Bill Belichick's PostGame Press Conference Transcript 8/29/12
Here's the complete transcript of what New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick had to say after Thursday night's preseason loss to the New York Giants:
OPENING STATEMENT:
"We had a good competitive game tonight and we got to look at a lot of people, and so now we're ready to turn the page and start playing them for real a week from Sunday. I thought we competed well, the Giants competed well, it was a good hard fought game, and as I said we've got to look at a lot of people."
On if cutdown day is always tough for him:
"It is, yes, it's a tough day. Because they work hard some of them have been with us, however long they've been with us, and they've done what we've asked them to do, and it's unfortunately a tough part of the business. We know that we've got to be at 53, everybody knows that, but it's still hard to tell some guys that they're not going to make it after they've worked so hard."
On what he saw for positives:
"We'll take a look at the film and see how everybody did. But we got a chance to play a lot of guys that played in the Philadelphia game that didn't play as much last week, we'll see how much they improved. Just try to make our decisions here at the end of the week, on our roster, our practice squad, things like that, see how it all shapes up."
On his thoughts on the center competition after four guys played tonight:
"Well we played with four guys last year and they all showed that they could play at a good level. We've had a good competition there this training camp, this preseason, and we'll have to make a decision on them."
On if any stood out as a clear cut number one guys:
"Again, we'll make our decisions here at the end of the week."
On his thoughts on the number two quarterback competition between Brian Hoyer and Ryan Mallett:
"That's been competitive as well. That's been competitive as well. Those guys have gotten pretty much equal opportunities all the way through from the spring, into the practices in preseason, in the preseason games other than the Tampa game, you know we only played one quarterback after Tom [Brady] in that game, but otherwise it's been about as equal as we could have it. It's very competitive, it's tight, and we'll see...you know, try and make the best decision we can for the team on that one."
On his if he was happy with what he saw from the play of Jermaine Cunningham:
"Well, yeah, again, we'll go back and look at the film and see how everybody did, it's hard to watch everybody out there, but we played competitively, did some good things, I'm sure there's other things that we still need to keep working on, but I think we made some improvement from...again, these guys are the guys who played mostly in the Philadelphia game so I think we've made some improvement since that game to this one."
On his approach on who played vs who didn't because of the tight schedule:
"Yeah, well obviously playing this many games close together, I mean, that had a lot to do with it. But look, everybody that played got an opportunity to show us what they could do and that was important, the guys that played in the Tampa game got that opportunity, the guys that played in the Philadelphia game, the New Orleans game, the guys at practice, who ever's out there it's an opportunity for them, it's an opportunity for us to evaluate them and also evaluate our team in those areas. You know, nothing wrong with that."
On if it's too early to give his thoughts what he's seen from their first opponent, the Tennessee Titans:
"Yeah, I think right now we're just trying to take care of the Patriots right now. We know we have a lot of tough opponents and we know Tennessee will be tough on opening day, but right now we need to do what's best for the New England Patriots, that's where our focus is."
On how compressed the next 48 hours is going to be like for his staff:
"Well, I mean we've known it's coming, it's not like it was sprung on us, so we've talked about this along the way. But now we'll have to make the final decisions to get all the information that we have, whether it be performance, injuries, and whatever other opportunities there are in the league. There's always a lot of player movement at this time of year, so who knows how that will or won't affect our roster, I don't really know. But we'll take all those things into consideration and make the decisions that are best for our football team. That's the process we always go through, so that won't be any different."
On if there's any concern going into the season about the replacement referees:
"I'm not going to comment on that."
