Fridays with Bill

by John Powers

  “When it comes down to situational football at the end of the game, that’s where you need to make the plays you need to make to win,” Belichick said. “We prepare for those plays, but which ones come up? It’s only a handful of them and ultimately those are the ones you have to make.”

  LIVING IN THE PRESENT

  “I don’t believe—and our team doesn’t believe—in living in the past. We can go back and look at a million things that have happened in every game. That’s not really important to us. What’s important to us is this game and our preparation for this game and our performance in this game. That’s what we’re all focused on and that’s what we will be focused on. Next week it will be next week. There’s certainly things that have happened in other games that we learn from. We learn from every game. We address things that we feel like need to be addressed, that we need to learn from and then we move on and attack the next situation.”

  BULLETIN-BOARD MOTIVATION

  While Patriot players usually are aware of what’s being said about them by upcoming opponents, Belichick discourages them from returning fire. “We don’t engage,” linebacker Marquis Flowers said before last year’s AFC title game. When receiver Wes Welker made puckish references to stories about Jets coach Rex Ryan’s reported foot fetish before a playoff game, Belichick benched him for the opening series. The players’ generic response to rivals’ gibes: “We’ll see on Sunday.”

  “You can go in there and beat your helmet against your locker before you go out on the field… but as soon as the ball is snapped, you do your job better than they do theirs or vice versa. After a couple of plays, it might be after one play, it is really about execution. What team can do what they have to do better than the other team? Not just individually one-on-one, but collectively as a group. You get into situational football, field position, clock management, changing personnel groups, substitutions, calls, and adjustments. That to me is what the game is about.

  Owner and coach savoring a successful season before the Super Bowl victory over the Seahawks. (photo by David Ryan)

  “You can go in there, take a sledgehammer, and break up the cinder blocks, but I don’t think that helps you block them. I don’t think that helps you tackle them. I don’t think it helps you do what you need to do from a football standpoint. If you can’t do that then I think the rest of it is minimal. I think in general what we all need to do is focus on what our jobs are and do that. There are a lot of potential distractions out there, stuff gets said and we all know what kind of stuff happens. Sometimes they can be distracting. I am not saying that we don’t feel them or it isn’t a burr in your saddle, but in the end you have to put all of that past you, whether you are on the giving or receiving side. I have seen it go on both ways. Go out and do your job. That is really what it comes down to.”

  ALL-AROUND BALANCE

  “You always want to be balanced in your game. The most important thing is to make the plays you need to make to win. What plays are those going to be? I don’t know. I’m not sure. But do you want to have good balance between your running game and passing game, production in your kicking game, production on defense, winning the turnover ratio, winning the field position battle, and all those things that lead up to it? Of course. You want to have the edge in all those categories. That just helps the whole flow of the game. Sometimes it works out that way, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you have an advantage in one area and the opponent has an advantage in another area.

  “In the end it comes down to a few plays at the end of the game on anything—kicking a field goal, blocking a field goal, a pass, defense, whatever it is. When it comes down to situational football at the end of the game, that’s where you need to make the plays you need to make to win. We prepare for those plays, but which ones come up? It’s only a handful of them, and ultimately those are the ones you have to make.”

  SCORING POINTS ACROSS THE BOARD

  “You don’t go into a game thinking that, well, we’re going to score a touchdown on a fumble return or we’re going to score a touchdown on a kickoff return or something. You don’t go into a game thinking that, because you’re lucky if you get three or four of those through the entire course of the season. If you get one a month you’re probably doing well…. You don’t really count on a blocked kick for a touchdown. You’re lucky if you get one of those a year. League-wide, when you look at all of the averages, that would put you very high up there if you had one of those.

  “When you score like that, they’re points that you really don’t count on, so to get them is a bonus. It’s a plus and obviously it’s great to get them. It’s great awareness by the team that executes it, whether it’s the special teams or a defensive player or a turnover or whatever it is. They’re good points to get. I don’t think you can ever count on them: ‘We’re going to score on a punt return in a game.’ How many of them are there? But when you get them it’s tough and when you give them it’s hard to overcome those. It’s another possession that you have to have and that you have to get just to neutralize the points that you’ve given up when they didn’t have the ball. You have to not only score once to neutralize that, but then you would have to score again just to have an advantage based on that miscellaneous return or miscellaneous score, whatever it is. An interception, fumble return, blocked kick, however it shows up.”

  BEING ON THE SAME PAGE

  “Football is a team sport. You want everybody to be on the same page doing the right thing, whatever that is. We’re a lot better off as a team if we’re all wrong together than if half of us are right and half of us are wrong. We’re better off all playing the same thing even if it’s not what we should be in, than half in one thing and half in something else. That’s what communication is, making sure that when the ball’s snapped, when the play’s run, whichever side of the ball we’re on, that we’re all consistent doing the same thing. Then at least you have a chance. Once you’re in one of those half-and-half deals it’s almost impossible to tie it together properly.”

