Bill Belichick

Patriots coach Bill Belichick appeared Tuesday on The Big Show to discuss the Patriots’ 45-3 victory Monday night over the Jets and preview Sunday’s matchup with the 9-3 Bears.

“The players really did a good job,” Belichick said. “We had a good week of practice and preparation, and it certainly came together for the most part last night. I just think the players did a really good job; captains Jerod [Mayo] and Vince [Wilfork] on defense and Tom [Brady] and Alge [Crumpler] on offense.”

Following are highlights from the conversation. To hear the entire interview, visit The Big Show audio on demand page.

It was a good night of football last night, wasn’t it?

It was, Glenn. The players really did a good job. We had a good week of practice and preparation, and it certainly came together for the most part last night. I just think the players did a really good job; captains Jerod and Vince on defense and Tom and Alge on offense.

Kevin Faulk was around a lot this week; I think he had a lot of good things to help our football team prepare for the game and being in the right frame of mind and all that. I think those guys, along with a lot of the veteran players, really did a good job of really getting the team to a good point and we were out there able to execute well last night, and we really played a good game all the way around — got off to a fast start and we were able to sustain it for 60 minutes.

What is Kevin Faulk doing with these players since he’s not out there? How does he help or impact the team since he can’t be out on the field with them?

Well, he’s around. He’s in getting treatment and doing rehab. But he’s around and certainly brings a great well of experience and confidence, and the participation he’s had in the games and what they’re like and how to approach them and how to prepare for them and what to expect. I think it’s invaluable the insight who’s been in those situations can give the players who either haven’t played or haven’t been in very many of them. I mean, pretty much everybody on the team played the Jets in September, but it’s a little bit different this time of year, and the second time around. Kevin gives a great perspective on what’s important and how to win the game, and no player is more unselfish than Kevin is, and I think he can impart some of that wisdom and experience toward other members of the team.

You also had [Tedy] Bruschi out there, too.

Yeah, it was great to see Tedy. It’s great to see him recognized, he certainly embodies everything that the New England Patriots stand for, and his performance is excellent; his teamwork, his energy, his unselfish play, his success on the field, captainship and leadership that he’s given us throughout the years is just awesome. To have this kind of game on his night is really a great combining of forces, so it was awesome.

It seemed like he was enjoying the game last night as much as he was when he was winning them with you.

Well, it was definitely good to have him there. We’ve had a lot of great players come through this organization in the last 10 years that I’ve been here, and me and Tedy going back to my year here in ’96, he certainly is up there at the top; he’s meant a lot to this organization, this franchise, and certainly to those teams that he was on. And the players that played with him and the coaches that coached him, he’s impacted all of us.

What was the difference offensively in this game? Tom seemed like he was able to pick them apart pretty well, and the receiving core was working as a unit. How were you able to come up with a game plan that was so different from the first one?

Well, I think the big thing we did as a team was perform better. We executed better offensively, even the first play of the game was a running play that picked up a first down, and the running game complemented the passing game, and the offense complemented the defense, the defense got three turnovers, and offense was able to convert those turnovers into a couple of long drives that not only took time off the clock, but put points on the board at the end of the drive. So, I mean it was good complementary football all the way around.

Offensively we got contributions from everybody; it wasn’t just the passing game, it was the running game, it was the protection, it was running after the catch — Deion’s touchdown, a couple of [Danny] Woodhead‘s plays, [Aaron] Hernandez. So we got good plays from a lot of different areas, and that’s really what a good offense does is it spreads the ball around and attacks the defense on a lot of different points and makes the defense defend everything.

Woodhead snuck out once for that 50-yard completion. It looked like they had a defensive tackle drop into zone. Was that what it was when you got that big completion to Woodhead?

