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BB: That game was pretty much everything that I thought it would be in terms of the closeness of it. I think first of all that you have to recognize that Buffalo is a lot better football team than the record they have. They played hard, they played us real tough and we were just fortunate that we were able to make enough plays to come out on top. That certainly was a game that we had mistakes in. We turned the ball over, we had a lot of penalties defensively that we had to overcome and we were barely able to do it. We got some real good defensive play on third down and that stopped quite a few drives for us which was good, but overall we just lacked the consistency that we would really like to have, but on the other hand I think that you really have to recognize that Buffalo is a lot better football team than their record is, just like all of our games with Buffalo have been this is very similar to the game last year that we lost in overtime, the same type of a dog fight. We got a couple of big plays out of Antowain [Smith] and Kevin [Faulk] made another nice catch for us in the end zone for us on the first touchdown. Defensively, big third down stops that really helped us today.
Q: Ho would you assess [Tom] Brady?
BB: I think offensively we weren't real sharp. We were sporadic running the ball. We had some good runs and then lost yardage on some plays. We hit some passes and then obviously we missed a few. Buffalo did a good job they mixed up the coverages a little bit. They gave us a little different look coverage-wise then what we anticipated and so we had some situations where we had to hold the ball and probably didn't really have good plays called for either the receivers or the quarterback. I don't think from a coaching standpoint, I don't think this was my best job, so let's start with it right there. I don't think it was a great job by me and I don't think offensively that we had great execution from the quarterback to the offensive line to the receivers right on down the line, so we will put us all in there.
Q: Is it an important step for him to be able to win when things are not going his way?
BB: Sure, sure it is important for the team, it's important for the team. We have had penalties and we have had some turnovers and we've had some lapses and we have lost games like that in the last year and a half so it is good to win one. We got enough plays to win, certainly not as many as we would like to have. It wasn't overall the type of precision and the performance that you like to see, but again it was a tough game against a tough team in the division. They played us hard and I think you have to give Buffalo a lot of credit. They made a lot of plays defensively and they are a pretty tough football team. I think that Coach Williams has done a good job with the toughness in the team.
Q: Did you think that Antowain ran with something a little extra today?
BB: I think he did when he had a hole, yeah I thought he ran hard when he had some daylight. There were too many plays in the running game where we lost yardage and that's just…you know when you call a running play you just don't expect for it to come up second and fifteen, second and thirteen, that kind of thing. You might get hit for nothing or maybe a yard, but to lose yardage on running plays those are really drive stoppers, that and penalties. Yeah I thought he did run hard, but I thought overall that our running game just lacked the consistency, we weren't able to have enough clean runs go through there.
Q: Speaking of penalties being drive stoppers, Buffalo had a few that really killed them they had the touchdown that was called back and your defense responded, the one at the goal line and then of course the pass interference play?
BB: It is hard to see for me on those, it definitely looked like holding on the touchdown pass, I don't think there was any doubt about that, but we had a couple of roughing the passer calls that were close calls. I know we are trying to protect the passer in this league and I know we are trying to get the defensive players not to grab by the face mask too, but I will tell you some of those are pretty, I don't know I mean 15 yards for some of the things you get penalized for and then you see other things go on and it is the same penalty it looks like there is quite a differential in the severity of the calls, but that's the way it is. So yeah we had some, they had some, that is the kind of game it was. It was called tightly and both sides had a couple of penalties that hurt them, no question about it.
Q: Seymour's play?
BB: Yeah it is tough for me. It would be hard for me to evaluate what those guys did. It is hard, I would have to take a look at the tape, but defensively overall we gave up a couple of big plays. We gave up a long pass play to [Peerless] Price and a long pass play to [Jay] Riemersma and then the touchdown there at the end, but otherwise there weren't a lot of big plays and we did have some stops on defense, so somebody must have been doing something out there.
Q: I know it is early and you have a big game next week, but what would you say to Pats fans who are going to start looking down the schedule and start thinking about playoff possibilities?
BB: I think that is a real bad thing to do. I think that the way it is in the NFL every game, every week is it's own entity. It doesn't have anything to do with what happened last week, it doesn't have anything to do with what the records are, it doesn't have anything to do with whether it is home, away, at a neutral or anything else, it just has to do with how those two teams come out and how they play in that game and I think that's, I know that's what it is going to come down to every week. Picking out teams that…we have seen everything this year. We have seen Carolina beat Minnesota, we've seen the upsets every week, we saw three or four of them last week games, teams that had 20 point leads and get beat in overtime and all of those kind of things. That is the way it is so I wouldn't be looking too far ahead. This is a big game for us against St. Louis coming up and they are probably the best football team in the league. So it will be a big challenge for us and we will need to be at our best against them. But I think we are going to need to be at our best every week. I just don't think you can throw it out there and not play well and not make enough plays…you can lose to anybody in this league, there are too many good players.
Q: You are over .500 for the first time in your career as the Patriots head coach any added significance with that?
BB: I am really happy for our football team. They have been written off by a lot of people and got off to a slow start and I don't think they got a lot of credit for just as hard as they have worked and what they have gone through. It is a real credit to them to be able to hang in there and keep fighting, dig themselves out of a hole and get over .500. I am more happy for the football team because we had so many guys work hard. This was a week where we had a bunch of guys play at way less than 100 percent, but they sucked it up, they got out there. A couple of them hardly practiced at all during the week, but they stayed in the game and fought through it and that is just a credit to them that they have gone though that kind of adversity and persevered through a tough situation to achieve a positive result, starting 0-2 I am sure that a lot of people would have taken that at that point.
Q: With three minutes left why did you call that pass play?
BB: Well we thought we were calling a safe play. We thought we had everybody blocked and of course the last thing we wanted was to turn the ball over. Getting sacked really at that point wasn't that big deal because we expected that even if we lost a couple of yards the clock would be running and it would be basically the same as a running play. It looked like Tom [Brady] got the ball slapped out of his hands, I couldn't see exactly what happened, but obviously that was not what we were looking for. We thought we had a safe play on and at the worst we figured a sack, but if we got a first down that would ice the game. Obviously if we had known what happened would have happened we would have just run a quarterback sneak and punted it.
Q: What is about Buffalo that the game is so close, there are other teams in the division that are supposedly better that you seem to handle, but with Buffalo, is it the match ups?
BB: I guess it is, I guess it is because every time we play them…I mean really we had a three point game out there today and Antowain splits one there at the end, but if he had gotten tackled we would have knelt on the ball and it would have been a three point game. That is just the way it has been with Buffalo and I think that is what we expected coming into the game. Of course we hoped that we would be able to be better and have a little more of a little comfort zone in there, but they just wouldn't let us. They hung in there, they made plays and they fought hard and we had to work for everything we got today.