  SITUATIONAL ROLES

  “When I first came into the league you just didn’t have as many personnel groups as you have now. A lot of times those 11 guys never left the field. Like the Hail Marys from Roger Staubach back in the ’70s, it’s just their regular offense, a guy running a go route. It wasn’t all those guys together jumping it and tipping it and that type of thing. You rarely saw a tight end. You saw two receivers, you saw two backs, whatever. You had four backs—those four replaced those two, those two replaced the other two. If you had two tight ends then your tight end replaced the other tight end. There were no two–tight end sets.

  “Even in goal-line, short-yardage on the 1-yard line, you still usually had two spread receivers. There was no third receiver. There were a few teams that played nickel defense like the Redskins when George Allen was there but it wasn’t really nickel. It was just the defensive back came in for a linebacker. They played the exact same thing but it was just a DB instead of a linebacker having those coverage responsibilities. Maybe he was a little more athletic and had a little more coverage skill. If something happened to him they would put their linebacker back in and just run the same thing.

  Belichick examining photo printouts during last year’s preseason loss to the Jaguars. (photo by Barry Chin)

  “It wasn’t until the late ’70s to early ’80s when you had teams running two tight ends and one back and even starting to get into three receivers. I remember being with the Giants in ’81 and we didn’t even have a nickel defense. That was a big step. I can’t remember what year it was, maybe it was ’82 or ’83, and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re going to put the nickel in this year.’ It was like, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be a big step, how are we going to do this?’

  “Now there are more players but you have three receivers, you have two–tight end sets, you have your five, maybe six DBs, you’ve got your pass-rush guys. You’ve got your backup
punter, you’ve got your 50-plus punter, you’ve got your short–field goal kicker, you’ve got your field goal snapper, you’ve got a punt snapper, you’ve got an onside kick guy, you’ve got four tight ends on this formation, you’ve got four, five wide receivers on this formation. It’s just more and more substitutional groups. If you have more and more players it gets further away from just the 11 guys that you had out there.

  “You can take it all the way back to the ’50s in college football, when you didn’t have free substitution. Guys went both ways. You look at some of the old defenses there. Why were teams playing a 5–3 and a 6–2? Because it was the same guys who had to play offense. You had to take your offensive players and put them on defense. Or, more importantly, you had to take your defensive players and then fit them onto offense. If a lot of fullbacks looked like guards it’s because they were linebackers on defense. The game, in terms of substitution and all that, has expanded tremendously.”

  EXPLOITING OPPONENTs’ LACK OF DEPTH

  “We definitely try and do that. We try to take an assessment of the team after you’ve had time to do it. Let’s call it by the end of the first quarter, just to pick a time. How’s it going? It looks like they’re having trouble here or it looks like so-and-so isn’t very effective. Or maybe a defensive player will come off and say ‘So-and-so, I don’t think he can run.’ or ‘I don’t think he has the stopping quickness that he had the last time I played him.’ They tell us that.

  “A lot of times they see it before we do. Sometimes if we know about it, we try to have people on our staff that observe that and take an assessment of where they are to confirm it with the players. Maybe there’s something you can do about it, maybe there isn’t. Maybe it’s just that individual matchup of how that person plays them that can be used to some advantage, as opposed to some big scheme thing like, ‘Okay, this player’s limited in something. What play do you want to run?’ Maybe it’s less of that and more of, ‘Okay, we’re competing against this player. This looks like a weakness today. Here’s how individually we want to block him or defend him or whatever the case may be.”

  NEUTRALIZING OPPOSING PLAYERS

  “The fundamentals of any matchup are, when you look at a player you see his strengths and you also see his weaknesses. You say, ‘Okay, this is what he does well but this is what he doesn’t do so well, and this is how we can attack that player or neutralize him.’ Every player has things, especially in this league, that they do well and then they have things that they don’t do so well. Or you can hopefully match up a player on them where you think that player can be competitive because of the way that they match up.

  “That’s what we try to focus on. If guys do something well, then how do we neutralize it? How do we stalemate that? And then how do we take advantage of something that maybe they don’t do quite as well as other players we’ve played? Or maybe our skills are a little bit better than theirs in a certain area. We have more quickness, we have more size, we have more power. They don’t block moving targets as well or they don’t block stationary targets. Whatever it is, we try to work that angle. That’s why each one of those individual matchups across the board is important, whether it be the receivers and defensive backs or the linebackers and the tight ends and the backs or the linemen. Those are all key matchups for us every week.”

  MATCHUPS

  “The easiest thing in the world is for one player to match another. ‘Okay, you go cover this guy.’ All right, great. But what do the other 10 guys do? That’s the problem. It’s easy to match up one guy. That’s simple. What do the other 10 guys do? What if he’s here? What if he’s there? What if he goes in motion? What if he’s in the backfield? What if it’s this personnel? What if it’s that personnel in the game? Then how does all of the rest of it match up? That’s where it gets tricky. You can be spending all day, literally, on that. Now if [the guy] is always in the same spot, then it’s a lot easier in terms of scheme to match up and make your adjustments and so forth.

