Patriots at Bills: Bill Belichick Post Game Transcript

You know, there was a lot of energy in the stadium and all that, in pregame and so forth, but I thought after that first drive our team showed a lot of mental toughness and resiliency to come back from, a pretty hostile atmosphere to take the lead and play from ahead most of the game. Certainly a lot of things we could do better. We left a lot of plays on the field so we just have to keep trying to coach better and play better, play with more consistency but, you know, I thought our guys showed a lot of … we had a good week of preparation we were ready to go, we played … did a lot of things well but there’s certainly a lot of things we need to do better. So concentrate on that, but always good to win a road division game, you know, to come up here and win in Buffalo, so that’s always a good thing.

ON IF HE GOES BACK AND SECOND-GUESSES THINGS HE DID EVEN WHEN THEY WIN:

Yeah, well, in every game you do what you think is best. Sure, at the end of every game we’ll go back and take a look at everything. We always do that. See things that we could do better as a team, as a coaching staff in our preparation and everything. We do that every week.

ON IF HE FEELS THEY KEPT THE BILLS IN IT BY THROWING THE BALL:

I think we did what we thought was best to win the game. That’s what we always do.

ON HOW IMPORTANT THE ADJUSTMENTS WERE AFTER THE BILLS FIRST DRIVE:

Well, we obviously didn’t play very well defensively on the first drive. They made a couple plays, they made a play on the scramble, that was a big one to get it started, hit the boot pass for a touchdown. So it was a variety of things that came up on that drive that just wasn’t one play repeating over and over again but that’s, look you gotta, you know, be ready to play at the opening kickoff in this league. Defensively, they really didn’t blitz the first half. They ran a couple zone pressures where one guy blitzed and the other guy dropped, but they didn’t by then then really bring pressure at all. And in the second half, we saw, a little more pressure defense. which we kind of just anticipated that at halftime, we didn’t think they’d keep doing the same thing for as long as they did, but they did it pretty much all first half.

ON IF HIS TEAM BENEFITS FROM THIS KIND OF EXPERIENCE IN THIS ENVIRONMENT:

I don’t know. We have a lot of guys that are on the team this year that weren’t on the team last year or some other year. This year’s its own year, this team’s its own team, we’ll see what we do. I don’t know.

ON HOW IMPORTANT THE NO-HUDDLE OFFENSE AND QUICK PASSES WERE IN NEUTRALIZING THE BILLS’ PASS RUSH:

Well, obviously that was a big part of the game plan, we pretty much did that the whole game. We thought that would give us a little bit of an advantage. maybe we could move the ball, I don’t know, we must’ve had 500 yards out there. But we still left a lot on the field, we just have to focus on the things things we can do better.

ON THE FACT BRADY DROPPED BACK 61 TIMES AND WAS ONLY SACKED TWICE, WHAT THAT SAYS ABOUT THE OFFENSIVE LINE:

I thought the line did a pretty good job. I don’t think either, if I remember correctly, I don’t think either sack had anything to do with the offensive line. Just poor execution.

ON THE PLAY OF DION LEWIS:

Yeah, we’ll go back and look at everybody. I mean as a team we competed hard, we got plays from a lot of different players in all three phases of the game. So it’s a team win. everybody contributed they played hard as a team, we prepared hard and we’ve got something to show for it. We came up here and scored 40 points and we’re 1-0 in the division.

ON HIS THOUGHTS ON THE AMENDOLA CATCH:

It was a good catch. There was a couple plays where, you know, they had good coverage, but good throw, good catch and great concentration. That was a big play. Danny’s punt return was big too that was, you know, the sackthat we almost got the safety on and then the punt return the personal foul after that put us in great field position there in a second quarter, Danny’s catch at the end of the game, so we got plays from everybody and all the units so we need to keep playing complimentary football like that.

ON IF BRADY LOOKS LIKE HE’S AS SHARP AS EVER:

No, I think there’s a lot of things we can do better, everybody can do better. I didn’t think it was all that spectacular by anybody. But it was good enough, but we’ve got a lot of room to improve.

ON THE FACT REX RYAN WAS SAYING HE WAS OUTCOACHED AND IF HE BUYS INTO THAT AT ALL:

No, it’s our players. Our players went out there and played, they made the plays to win the game and I’d say they probably overcame some not so great coaching on my part. So give the credit to our players, they did a good job. They deserve the credit. They’re the ones who made the plays.

WHEN HE SAYS ‘NOT SO GREAT COACHING’, IF THERE’S ANYTHING IN PARTICULAR:

No.

ON THE FACT THEY FINISHED WITH EIGHT SACKS AND HOW DISRUPTIVE THEY WERE:

We had our moments. I mean, we let him run around a lot too. Taylor ran around, he scrambled for yardage, he scrambled and threw for big yardage. So again, I didn’t think it was all that great, we made some plays, we gave up some plays, I don’t think it was very consistent. We have to coach better, we’ve got to be more disciplined and play better. We’ll see it again this week. [Blake] Bortles is the same kind of player, athletic, makes plays throwing the ball, makes plays with his feet, so we’re going to have to do a better job than we did today.

About Ian Logue

Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.

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