Fridays with Bill

by John Powers

  INCREASED VALUE OF PRACTICE SQUADDERS

  “The further you get into the season, the more attractive your practice squad players are because they’ve been with you longer, they know a little bit more, and you’ve seen them out there on a daily basis versus somebody else who, let’s say, was released at the beginning of the season and now we’re in the 13th week and maybe the player hasn’t played in three months. Well, how long is it going to take to get him up to speed versus how long is it going to take for your practice squad player?

  “He can kind of jump in there, he knows what to do. Maybe he doesn’t have as much experience or he’s a younger player but that’s the trade-off. He’s more current than guys that were out of football now for a while. That’s less of an issue earlier in the year. You get in the second, third, fourth week of the season and you bring in a player that was just at training camp and preseason games a couple of weeks ago. That’s a little bit different than doing it now.

  “When you look across the league, you look at the waiver wire on a Tuesday or Wednesday in December, that’s just about what you’re going to see. You’re going to see 10, 11 guys going on injured reserve. And you’re going to see 15 guys released, maybe 10 of them go on injured reserve and five of them are releases. And then probably 10 of those replacements are going to be from the team’s practice squad and then five of them will come from somewhere else—a team changed kickers, or something like that—and you find those players. With each week it’s going to be the same.”

  TEAM CHEMISTRY

  “Every team is different. Every team has a different makeup and a different chemistry and sometimes it changes over the course of the year based on the circumstances that a team goes through. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong, it has to be this or it has to be that. You put any group of people together and you’re going to have a different chemistry, and if you change a few people then that will change and the circumstances that group goes through will force some changes. It just will. It’s inevitable. The most important thing is the execution and the consistency of the units in the overall team. Emotion is great and that can be a big part of it but in the end we can’t all sit around and kumbaya all day. If you don’t block anybody or you can’t tackle or you can’t kick then I don’t really know what you have. I’m not saying it’s not important. It’s part of it, but you better be able to execute what you’re doing at a pretty high level or I don’t think the rest of it is going to carry you all that far.”

  The Patriots make the 44th president their 54th player during the White House visit following the Super Bowl victory over the Seahawks. (photo by John Tlumacki)

  4. Training Camp

  Whether or not the Patriots win the Super Bowl, the following season begins at the bottom of the mountain with a refashioned roster and a renewed challenge. “It’s a constant race for 16 weeks to get your football team better and better and better and better, but they’re doing that on the other side, too,” Bill Belichick mused. “When the season starts, as much as anybody wants to say, ‘Well, we’ll start off where we were last year,’ there’s no way. There’s no way.”

  A substantial amount of training and tutelage needs to be accomplished in eight weeks of preseason camp and exhibition games. “It’s like building a house,” the coach observed. “You cut some corners and then you don’t have the walls put up properly and then the sheetrock doesn’t go on right and then you have to go back and fix it up and everything. That’s not the way to do it. You want to get it in right but at the same time we’re on a time schedule, too. We don’t have forever.”

  The coach surveys his domain during the 2016 training camp. (photo by John Tlumacki)

  As a guide, Belichick and his staff will consult their camp notes from previous seasons. “We will go back and evaluate what we did, how we did it, what things were good, what things we would like to do differently, suggestions for next year, problems we had,” he said, “and try to be on the front end of those the next time around.”

  BACK TO BEGINNINGS

  “You get to the end of the year and then you start the next year and you think, ‘Okay, where are we? Well, we’re nowhere close to where we were in December or January. We’re just not. We’re starting training camp, we have new people, nobody has run these plays in six months.’ It takes you a period of time. Even if you have some spring practices, still you’re just nowhere near the execution level…. I’m not saying we’re great in December. We’re better in December—well, so is everybody else. From an execution standpoint, what we can do now and what we can do in September are two different things. A big part of it is just the newness and the getting back to the timing and the execution of your basic plays and then adjustments and situations and all those kinds of things. That’s the way I see it.

  “Now, you can look at the stats like I’m sure everybody does and say, ‘Look at how great the Patriots were in September.’ That’s only relative to where anybody else was in September. It’s not relative to where you are. We’re better now than we were in September, there’s no question about that. Even though maybe you don’t want to believe that but I know we are. But where is everybody else? And if they’ve improved more than we have, then the results are a little different. Or if we have improved more than they have, the results could be a little bit different. It’s a constant race for 16 weeks to get your football team better and better and better and better, but they’re doing that on the other side, too. When the season starts, as much as anybody wants to say, ‘Well, we’ll start off where we were last year,’ there’s no way. There’s no way. It takes so long to build to that point that you have to be realistic. You just can’t do the things that you did a year ago in December, in September.”

