by John Powers
“You’ve heard that so many times from those young guys that you tell them, ‘Look, this is the way it’s going to be. This is what you need to be ready for. This is what’s going to happen. This is how this is going to work. This is how you need to do this. This is how you need to do that.’ It doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect but at least they’ve been warned ahead of time, they have an idea of what to expect.
“A lot of times you come back and say, ‘Okay, this is what we talked about. Did it happen about the way you thought it would? The way we talked about it?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, what was different?’ ‘I didn’t expect this or I didn’t expect that.’ Then we talk about that and move on to the next thing. It’s a long season for these guys. There are a lot of hills to climb, not just one. So it’s a roller coaster. Each week is a new challenge and each day is a new challenge. I think the better you can prepare them for it, the better chance they have to meet it. But there’s still no substitute for experience. Coaches, players, we try to provide that and we do that. That’s every year, every group, on and off the field.
“There are a lot of things in pro football that are a lot different than college. Not just the game, not just the preparation, but once they walk out of the building there’s no dormitories, no classes, not a lot of other stuff. There are a lot of other things. There’s regular life to deal with, paying bills and being accountable in other areas of your life that are much less so in college. A lot of stuff that is taken care of for you or you don’t have to deal with at all.
“It’s the same whether you’re talking to five guys, 10 guys, or 15 guys. It’s the same conversation. Maybe there are more or less of them but it’s the same. The five guys haven’t been through it any more than the 15 guys have been through it. A lot of little things. Most of our guys aren’t from this area of the country. A lot of them come from the South, some from the Midwest, some from the West. It’s a different lifestyle, it’s a different climate. There are a lot of things that are different up here. Just generally getting around, just doing normal things, particularly as we go deeper into the season. It’s all part of the transition.”
ROOKIE ROLES
“If you throw it all in there at once, sometimes that can be overwhelming and then you don’t get one thing right. You try to find that balance. You take it at a pace that you think the player can handle and sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong and you have to adjust it one way or the other. Until you work with a guy and you’re trying to do something like that with him, you have to try to figure it out on the run sometimes and that can be challenging.”
ROOKIE WALL
“I don’t think it affects everyone the same. The season grinds everyone down—players, coaches, experienced guys, inexperienced guys. It is a long season, it is a lot of work and you have to keep up the pace and that is challenging. For somebody who hasn’t been through it before, I think it is always a little bit tougher the first year, whether it’s a first-year NFL coach or a first-year NFL player. You don’t really appreciate it until you actually go through it and you don’t really know what you are going to go through until you are there doing it. No matter how much everyone tells you it is going to be like this or that, until you actually experience it and learn to deal with it yourself internally from a stamina and concentration standpoint I don’t think you actually know exactly how to do it.”
PLAYING FOOTBALL
“You just can’t play football unless you play football. You can run around the track and do 500 sit-ups and jumping jacks but it’s not playing football. No matter what kind of condition any athlete is in, no matter how many balls somebody throws to him or he catches, it is different when the other 21 guys are on the field and you are running a specific system against another opponent. That is all reactionary quickness, anticipation, and communication with your teammates. That’s what makes football football, and there is no other way to simulate that other than to actually do it…. Conditioning is important. I am not trying to minimize that. But at the same time, you could be the greatest decathlete of all time but that doesn’t mean that you are ready to play football. Football is football. It’s not just conditioning.”
Celebrating the “miracle” Super Bowl triumph over Atlanta at City Hall. (photo by Stan Grossfeld)
REPETITION AND EXPERIENCE
“Seeing and reacting as quickly as you have to do it at this level in this league is a lot different than running sprints. You see 21 other guys moving and that means you have to do a certain thing, whatever your job is on that play. So seeing it, reacting to it, being able to get the jump on it and anticipate it—those are all the things that come with repetitions and experience.”
YEAR-TO-YEAR IMPROVEMENT
“We’ve seen plenty of players that maybe haven’t done a lot in Year 1, haven’t done a lot in Year 2 and then Year 3 becomes a big year. As long as a player is improving and he’s getting better, that’s really the curve that you are looking for. You can’t always identify when that time is going to come, but as they’re cresting, sometimes it’s in the middle of Year 1, it’s the beginning of Year 2, it’s the middle of Year 3. We can cite plenty of examples of players who had their big year in Year 3….
“Each situation is a little bit different. Sometimes it depends where the player came from, what his background was, what type of system he played in, what he was asked to do, how quickly he can learn to do the things he’s being asked to do here. Some cases, that’s very similar to what guys were asked to do in another program, techniques and things like that. In some cases it’s very different.
