New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick addresses the media during his postgame press conference at Gillette Stadium on Monday, September 14, 2009.
BB: Well, that was an exciting game - got that one going. It was a great effort by our team. I'm really proud of the players; not that we played our best, but we hung in there. We kept playing, down by 11 with four or five minutes to go in the game and we came back and made the plays we had to make to win. We certainly don't want to put ourselves in that position very often. That's not what we're trying to do. But whatever it was they dealt with it and made some smart plays at the end. I wish we would have played like that earlier in the game. But give Buffalo credit. That's a good football team. They played extremely well tonight. My hat's off to their effort. It really just came down to a few plays at the end of the game and we made them. They were big plays: turnovers, touchdown passes, conversions, you know, all that stuff and we didn't do it earlier. So that was definitely part of the problem. [We have a] quick turnaround down at the Jets this week - division game on the road. So we're going to have to get ready here in a hurry, put this one behind us, learn from it, correct some mistakes and get ready to play the Jets. Obviously, they had a big win yesterday against Houston so it looks like they got it rolling pretty good down there. So we've got our work cut out for us.
Q: With 2:06 to go, when you're kicking off, was there much of a decision to kickoff as opposed to the onside kick?
BB: We had three timeouts and at 2:06 we might have had the two minute warning depending on how much time - say if it would have been a touchback - then we would have had three timeouts plus a two minute warning. It could have gone either way, but we picked the deep there.
Q: Is that rare to see a kicker to go diving in for a fumble like that?
BB: Not Steve [Gostkowski]. He's a pretty tough kid.
Q: Any update on Jerod Mayo at all?
BB: No, I wish I had one for you. I really do.
Q: You don't know or you don't have one to give?
BB: I don't have one.
Q: Thoughts on Tom Brady today?
BB: I think offensively and defensively we did some things well [and] we did some other things not so well. I'll have to look at the film, but I'm sure that's true for all the players out there. There were things that were good then there were other things that weren't so good. I'm glad we made the plays we made at the end of the game – that's the important thing.
Q: Did the Bills change their coverage late? It seemed like the Benjamin Watson touchdowns came down the seam? Was there something that they changed that you adjusted to?
BB: No, they basically played two main coverages the whole game. They gave a couple change-ups in there, but they basically played split-safety coverage against us. Fortunately, we were able to beat it.
Q: Were you more conservative with Tom Brady's first game back?
BB: No, we were trying to move the ball and score. No. We were trying to move the ball. We were trying to score.
Q: I meant game-long?
BB: That's what I'm saying.
Q: What are your thoughts on Benjamin Watson's second touchdown catch?
BB: You know I didn't really get a good look at it. I couldn't tell. I guess they reviewed it upstairs. I'm sure you guys saw it better than I did. With my eyesight, I just saw the fans cheering so I knew that was good.
Q: Was there anything you did differently on special teams, did you give any special instructions before the script?
BB: We got the fumble out on the previous kickoff, we just didn't get it. But sure, that's a situation where at the end of the game when you're behind you're always looking to pull the ball out. It was a heads up play. Did [Brandon] Meriweather get it? I couldn't tell, but we were pulling at it in there and fortunately we got it out.
Q: Is this one of the wins you are really proud of for your team?
BB: Look, I'm proud of every win. I'm proud of every win. It's hard to win in this league. Every team's got good coaches, they got good players, they work hard, they practice hard and if you're not ready to play you won't win in this league. I don't care who it's against or where it is. I'm proud of this win. I'm proud of all of them. But this was kind of like the – going back to '01, we were down by 10 against Oakland, down by 10 or 11, I think 11, against San Diego – similar, middle of fourth quarter, down by a couple scores and we were able to come back and win those games. This kind of reminded me of that. Both [of] those were at home, too. But that's not exactly the way you draw them up, but we will take the results.
