Patriots at Denver: AFC Championship – Bill Belichick PostGame Transcript
Kevin Jairaj - USA TODAY Sports
OPENING STATEMENT:
“First of all, want to congratulate Denver on an AFC Championship. They’ve got a good football team, well coached, have a lot of good players and played a little bit better than we did today. I’m proud of our guys, they fought right to the very end like they always do and in the end we just couldn’t quite make enough plays, obviously. Disappointing result, a lot of big plays in the game, any one of them probably could have made a bit of a difference. I just think we all feel as coaches, players, all of us, there’s such a fine line today between winning and losing that if we all could have just done a little bit more, it might have been a different result, but it wasn’t. Crash landing to the end of the season like it usually is in the National Football League.”
On being down close three times late in the fourth quarter and how frustrating it was not being able to do anything:
“Yeah, exactly.”
On how tough it was with them rushing four and dropping seven:
“Yeah, they did a good job. We didn’t run the ball well enough to take them out of much of that. They’ve got a good pass rush, the coverage was tight. They did a good job. Wade[Philips]’s a great coach, does a great job, they have good players. Defensively they’re a good team. We know that.”
On why they went for it on fourth down twice:
“Because of the score and the situation in the game.”
Any regrets?
“No.”
On the fact he was one of the people who was the strongest voices on the extra point not being automatic:
“There was a lot of plays in the game, a lot of big plays in the game. We had a chance an the end. You know, they made the play.”
On if he’d share anything on what he said to Peyton Manning at the end of the game:
“No.”
On the play of Jamie Collins:
“We did a lot of good things defensively. Gave up two touchdowns on double moves and then, give up the field goal at the end of the half. Those are a lot of good plays and then there’s a couple ones that, you know, wish you could have back. Could have made a red area stop or … could have … the field goal at the end of the half, that ended up being a big three points too. Which, I mean, we didn’t help ourselves on that on offense or with the field position on the punt. It was a combination of things. We had a lot of guys play well on defense. I’ll have to look at the film and see how it all turned out. But I think we had a lot of guys play well. Did a good job on the running game and they split the short yardage play and that was another three points. So in the end, it wasn’t quite enough.”
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