“The level of competition can be a factor, too. What type of players he played against in college relative to the level of competition here. Just the whole schedule, the length of the season, the maturity, and so forth. There are so many variables that go in there, I’d have a hard time saying it’s this one particular thing. But I think when you scout players and you bring them into your program you usually have an idea of where you think they are. Whether it turns out that way exactly you don’t know until you spend time with them and have them in your program on a consistent basis. But you have a sense that some guys are probably going to be a little closer to being ready than others.”
MEASURING INJURY RISK
“I wish I knew the answer to that question. If I did I’d be a lot better off. We see guys coming out of college that have never been hurt and they’re hurt. We’ve seen guys coming out of college that had injuries in college and don’t get hurt. We’ve seen guys that have played for a team and been injured and go somewhere else in free agency and never get injured and vice versa. I don’t know. Are some guys more prone than others? I mean, yes, but can you really quantify that? No. Some guys you think do everything they can. Every indicator you have says that they’re as healthy as they’re going to be. They have good flexibility, good strength, good balance. They have good everything and sometimes they end up [injured].
“You can’t take out insurance, so you’ve just to go out there and play and whatever happens, happens. You can measure how players deal with injuries. I think you can measure that. Some guys deal with things differently than others do. But can you predict who’s going to get a high-ankle [sprain], who’s going to get a shoulder, who’s going to break a bone? I don’t know how you measure that. I wish I did.”
AFTER MISSING TIME
“That is the question. How much is too much? How do you get ready for the speed of the game when you haven’t been at the speed of the game? Anytime you bring an injured player back, sometimes the injury is part of that whole conversation. How much can he do? It could be other situations. What kind of condition is the player in based on the time that he has been away?… It’s trying to find that sweet spot for getting the player the best preparation you can. My experience with all of those players has been, as time goes by they play better. Maybe their first game will be their best game but most lik
ely the third, fourth, fifth, sixth games will probably be better than the first.”
3. Roster
For the Patriots, as for other NFL clubs, their 53-man roster and 10-man practice squads are organic, changing from week to week. Once the season starts, additions usually are made to replace injured players. But for Bill Belichick and the front office the mission to improve the team at every position is a year-round endeavor. “Every player that’s available, we consider,” he said.
From Draft Day through training camp, when rivals are reducing their numbers, until the trading deadline and beyond, Belichick and the club’s player personnel staff routinely evaluate a dynamic pool of hundreds of players.
“Every week we talk about personnel,” said Belichick, “and we go through the players that are on our roster, the players that are on the practice squad, the players that are available that are out on the street that aren’t with any team, the players that are on other teams’ practice squads, and anything that might have changed from the previous week.”
More successfully than almost all of their opponents, the Patriots have managed over the years to build rosters for both the short and long term by knowing precisely what players they need and how to acquire them. “There’s no magic formula for anything,” Belichick observed. “It’s a very inexact science, for sure.”
OFF-SEASON EVALUATIONS
“We go through the same procedure every year in the off-season. We look at our team and look at the options we have to improve our team at every position. We don’t narrow it down to anything. We don’t exclude anything. Every player that’s available, we consider. Some of them we tried to add to our team and were able to and some of them we’ve tried to add and we weren’t. And that includes players that are on our team at the end of the season who are not on our team the following year…. Each year you try to build your team and make it as strong as you can. Whoever you think can help do that, you try to work it out with them. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.”
ASSEMBLING A ROSTER
The NFL has a roster limit of 53 players, which requires coaches to use jigsaw-puzzle techniques to create two-deeps on offense and defense and also make room for special teamers. When Belichick and his staff are making decisions on the final few players, their versatility is paramount.
“You’ve got to have a team that can do the things you want it to in terms of personnel groupings and has some depth. You also have to be able to handle all the responsibilities in the kicking game, from gunners to inside-coverage people to wedge blockers to guys that can play on the wing in the punt team and all that. You look at a lot of people doing different things in training camp to evaluate your depth and then when you come down to getting your roster you have to make sure that all those spots are covered. It’s really a mosaic of all of that. It’s not a third-down running back versus another third-down running back. It’s all the things that come into play that those players would do or the other value that they would bring to your roster that if they do them then you don’t need somebody else somewhere else to do them. Or if they don’t do them then you do need somebody somewhere else or somehow you’ve got to get those things filled.
Belichick formulating an answer after the third straight loss at the start of his inaugural 2000 season. (photo by Bill Greene)
“It’s a very inexact science. With 53 players, which is really only 45, you just can’t have the depth that every coach would like to have. Some positions you have it, at other positions you don’t. I don’t think there’s any way to ever have the kind of depth that all the NFL coaches would like to have on their roster. It’s just not possible. So you pick and choose where you want to have it and the quality of it and then you go with it. If something happens then you make adjustments along the way.”