Well you know, I’m not sure exactly how that was supposed to work out for him. It was a play action, it looked like things got distorted a little bit underneath. I doubt that that was the coverage assignment, but it looked like he was the closest man to him and he was just getting pursued and chased when the ball was thrown. But I think that somebody must have got caught up in the play action or something, but it was an alert play by Tom to find Woody and get him the ball and of course Woody made the most of it after he got the ball in his hands.

The interception by Brandon Spikes in the red zone was arguably the play of the game that may have turned the tides and kept the Jets without a touchdown. What was his read on that? Did he just read Sanchez’s eyes, or is it something that he’s seen in practice before?

Well I think on that particular play it looked like the Jets were trying to run a play similar to what the Colts did, what we call a pop pass where they fake a run into the line and then try to get a receiver back behind the linebackers and hit him in the back of the end zone. Brandon got a good read on the play, so did Mayo. Mayo was back there really to cover. Both the safeties were closing on it, and it looked like Sanchez just couldn’t get the ball over Spikes; it would have been a real tight throw if it had cleared Brandon because Mayo and the safeties were closing, but in the end he just couldn’t get it past Spikes, and having that kind of height and range at inside linebacker is difficult for a quarterback. I usually don’t see that; those guys are 6-4 and have that kind of length, and Spikes is able to get up there and make a good-hands catch on it.

Unfortunately, we had a good opportunity to end that drive on the first play of the half, you know, couldn’t recover the fumble. But it turned out alright, even after they ended up moving the ball 60 yards, we finally got the interception there, but we could’ve saved ourselves a lot of trouble if we had just fallen on the ball there at the start of the second half.

Were you telling him to watch for the play-action pass? Because he didn’t even bite at all on it.

Well we were in a three-man rush on the play, so we weren’t in a big pressure defense. We were in a three-man rush and, actually, we had two interceptions last night on a three-man rush. Sometimes as a quarterback that extra guy back there in coverage clogs things up a little bit, or sometimes you just don’t quite see him or account for him, and fortunately we were able to make a couple plays on that. It was obviously an alert play by Spikes and Mayo. Jerod really made a good play on it too to get back and cover the pattern.

There was a lot of movement of your defensive line last night. We saw Vince sometimes shift and line up over [Nick] Mangold. Was that mostly to confuse Sanchez after his pre-snap read?

Well, we try to keep not just Sanchez, but the whole offense. They’re playing on the road, there’s a lot of communication that has to go on at the line of scrimmage with blocking schemes or protections, and a team like the Jets that uses a decent amount of check-with-me plays, where they run this play or that play depending on the look of the defense. We tried to give them some different looks so that they had those plays called it would be a little harder for them to figure out which one was the right one for them to run, you know, give them a little bit of a different look.

But the guys out there did a great job. It’s a hard thing to coach from the sideline; it really has to be handled by the players on the field, knowing when to move, when to stem and when the quarterbacks going to go quick, and you’ve got to move quick and be ready to go and anticipate the snap. So Vince on the defensive line and Mayo as an inside linebacker, they both really kind of control that at their different levels. You know, Vince with the lineman, Mayo with the linebackers. We’ve also got some good disguises from the secondary. So it’s kind of how that works, but a real good job by the players of handling that on the field and, I don’t know how effective it was, but I think just the movement up there had at times at least cause them to make a different line or protection call.

On the improvement of the defense:

I think that’s a process that’s really been happening all season. Since probably September, we’ve really put a big emphasis on the communication. We’ve met together as a team more, done a lot of team walkthroughs. Maybe a little bit less individual teaching and more as groups so that everybody can hear what everybody’s saying, and the linebackers can talk to the linemen, and the linebackers and secondary can communicate together on run forces and coverage adjustments and so forth. It’s an ongoing process. It’s a lot of little steps.

When you play a defense there’s so many different things the offense can do. If you play 10 defenses, and then there’s all the multiples. There’s a lot of multiples. There’s a lot of things that can happen. And the more defenses you have, the more stuff the offense runs, the more adjustments there are. And sorting those out, and making sure that you’re doing the right thing at the right time and so forth definitely involves communication and experience on defense. I think that our players have worked hard. We’ve gotten better at it. It’s not perfect. We still have a long way to go.

