Patriots coach Bill Belichick made his weekly appearance on The Big Show on Monday afternoon. Here are the highlights from the Q&A. (Check The Big Show audio on-demand page later Monday to listen to the entire interview.)

It can never be a good afternoon when they say to you ‘It’s time to go home…’
It’s certainly a disappointing day yesterday, today. Just kind of picking up the pieces.

How do you, when you deal with something like that, do you play it over and over in your head, or do you say, ‘I need to get away from it’ and collect my thoughts for next season?
I think a little bit of both. We play Baltimore next year — we can certainly learn a lot from this game for ourselves and our future preparation while its fresh in our mind. We’ll take a look at that, and then also, take a look at the entire body of work, the 17 regular-season and one postseason game, try to take a look at that. Not just one game, but the whole season and take stock of that as well.

Did Suggs’ grabbing of his finger on the strip sack affect Tom’s throwing mechanics?
I didn’t ask him about that. I’m not sure. I think he was OK. He hit a few passes. I don’t think it was the accuracy as much as it was the overall execution.

It seemed like there was a lot of confusion with the receivers…
No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that was a …. I think what happened in the game was we ended up throwing a lot more than we planned on throwing — we lost the balance of the game fairly early, and sometimes, you get into making adjustments on routes as you get into the game just because you’re running so many of them. There could have been a little bit of that. I don’t think that was a big problem.

How as the week of practice leading up to the game?
I think like most weeks, you put in something new and you get ready for a new opponent, there are things you have to work out and go back over again when you actually see them on the field. So we had corrections during the week, as we usually do. I think the players, they put a lot into the game, but unfortunately, we just didn’t get a, the kind of result that we were looking for on any level from any of us. So that was disappointing.

On Ray Rice’s run to start the game…
Rice made a good cut, and I thought we played the play fairly well, but not good enough. And then he was able to find a crease there, and we couldn’t get him at the second level — he kind of got caught there at the line of scrimmage. And he split us. We’ve all seen a lot bigger holes than that. But it was big enough. And we didn’t play it quite well enough at the line of scrimmage, then, we weren’t able to make the tackle in the secondary, so that was obviously a terrible way to start the game.

On Ray Lewis saying he was able to pick Brady’s cadence from watching him on TV. Is that possible?
If Ray Lewis said it, it probably is.

On that blitz when Maroney was supposed to come up and hit him, it looked like he got a good charge on him…
They do a pretty good job of timing up their blitzes anyway, and Ray Lewis is a very experienced player, so he might have been able to time that up a little bit. That’s a possibility.

On the offseason evaluation process with the coaches and the players, and figuring out what went wrong — how long does that take?
It probably takes a good solid month at the beginning of the offseason to do everything that you’re talking about and it comes in different stages. The first thing you do is assemble all the information and then you look at the different areas that you talked about and various people that are involved in those give their opinions, and try to identify problems and identify solutions, and try to figure out what’s the best course of action. Once that’s determined, then we set our sails on that. Sometimes, it’s not evident right away what the problem is or exactly what the solution is. Sometimes it takes a little further investigation to try and dig deeper and do a little more research and see what you can come up with. It’s nothing … there’s no exact formula for it other than the process of getting the information, looking at it, getting different perspectives on it then, trying to arrive at a direction to go with.

On that information being compiled from game-to-game, and then, at the end of the year, it’s a summary.
Right. We do it game-by-game, but at the end of the year, you have a lot more time to look at a lot more information from different angles and different perspectives. Again, a lot of times, things look back that are probably pretty close to being good, and sometimes, things look good that are circumstantial that are really probably aren’t as good as what you think they are when you look closely at them. So it can go both ways.

On struggling to close teams out…
It all comes back to consistency. Whether it’s starting the game well or finishing the game well or playing for sixty minutes … that’s an area, you’re right, that we didn’t do a great job of in this year. And we … you always strive for. But this year, we lacked some consistency, and that was really in all three phases of the game. Certainly at the beginning of the game yesterday it was a big hole for us to try to dog out of and we couldn’t get out of it. Sometimes, that’s come at other points in the game.

Was there a lack of leadership on this team this year?
I think every team has it’s own chemistry, has its own dynamics and leadership. I think a number of our players who are younger players, the Jerod Mayo’s and Brandon Meriweather’s and Logan Mankins’, guys like that, are outstanding leaders. I think they do a tremendous job in their own way. And they all have different styles of leadership and so forth. So … I think ultimately, in the end, nobody can do anybody else’s job, and as much leadership is important, it’s equally or maybe more important for each player to do their job and do it well. That’s probably the main thing we needed to do this year better as a football team, just for everybody to consistently execute what we needed to do. And we had plenty of times where things were good but they would not be good consistently and that’s really the level you need to be at to be a good football team. And we just didn’t do that consistently. We had our moments, but we came up a little bit short at times, and that was definitely the case yesterday.

How much did the inconsistencies change the game-planning and implementation of the offensive game plans?
I think the process this year is the same as it has been in previous years, and I think when you look at the 05 season or even the 06 season, offensively, some of the things you’re saying now, you were saying then, too. … Whatever it is, some element of that’s missing. I think that the process is the same as it has been. Can we do a better job from a coaching staff of designing better plays, complimenting them better, getting a more efficient operation all the way around? Absolutely. And that’s something we need to work on in the offseason — on offense, defense and special teams, that we need to improve our overall coaching and the system and the way everything works. We need to fine tune it and make it more efficient and make it better. We need to play better. We need to just do everything better. I don’t think you can look at one game or seven losses over the course of the year and feel like there’s not areas you can’t improve in. There’s a lot of areas we can improve in, and we can try to address all of them, if we can get a little bit better in a lot of things, then that ends up being a big improvement.

On the answer he gave in the press conference earlier in the day about the dynamics of a coaching staff — do you think your presence with some of these younger guys on your staff affects things, where guys like Romeo Crennel, Mike Vrabel or Charlie might sit there before and say ‘Bill, what the hell Why are we doing some of these things’?
I think every coaching staff has its own dynamics too. I think our staff does a good job. They work hard, they’re well-prepared. I think they dig hard to get the information that we need, and I think that collectively, as a group, try to make the right decisions. Could we do a better job? Sure. But I think that our system can operate efficiently, and I think there were plenty of examples — this year, last year through the years — where we’ve certainly more than held our share, given the fans plenty to cheer about out there on the football field. But like anything else, can we do a better job? Sure.

How much of the offensive play-calling were you directly involved in this year?
Well, ultimately, every play that gets called, I have the final say on. So therefore, I’d say if there was any of them that you didn’t like, you should probably hold me accountable for them.

So none of that has changed, then? Everything has always filtered through you.
I have the final say on the plays, so ultimately, if the play is a bad play or of its called in the wrong situation or it doesn’t work out right, then I’m the one that’s finally responsible for it. The buck stops on my desk. I accept that.

When things start going badly, what can you and your staff do to stem the tide?
I think the main thing is for everybody to just understand that it’s playing one play at a time. You can’t score 24 points on one possession. You can’t get three turnovers on one play. You just have to take it one play at a time and try to have one good play, but another one behind it, string three or four together, and that’s how things get better. Of course, as a competitor, you want to try and make the big play. You want to make the play that turns things around, that changes the direction they’re going when they’re not going good. I think it’s more important at that time to focus on your job, your responsibility, your technique and just try to get one good play. Because that’s all you can do is play the next play. Then, if you can get that, you try and string a couple of them together. That’s the best way to turn that around, rather than hoping to go up there and hit a big home run on one play. Occasionally, that works. But for the most part, if you can just get some consistency and get control of the game back. But it took us too long to do that.