RELEASING PLAYERS
While the NFL allows clubs to bring 90 players into training camp in mid-July, it also requires them to release more than three dozen of them by September 1 in order to reach the 53-man limit. The enforced exodus often makes for excruciating decisions for the coaching staff and difficult conversations with players who may never again wear a helmet.
“It’s the worst part of the job. You start with 90 players and you know you’re going to have to release 37 of them. It’s usually more than that because other players come and are part of that process, too. Guys work hard, they give you everything they’ve got, they go out there and compete, and not everybody can make it. It’s always a tough time of year for myself and all the other position coaches as well because those guys spend a lot of time with those players in meetings, watching film with them, out on the practice fields in smaller groups, and really try to develop a good working relationship with those players and it’s hard to see it end…. It doesn’t really get any easier. It’s always a grouping of people and you’re affecting their lives and their families and their careers and trying to do what’s best for the team. But that can still be tough. It’s tough.”
LONG-TERM vs. SHORT-TERM NEEDS
“If you were just picking the team for one game, for the opener, that would be one thing. If you were picking the team strictly for next year, that would be another thing. But in reality you’re trying to pick a team for all of those. You’ve got a game to play, you’ve got the early part of the season to be ready for. Sixteen games, that’s a lot of football, and you need a lot of depth to get through those 16 games but you don’t know exactly where you’re going to need it.
The coach observes stretching exercises during 2009 training camp. (photo by John Tlumacki)
“It’s one big balancing act. You know you’re going to have a team next year so do you want to keep a player this year, but you’re really looking at where he’s going to be next year? You don’t think he’s going to be a big contributor this year but you see that player has an upside to improve the following year. Or, do you go with a player who maybe has a little bit of a higher performance now but a year from now would somebody else pass him? Those are all tough questions….
“It’s always hard to leave that veteran experience for a little bit of an unknown, but the lifeline of this league and the lifeline of every team is young developing players. You can’t build a team without them, so they’re an important part of it. There’s uncertainty there. Not all of them develop. Then that, at the end, just becomes a waste of time. Just trying to make the right decisions there, especially when sometimes the information is limited. But it is what it is.”
ACQUISITION TIMING
“Acquisitions that you make at the beginning of the season, in the spring or in the off-season, you’re looking at roster building. You’re looking at players that you feel would be competitive in a certain position or in a certain role or in a combination of roles that would be competitive for your team. That role might be as a starter, it might be as a rotational player, but whatever that is, you’re looking for a guy that’s going to be competitive in those roles.
“When you acquire a guy at the beginning of the season or in the season you’re usually acquiring that player to fill a specific role at that time. He’s not in competition with eight other guys for something. I mean, the reason you’ve acquired him is because he’s available and it’s worked out and you see a role for that player that you can use…. It’s different than when you get a guy in March. Certainly you have a lot more time with that player, but your team’s not really established at that point, either. You’re still trying to see how it’s all going to play out.
“In September or October, you have a lot better idea how it’s playing out and if you acquire a player generally it’s to put that player into a role that you feel is necessary and that he can do…. Other things happen, too. What you do at the end of September for one reason, by the middle of November those reasons may not be valid any more. You might be in a whole different ballgame and then maybe that player fits into that new situation or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe some
body else fits into it. So you can’t oversimplify it because each case is different.”
POTENTIAL ADDITIONS
“Every time you bring a player on to your team I think you want to have an idea of what you’re going to do with them, what you’re going to ask them to do, and whether or not you feel like he can do it. Whether you draft them or sign them as a free agent or a veteran free agent or whatever the situation is, here’s what you envision this guy’s responsibilities being and what he needs to do. And then, whether or not you think he has the skill, the makeup and maybe in some cases experience, depending on what that role is, to do it.
“There’s no magic formula for anything. It’s a very inexact science, for sure, but you try to identify what you’re looking for and then find people that fit that particular niche or role or criteria, however you want to look at it. If you feel like it will be productive, then you do it. If you don’t, then you keep looking. Sometimes you find a guy that you think will and for whatever reason you don’t get him. Somebody else drafts him or you’re not able to sign him or whatever. And then maybe that opportunity comes up later on. Or maybe it doesn’t. It’s a regular process. It’s very cyclical. We go through it many times during the year and then the next year we go through it again.”
BEST PLAYER AVAILABLE
“At the start of the season you have your Best Player Available list, like Mel Kiper’s. Here are the top five, six, seven guys, however many it is, that aren’t on an NFL roster that you would like to spot if you have a need. And then there is another list of guys that are just the next player. Our next tackle, our next center, our next quarterback, our next receiver, our next whatever. But within that group there’s just, who are the best football players? Forget about what our needs are. Who are the best players out there right now? Or who were they then and who are they right now?