  CAMP PROGrESS

  From the moment that camp opens in mid-July until the regular season commences on the Thursday after Labor Day, the countdown clock is ticking for Belichick and his staff to instruct, evaluate, and whittle down their 90 candidates to 53. Since league rules limit the number of padded practices and hours on the field, the traditional four exhibition games are invaluable in helping the coaches decide which players are ready for prime time.

  “There are certain things that you have to get done, certain situations you have to cover and things like that. We just take it day to day, and things that aren’t looking as good we spend more time on and try to correct them or maybe even throw them out. Sometimes we adjust what we do and put in something new or build on something that we feel like is going better and can be a strong point for us. I don’t think you could sit there at the beginning of training camp and say, ‘Well, this is exactly where we’re going to be in September.’ There are a lot of variables between the time you start training camp and the time you open the season. Along the way you’re just trying to do the best thing that you can for the team and everybody involved. Players are at different stages of their preparation. Some guys have never played before. Some guys have played a lot. Some guys have worked together with each other before, some guys haven’t. There are just so many variables. I think you just try to do what is best for your team and do that on a day-to-day basis.”

  PLAY RETENTION

  While the physical demands of an NFL training camp are daunting, especially for rookies adjusting to the size, speed, and savvy of professional football players, the more challenging aspect for Patriots players is mental. The playbook can contain as many as 1,000 pass plays alone, reckons quarterback Tom Brady, who expects his receivers to know them all.

  “What coaching is in training camp is trying to give the players the right amount of information. You don’t want to not move ahead but at the same time you don’t want to move ahead too quickly, where you then have to go back and do it all over again. It’s like building a house. You cut some corners and then you don’t have the walls put up properly and then the sheetrock doesn’t go on right and then you have to go back and fix it up and ever
ything. That’s not the way to do it.

  “You want to get it in right but at the same time we’re on a time schedule, too. We don’t have forever. We have a preseason game in two weeks and [then] we open the season, so we have a schedule where we have to have everything ready by then to some degree. You try to manage those two things but at the same time everybody on your team isn’t at the same place. You have some players who are much more experienced and are further ahead than others so you try to find that balance and that’s really what coaching is.

  “Sometimes some groups can move faster than others on your team and so as a head coach and as a coordinator you have to talk about those things and try to figure out what the best thing is for the team. And that might not be the best thing for each individual player but that’s what football is. It’s a team sport and we all have to give up some individual preferences when we sign up for the team. That’s part of it, too.”

  DEVELOPING VERSATILITY

  “At some point in camp we’ll probably move just about every player either from one position to another or just switch sides in the same position to give ourselves depth and versatility. I think everybody should be expecting that at one point or another, with a couple of exceptions. For the most part, everybody will have some degree of learning multiple positions and building some versatility, both for themselves and for the team.”

  Belichick amid the quickened pace of a joint practice with the Jaguars in 2017. (photo by John Tlumacki)

  CONDITIONING

  “Every play that players play in preseason is beneficial from a learning standpoint, a technique standpoint, and also conditioning. We run around the field and all of that and that’s great for conditioning but it’s still not quite the same as actually playing the game and the intensity of it. What actually occurs in the game and the conditioning levels that a player has to be in to play a game, we try to simulate those in practice but it isn’t quite the same. Whichever players play, when they’re in there they get those opportunities and experiences and when they don’t, then it goes to some other players.”

  VALUE OF SCRIMMAGES vs. PRACTICES

  “Instead of doing one thing for a sustained period of time, which isn’t really the way football is played, this gives us a chance to simulate the moving game. First down, second down, third down, ball moves, field position moves, the kicking unit comes on the field, other offensive or defensive unit comes out on the exchange. That’s how you play. You don’t run 10 first-down plays in a row. You don’t run eight third-down plays in a row or eight sub-blitzes in a row or 10 punts in a row. That’s just not football, but those are good teaching methods and it’s a more efficient way to do it, so there’s a place for that. But at some point there’s a place for trying to simulate a game, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

  JOINT PRACTICES

  After having one joint practice in 2001 with the Giants, his former club, Belichick didn’t schedule another for nine years. The Patriots routinely have had two of them during each preseason and penciled in three in 2017 with the Texans, Lions, and Jaguars, whom they ended up facing both in the exhibition opener and in the AFC Championship Game. This year the Patriots scheduled no joint sessions.

  “We have a certain practice structure, a certain way of doing things. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just the way we do them. You have another team that, they’re playing the same game but maybe they do things just a little bit differently. When those don’t coincide, then as coaches we try to find what the common ground is. Either we’re going to do it your way or you’re going to do it our way or we’re going to split the difference, depending on what the issue is. I wouldn’t say that’s challenging but that’s one of the things that needs to be ironed out.

