’ in practice yesterday?
BB: Yeah, I could, especially as it relates to Arizona. They have a big one this week. He was bearing down in several different ways. He bore down, yep.