I think the big thing is everybody realizes the importance of it and they’re making a very conscious effort to communicate, to try to get it better, to try to make sure it’s right. And if they don’t understand it or if they’re not sure about it, to ask and get it straightened out rather then do something and then find out after the play, well, that’s really not the right thing.

Have you had more or less time than ever before helping as coordinator?

I think each year is a little bit different. Not necessarily that you plan it that way, but it just works out that way. I try to spend my time in whatever way I think is most beneficial for the team. That’s my job as a head coach to try to coach the team and help the team in any way I can. My time commitments go where I feel like they can be most effective. That changes sometimes from week to week and sometimes it changes from year to year.

Is Tom throwing the ball over these last four games as well as you’ve seen him? He’s on a good roll.

I think Tom’s throwing the ball well. At the same time, I think a lot of that credit has to go to the receivers. There’s nothing better for a quarterback than to have a receiver be exactly where he’s supposed to be. Conversely, there’s nothing worse for a quarterback than to think a guy’s going to be one place and he’s not there, or he’s somewhere else. Whether he misreads it, or whether he doesn’t go to the right depth, or whether the quarterback misreads it, but just everybody being on the same page.

And again, that’s been a process over the course of the year or two, of just the quarterbacks and the receivers — and when I say receivers, [that includes] backs, tight ends — making the proper adjustments, being the right place, anticipating the same thing that the quarterback’s going to anticipate and just seeing the same picture. There’s no way to do that other than to get out there and practice it and meet on it and work on it and get it right. It just doesn’t happen on its own. The amount of time that those guys have spent working and even practicing at the end of practice or individually on their own to get certain plays right, and then to see those things show up in the game, it’s great. That’s the way it should be.

Did you spend any more time breaking down film with Tom this week?

Tom and I, at other points during my coaching tenure here, we’ve sat down and met from time to time. This week was a little longer week with the Thanksgiving game. So, Tom and I had a chance to sit down and spend a few hours just watching the Jets, talking about what they do, our game plans, things we wanted to do and so forth. It was fun.

It’s something that we really hadn’t done as much of this year. Although we’ve done it, and we’ve done it in the past, this year it just hasn’t worked out that way. But this was a chance to do it. It was a lot of fun for me, and I think really beneficial for both of us. As a head coach, there’s no player you want to be more on the same page with than your quarterback, to make sure what he’s doing with the ball is what you think he should be doing, and vice versa. We had a real good opportunity to do that and I think it benefited both of us.

On emphasizing to his players to play a full 60 minutes Monday night:

It was something that we talked about all week. The players talked about it, certainly the coaches talked about it. We wanted to be totally committed to playing 60 minutes, playing our best football every snap, every down, from the opening kickoff to the final gun. We got to the fourth quarter and we had just scored there, so I just wanted to remind everybody about what we had all talked about.

We had all been talking  about it all week. We were down to 15 minutes of football in the game. It wasn’t about the score, it wasn’t about anything other than just trying to play our best. And that’s what we’re out there for. As we went through the fourth quarter, you could hear guys on the sideline talking about finishing the game, about playing 60 minutes, about staying focused and all that. I think it was a real good job by our players, and our captains in particular, including Kevin. Those guys really set the pace for that attitude all week, and we were able to do it yesterday.

On Sunday’s game against the Bears:

Jay Cutler is having a terrific year. Probably playing as well as any quarterback, maybe other than [Peyton] Manning, that we’ve faced. He’s really carrying the team and the passing game on his shoulders, making great decisions, throwing the ball very accurately. They have a good mix of running game, passing game, they have a lot of good skill players, they’re very good in the kicking game and they’re very good on defense. It’s a good football team, they’re 9-3 and you can see why.