Patriots at Steelers: Bill Belichick Post Game Comments

Head coach Bill Belichick met with the media after the game, and here are some highlights from his press conference:

On the key to the offensive performance

"I thought we just had a good consistent offensive performance. We ran the ball competitively, made them worry about it. Did a good job in the passing game - made some yards after the catch. Of course the red area's huge like it always is, getting the ball in the endzone, so give the players the credit. They played well, they played hard, they blocked them, they got open, they threw it, they caught it, they did a good job."

On whether they had a better week of practice compared to last week

"Well it was definitely better, but that wouldn't take much."

On how they can play so differently from week-to-week

"That's the NFL."

On if he got any sense during the week this week would be better

"It starts in practice. But you've still got to go out there and play. Hey, you never know, if you knew what was going to happen in this league, you could make a lot of money."

On what they based their offensive game plan off of

"We made our game plan against Pittsburgh this year based on what Pittsburgh does, what we think we can do, and how we felt like we could best attack them."

On tight end Rob Gronkowski's 3-Touchdown performance

"Rob works hard. He does a good job, he's improved a lot over the course of the year. He's a big target. He was wide open on one of them, but made a nice catch there on the last one. He's done a good job for us, he really has. He's worked hard, and hopefully he can keep it going. You know we've got a lot of young players, there's a lot of football left to be played, and hopefully they can all keep working hard and improving."

On how they were able to create so much pressure on Ben Roethlisberger

"Give the credit to the players. There were guys blocking them, but they were able to get past those blocks. Roethlisberger's a hard guy to tackle, we had our hands on him a lot, couldn't get him down. He's tough, but we were able to get a hold of him there and hogtie him down a couple times."

On the missed extra point, and how Shayne Graham, Zoltan Mesko, and their new longsnapper all worked together

"It looked like it was alright, I would say 'not perfect' but we've still got work to do. Fortunately we came out of it with a number of good plays and a win. I know we definitely had to deal with a couple of punt rushes there around midfield. We had some fourth and long situations which set up for the Steelers to rush us. So we handled those, and it looked like the snapping and the kicking and the holding was ok for the most part."

On the performance of the offensive line against Pittsburgh's pass rush

"They did a great job, our whole offensive line did a good job. I mean those guys bring a lot of inside pressure with [Lawrence] Timmons and [James] Farrior, and [Casey] Hampton, and Ziggy Hood and all those guys inside, so you know, you've just got to step up and block them and they did a great job of that. It's never easy against the Steelers, they're aggressive, they've got a lot of good players, they bring all different combinations of them - Polamalu - all of them so, the guys that block them, you've got to give them the credit. It's easy to X and O it, 'you've got him, you've got him', it's a whole other story getting them blocked out there on the field."

On Tom Brady's performance

"I thought Tom did a good job, and I thought our offense did a nice job. We had good balance, we had the ball to the tight ends, the backs, the receivers, we ran the ball competitively, we scored in the red area, the offensively blocked hard. So I think everyone had their own part in it, and certainly Tom did a nice job."

On how the defense has progressed this year

"I thought for the most part we played pretty competitively on defense until the last couple of two minute drives, and then we really didn't do a very good job on those. But we were able to make a couple of red area stops, one field goal, one missed field goal, so that was good. We played better on third down, so that gave us an opportunity to get off the field, which always helped. And that combined with our offense moving the ball and having a couple of long drives, it was a good complimentary game. The offense and the defense, and the kicking game all kind of…you know we had field position, we took advantage of it, our offense got good field position, for the most part they took advantage of it. It was a good team effort all the way around. The defense helped out the offense, the offense helped out the defense, and we got some plays in the kicking game."