Patriots coach Bill Belichick spent some time this afternoon with “The Big Show,” and touched on a few different topics. Here are some of the highlights — look for the complete audio to be posted soon on “The Big Show” page:

On the noise level in the stadium during the game…
Most of the noise was in between plays until the point in the third quarter when they started doing the wave. And then, it was just constant. … Normally, after you’ve been on the sideline for three hours, whether you’re home or away, your heads kind of throbbing a little bit, just from the noise and the pounding and all that. After this game, I would put that in the same category. There was constant noise, particularly in the third quarter and in between plays, they revved it up.

They seemed to cheer during kicks…
Well, sometimes there was kind of random … there was times when I was not watching the game with the defense or the offense behind the sideline, you’d hear a bunch of cheering and you’d turn around and you think something is gonna happen and it wasn’t, so … I’m not really sure what all the commotion was about, but it didn’t seem to be about a play that had or hadn’t occurred.

You guys set the tempo early defensively…
We got them in a lot of long-yardage situations, Glen. There were some second and longs and there were some third and longs. We had some negative plays in the running game with Vince and Ty and Tully and Jerod all had some disruptive plays that created second and third and long, and that really helped our pass rush and our defensive play-calling, when we were ahead on the down and distance. That was a good situation to be in — a little but like it was against Tennessee the week before. It was something we’d like to continue to work from — being ahead in the count instead of second and two, second and threes. We blitzed a little more in this game than we have in recent games, so we were able to hit the quarterback and cause some disruption in the running game and the passing game.

It almost seemed like you forced him with the threat of the blitz to unload quickly
I think one of the things that probably helped us in the game too was the job that McGowan did on Winslow. He’s really … we felt like going into the game he was the go-to guy in the passing game. When Johnson got the ball, a lot of times, he was looking for Winslow and we felt like if we could take that away and make him go to his next read or even pull the ball down, that that would kind of disrupt the passing game. And Brandon did a good job on that. And so did Tully and Derrick Burgess and Gary Guyton of hitting Winslow at times, knock him off his timing on a route. Overall, the coverage on Winslow probably had something to do with the rush and the pressure, as it usually does. When the receivers aren’t open, the rush gets there. When the receivers are open, the rush is always late or there’s never enough. So, we had those working together this past week.

On Tully Banta-Cain’s performance…
I think he’s been playing well all year. I really do. I think he’s done a real good job for us. And he played very well against Tampa Bay over there. He was disruptive in the running game and the passing game. I thought really, the play he made on the screen pass was one of the best plays we’ve had all year. He rushed, got off on the ball, he beat Penn on the snap. He got to the quarterback, and Penn cut him just as the ball was released. He was about seven yards across the line of scrimmage, and got up and made a play after about a six-yard gain downfield on third and 12 or whatever it was. So those are the kind of plays that don’t really show up on the stat sheet, but they’re terrific plays. He had a tackle for a loss, and three or four pressures. He was constantly in their backfield. He did a real good job.

His ball-key was tremendous…
He gets off on the ball pretty well. Really, he’s been getting off on the ball very well all year, starting with the Buffalo game and all the way through. He’s playing with confidence. He’s playing with a real good pad level, that even when he contacts the blockers, he’s playing with good leverage and he’s usually generating the force on the hit rather than taking it. So, he’s really … running game, passing game. We’ve moved him around. Sometimes, he’s in on the tackles, sometimes, he’s out there on the tight end flip side. He’s been a real versatile guy for us and very productive. He’s earning more playing time, kind of, on a weekly basis, and it seems like every game he’s got good production.

On Meriweather’s first interception…
It was a blitz zone. We brought five guys, and Brandon dropped down in a three by one set — Brandon dropped down on the slot receiver, and when Johnson released the throw, he got a good break on it and ran it in. it was well-timed by Brandon. We kind of expected them … it was a third down play, so we kind of expected them to kind of get the first down there and run a five- or six-yard route, and that’s what they did and he jumped it and made a nice play.

With no Taylor and no Morris, were you trying to get a little more creative in the running game with the reverses?
No. I think what happened in the game was that they played us a lot of eight-man front. They dropped Piscatelli down in the box a lot and they were chasing hard off the backside. They gave us some problems coming from the backside sometimes. We started with a reverse, and ran another one fairly early and thought that that would slow them down a little bit, and we also tried to play-action them a little bit to try and take advantage of their aggressiveness in the running game. So on a lot of those runs, they kind of had one more guy than we had blockers. There wasn’t a whole lot of room to run, to be honest with you, and we felt like the reverses and the play-actions would be able to take advantage of their aggressiveness in the running game, and we got something out of the reverses and we hit some play-actions. We could have probably hit a few more play-actions. But we didn’t. That was kind of the idea. It wasn’t more to take it off the running backs, as it was to try and slow down the pursuit. And they were coming hard off the backside.

You also had a bunch of screens
The screens, the reverses, the play-actions … kind of anything to get the defense running one way and then bring it the other way with play-action or try to separate the defense, because they’re a very hard-pursuing team. They really hustle and they pursue hard to the ball. So when you can get them going one way and screen them or draw them or reverse them or play-action them, we felt like those would be good plays for us.

On the amount of points the team has scored the last two games – is it a lack of competition or the fact that the offense is starting to come together?
Well, I think it’s a combination of things. One thing certainly is the turnovers. Any time you turn the ball over and give the ball to the offense on a short field, that helps your chances. The other things have been the big plays. We’ve hit some big plays in both the last two games. Long runs, long passes, catch and run plays. And we’ve had good punt returns the last two games, so those plays where you can get a chunk of 20 or 30 or 40 yards on one play instead of having to run 8 or 9 plays to get that 40 yards increases your chances of scoring. Yesterday, we really didn’t have a lot of opportunities in the red area. We scored from further out with Sam, with Wes on the slip-screen, Ben kind of went over the top to score on the defense. We didn’t have a lot of opportunities in the red area. But I think our red area offense and defense have improved a little bit too. We have gotten a couple of stops.

Leave a Reply