  “It’s usually better if everybody can do it the same way, so there are certain periods at the beginning of practice where both teams do their own thing separately and then when we come together there’s a certain standard or conformity that we want there to be so that everybody’s on the same page. It’s not one way for our defense and another way for their defense…. In general, that’s how it goes. Once you have the conversation with the coach and we agree, ‘Well, this is conceptually the way we want to do it,’ then it’s dotting the i’s and crossing some t’s and just working it out so that we can actually get to the point that we agree on.”

  CAMP NOTES

  “I look at the last two or three years of notes from before training camp, and during training camp and then after training camp when we talk about what happened. We will go back and evaluate what we did, how we did it, what things were good, what things we would like to do differently, suggestions for next year, problems we had—and try to be on the front end of those the next time around. There is definitely an element of looking back at previous years and trying to take the best things from those camps that we felt like we did as a team and incorporating those in the future at camps, and also trying to eliminate the problems or address them sooner, rather than after they become an issue.”

  During training camp Belichick may chat with his questioners al fresco, as he did here in 2015. (photo by Jonathan Wiggs)

  DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRESEASON AND REGULAR SEASON

  “Other teams have much better scouting reports on our players, as we do on theirs. By the time you get to the regular season and you’ve seen guys play in preseason or a couple of regular season games, you can start to identify their strengths and weaknesses and they can start to identify ours. The game planning is different, the way that your matchups are. Players try to play to your weakness and avoid your strength. That’s something you don’t always see in the first two or three preseason games because nobody really cares that much about it. That’s a big thing now, the situational football, getting to know the other teams, their personnel, their tendencies, their coordinators. How they do things, how much it changes from week to week, not just out there running around. It’s very specific.

  “It’s a huge transition from the preseason to the regular season and I’d say it’s a huge transition within the regular season. The games are a lot different than they’re going to be three, four, five weeks from now when there’s a lot more evidence in the books. Then teams start dealing with injuries and replacements and adjustments and everybody is adding to their scheme. Each week you add a couple new plays, a couple new looks, you add a wrinkle, those kind of things. What looks like a tendency is really just bait for something that they’re going to try to set up and show you something they’ve been doing and something else off it. All those are learning experiences and it’s a much higher level than what you see in college football, particularly in the passing game [that’s the big difference] and the kicking game.”

  5. Season

  What traditionally sets the Patriots apart from the rest of the league is their progressive improvement from summer to winter. Under Bill Belichick’s direction, the team has compiled a 64–13 record in December, the best in NFL history.

  “We try to take pride in our performance every week, from Game 1 to Game whatever,” the coach said. “That’s the way we do it. Come in, prepare for the team, get ready to go, try to play our best on Sunday, and try to win. That’s what we do every week.”

  The essence of the Patriots’ philosophy is consistent and efficient preparation with prime emphasis on what each player’s contribution needs to be for the team’s success. “This is what your role is,” Belichick and his staff tell them. “This is what your job is. First things first.”

  As the week progresses, the coaches distill and prioritize the details that they believe will make the difference between defeat and victory. “What are the most important things that we have to do here to win?” Belichick asks his players. “We know there are 1,000 things we’ve talked about and everything is important, but in the end, let’s get back to what we need to do here tomorrow.”

  While the stakes undeniably are hig
her in December than they are in September, the Patriots’ approach is undeviating. “We try to play good football all year long,” said Belichick. “We try to coach well. We don’t always do it, but we’re trying.”

  STEADY IMPROVEMENT

  “Early in the year everything is so new and fresh. You start playing games and nobody has played a full game in preseason. You build up your stamina and you build up your routine, which is different than what it is in training camp as far as your weekly preparation. You start to expand your playbook a little bit, and your opponents, each week you see a little bit more from each of them progressively. It’s important that we keep working to improve as a football team and individually.

  “Fundamentally, here are the things we need to do better, these types of plays or your individual techniques, things like that. I really make it a point to talk to a number of players individually on a weekly basis about, ‘Look, this is what you need to do better,’ or ‘Here are some examples of plays over the last few weeks that [are] a problem, we have to get this.’ ‘Here’s how you can do a better job,’ or ‘This is how we’re going to do this differently.’

  Belichick pleading for reconsideration from the officials amid a resounding 2002 loss at Tennessee. (photo by Matthew Lee)

  “I don’t think it’s so much of looking ahead as it is, there’s a body of work here, there are a lot of games. Looking back at the last three, four, five, six games, what things can we do better than what we’ve been doing? There is certainly enough to go on, whereas those first few weeks, a lot of it is just trying to move forward with your team, but now we’re seeing some of the same things every week. Teams are trying to do similar things to us, whether it’s a weakness or scheme thing, whatever it is, we have to try to address it and take better care of it.”