Here’s the full transcript of Bill Belichick’s interview with former Patriots Scott Zolak that appeared on Patriots.com on Wednesday:
Go back to the regular season, you guys prepare all week, you get tested every Sunday or Monday. So basically, you’re studying for that one test per week. We go to the draft, years of preparation, your scouting department’s involved, personnel department, how do you balance the two where you get tested during the year, but then now you’ve got the one big test that maybe you’ve been working on for three years?
“This is like the proverbial final exam. We’ll see what the questions are and hopefully, we’re prepared to answer them.”
All right, coach, the beginning of the week I got all excited for draft week, you pulled off the trade to start the week with the Texans …
“That was a blockbuster.”
Blockbuster, genesis behind it, we all get a chuckle, but it gives you some more picks, right?
“Yes, it gives us kind of a two-for-one situation there. We felt like it was really about positioning. The trade was numerically equal.”
When I was growing up, we always felt that the best athletes were quarterbacks, or at least that’s what my dad told me. It seems like times have changed where the best athletes on the field, the way you look at the game now, may be the wide receivers. What is the reason for the influx of so many wide receivers in the league, especially over the last couple of years. Is it the game has changed at the collegiate level, the high school level?
“Well, there’s certainly a lot more passing. So I think, more balls in the air, maybe a little more value to the guys that are catching them. But I wouldn’t argue with the quarterback thing. I think you’re dad’s still right on that.”
Mock drafts, do you guys mock draft inside? At least, you have to practice making picks and everything, right?
We would kind of go through the process, probably similar to what a mock draft would be. But we don’t follow somebody else’s, we kind of do it ourselves.
You have the needs on one board, best available player in the draft left and maybe that best available player you didn’t think would be there when you pick for your need. How tough is that balance in making that pick?
“That’s a decision, for sure. I think the key thing, though, is you want to make sure the player that you take is good enough … he’s a good enough player. Because if he isn’t, then you haven’t really filled the need even if you have on paper. In the end, it’s not going to work out. So you want to make sure that the players are good enough to actually make your team and can contribute to your team if you take him.”
Last one for you. When is the “hay in the barn” for Bill Belichick. When does he close the computer and say, ‘We’re ready to go, nothing else we can do? Or is that never the case?
“Well, it really isn’t the case because it keeps changing. As players get picked in the first round, then things unfold. At the end of day one, then you reset the board for day two, which is rounds two and three and then at the end of Friday night, you reset the board and so it’s really, it’s three separate drafts. Certainly, you know a lot more on day two than you did on one and day three on day two. Players get picked, players come off the board, you’re not working with as many names but the process is kind of the same. You just reset the board.
Here’s the full video below:
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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.
