New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick addresses the media during his postgame press conference at Wembley Stadium in London on Sunday, October 25, 2009.
BB:Hello. It's a great way to end this week for our football team. I thought these guys really put in a good week of preparation. We started on Tuesday and got a lot of work done in Foxboro on Wednesday and Thursday and came out here and made the adjustment. And, you know, we went out there, played hard. Made some plays. So did Tampa. Some weren't so good, but we made some good ones. And I'm really proud of the guys for that. They stepped up. We had a pretty good effort on defense in the first quarter. Got a couple turnovers and offensively we were able to get some points on the board, and they scored 35 points. Should be able to win in this league. So really happy with what they did today. We got a little bit of time now to go back and regroup and work on certainly a lot of things we need to work on here going forward. We've got a tough game coming up against Miami and we know the whole second half of the season really has a lot of challenges from week to week, but we'll tackle Miami first. So good to get on the plane and get back. It's been an enjoyable couple days here and glad we could end it on a positive note for our football team.
Q:On playing in London...
BB:It's like a regular game. Once you get out there, you're concentrating on coaching the game, playing the game and Tampa in this case. And so I think whoever we're playing, that's the way we feel about it. But the week, the environment was good, and the people of London and all the people connected with our stay here, the hotel and the buses and the stadium and everybody was very hospitable. It was a good experience for all of us, and I'm happy we won.
Q:(Question off microphone.)
BB:Had a lot of big plays. Had a couple third down conversions. Of course had a score on a slip screen early in the game. So he comes through like he always does. I thought all our receivers played well. Randy had some big plays for us, Wes, Sam had a big play. We were able to get Tate involved. Ben Watson made a big play for us in man coverage there and Laurence ran well and Kevin made some plays. We spread the ball around. And Wes probably got more of them. Also a nice punt return. But they all stepped up and did a good job.
Q:(Question off microphone.)
BB:He had a couple of good days of practice. Has a long way to go, obviously. He's missed so much time compared to everybody else. And so this is training camp for him like the preseason games were for the other players in training camp when they got some practices and then played in the game. We've just got to accelerate the pace for him. But he's worked hard. I think he's in good shape and needs snaps on the field and reps and things he hasn't had. But I'm sure the more he gets of those, the better he'll be and he'll see things the second and third time around, just execute and run its routes better, do little things in passing game. But he's got good talent and he works hard and it's important to him, so I respect that. Respect the way he practiced this week.
Q:On Brandon McGowan
BB:Sure. I think Brandon's had a real good year for us. From the beginning of training camp he's really been a leader for us back in the secondary, making calls, making adjustments, sometimes taking harder responsibilities with the safeties. And he and Brandon have worked well together and Patrick and James. We have a good group back there, Shawn when he's been in there. But Brandon stepped up with some huge plays today. And those are the plays he's capable of making. And he's been around those. And today they fell for them. But he's a good player for us, and there's a lot of plays he makes that don't show up on the stat sheet. Today's plays did, but there's a lot of ones that he makes that don't. He's done a real good job.
Q:On playing regularly in London...
BB:It's a long haul. I can't imagine playing four games here. It's a long haul. But the experience was good. Fortunately we have a week off next week with the bye week, so that helps the whole process. I think it would be hard to commute back and forth to London for the season. It's would just be hard, that's all. As far as the facilities and the game and the people and the city and all that, that was great.
Q:(Question off microphone.)
BB:I thought we played well defensively. They did a good job. I'll have to take a look at the film and all. Some plays, short yardage play looked like he made a good play on that third and one. He's a good contributor. He's contributed a lot for us over the last two and a half years. I'm sure he will continue to in the future.
Q:(Question off microphone.)
BB:The secondary has been challenged every week. Great receivers, great quarterbacks every single week, so doesn't matter who the opponent is. And we face some of the top offenses and there will be more in the season. Every week is a new challenge.
Q:(Question off microphone.)
BB:We played all those guys, played James and Patrick along with Brandon and Meriweather and McGowan. I think we've got all of them decent amount of snaps, and those guys do a good job for us. We've got good depth at corner. Good depth at safety. And we played all those we played all them in different combinations, different situations. So I think it's good that we build up that kind of depth and communication in our secondary and had different personnel groups that we can match differently with the offensive people. Patrick has gotten better and better each week. Football is really important to him. Comes in, spends a lot of time at it, as does Brandon McGowan, Meriweather and Sanders and all those guys, Shawn in the corner. So I think we're growing as a secondary. Hopefully we can continue to develop. Certainly we'll see a lot of good passing teams going forward here.
Q:(Question off microphone.)
BB:We play in noisy stadiums every week. That's no excuse. We have to do a better job than that. We've played in stadiums where it's deafening. We've just got to execute that better. We're going to have to silent count every time we're on the road. We just didn't do a good job. But we gotta be better. We've got to coach it better, gotta execute it better.
Q:(Question off microphone.)
BB:You know, I think we overall pressured decent amount in this game. We had different people come, safeties, corners, linebackers, tried to mix it up on them a little bit and tried to keep Johnson in the pocket, which we had some success doing. Sometimes he got out and he hurt us. But he's really an athletic guy and I hate to see him running around there in open spaces, so we try to keep him boxed in. Sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't.
Q:(Question off microphone.)
BB:Sam's one of our most solid players. He's such a dependable guy in the kicking game. Seems like every time we need for him to step up offensively he's there and he delivers. Sam's one of our hardest working guys. He's tough, does some of the dirty work offensively and the kicking game and the blocking and cracking and covering kicks and all those kind of things. And it's nice to see him get a chance to handle the ball. And he's a big strong guy. And he's hard to bring down. Made a couple of plays for us last year on flip screens and run after catch. And he did that again today, ran through a tackle and showed he's got a little bit of speed out there. So we needed him to step up today. We only had four receivers at the game. Not including Slater, but four receivers, and we knew Brandon Tate was going to be a little bit limited on the number of snaps that he got. Sam did a nice job filling in there and stepping up and making plays, not just filling in, but being productive for us.
Q:On London...
BB:Yes. You know, I was here before. I didn't get a chance to see Churchill's war bunkers, so I was able to swing over there yesterday. So that was pretty interesting how that was set up and how tight it was and everything they gave during that time to fight off London bombing and all that. So that was pretty special part of the trip. It was only a couple hours, but it's something I'm sure I'll remember.
Q:On Tom Brady...
BB:Buckingham Palace. Tom's comfortable. Of course he's got a comfortable runoff, doing it for nine years. Tom's the guy that works hard and every week he's such a positive player on our football team, both for himself, our team and the younger players, particularly a week like this with Sam and Brandon and even Matt Slater jumping in there taking a few plays. Nobody prepares harder than Tom. Nobody works harder than Tom. And all the success that he gets on the field he really deserves, because he puts so much into it and gives so much of himself for this football team. He's a great leader. He's a great worker. And I'm glad he's our quarterback. There's nobody I'd rather have than Tom Brady.
Q:On the conditions at Wembley...
BB:Seemed like it was all right. I wasn't here for the other two games. So I can't comment on those. I know one of them was in the rain. No, it seemed fine. The venue is really awesome. It's an awesome stadium, and surface was good. Really no wind there.
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