  “Again, there are a lot of different ways to match up. You can match up and put your best guy on their best guy or you can match up and put your best guy on their second-best guy and put your second-best guy on their best guy and double him. If you’re going to put your best guy on their best guy and double him anyway, then you lessen the matchups down the line. It’s like setting a tennis ladder. If you put your bad guy at 1 and you win 2 through 7, great. If you put your best guy at 1 and he gets beat by their 1 and then your 2 versus their 2, that’s what you’re doing. You have a three-to-four-man ladder there with the receivers and your DBs, except we don’t have to match them that way. You can match them however you want.”

  DEFERRING COIN TOSS

  In 2008, the rule was changed to allow the coin-toss winner to defer the option to kick or receive to the second half. In all but two of the subsequent 50 games, the Patriots chose to defer. They opted otherwise in the 2017 regular season finale against the Jets and the divisional playoff with the Titans, electing to receive. In the Super Bowl, they deferred, and the Eagles received and drove down for a field goal.

  “There is something to be said for setting the tone offensively and going out there, first drive and all that. If you have received the opening kickoff, now you start the second half and say, “Okay, they are going to take the ball.’ Then you really have a decision to make relative to the wind, if that is a factor. Do you have it in the third quarter when you are kicking off, or do you want it in the fourth quarter when the passing and kicking game might be a little more important? I think it is the reverse of that when you defer. You have the opportunity for two possessions, one at the end of the half and one at the start of the third quarter, so there is a chance for that back-to-back possession and then you don’t always have that third-quarter decision.

  The coach preparing assiduously for the 2011 season—in April. (photo by Stan Grossfeld)

  “If you defer, then you take the ball and take the wind at the start of the game, then the second half it puts the ball in their court as far as that wind decision goes, which is always a tough one. Whatever you decide to do on that you are always giving some consideration to the other side. ‘Do I want it in the third or do I want it in the fourth?’ It certainly has made it more of a decision than it was in the past. Unless you were playing in a hurricane you just automatically take the ball. Now there are some things to consider and I do think there is a certain comfort level with just taking the ball.”

  SCRIPTING OPENING PLAYS

  “The thing that you have to take into consideration is the situations. Do you want to call the same play on first-and-15 that you want to call on second-and-1? Do you want to call the same play on third-and-6 that you want to call on second-and-4? If you follow the script then, ‘Okay, here’s the fourth play.’ But would you really want to call that play in that situation or would you rather call your second-and-short play in second-and-short and your third-and-long play in third-and-long? It’s a couple of different philosophies on that. There’s merit to both of them.

  “I’ve done it both ways. At times we’ve said, ‘Okay, this is what we want to do sequentially.’ Other times we’ve said, ‘The first time it’s second-and-long, this is what we’re going to call. The first time it’s second-and-short this is what we’re going to call.’ It’s not the same play. I think there is a place for both. It’s really a philosophy of either how you want to start the game or how you want to start a particular game with your sequence of call. That’s usually an end-of-the-week decision—Thursday, Friday, Saturday. You’ve practiced everything. Here’s how it looks. Here’s what our comfort level is of calling the plays with our players and our team and then you make the decision of, ‘Okay, this is what it’s going to be.’ Last year [2009] against Baltimore we started off the game and recovered a fumble and we got the ball at the 15-yard line. So what play do you want to call there? The first play of your script or your 15-yard play or yo
ur first play after a turnover? You’ve got to decide how you want to handle those situations because it isn’t always that clean when it comes up.”

  GAME PLANNING AND INJURIES

  “Whatever your game plan is you’ve got to be able to run with whoever you have in the game. Anyone could be out after one or two plays. You don’t want to be drawing up stuff on the sideline. So whatever you’re going to run, you have to have somebody to back up everybody to run it. You’ve got to have a backup right tackle, a backup right guard, a backup tight end, a backup running back, a backup receiver. Somebody takes reps at those positions during the course of the week. Now if you lose two guys at the same position, I don’t care what position it’s at, you’re probably talking about some adjustments. You lose two centers, you lose two corners, you lose two linebackers, you lose two of anything then I would say 90 percent of the time that would be a pretty good scramble. To lose one guy to any position, you’ve got to be prepared for that. That’s football.”

  FOCUS WHILE CHALLENGING PLAYS

  The rules allow teams to make two challenges per game on calls that they believe are questionable. Coaches, who toss a red flag onto the field as a signal, are required to issue their challenge before the next play. “Incontrovertible visual evidence” is required to reverse a call. If a challenge fails, the team is charged with a timeout.

  “I don’t think you can wait to challenge the play. If you’re calling the play, you have to call the play. You can’t wait and [think], ‘Is there going to be a replay? What’s going to [happen?]’ You can’t operate like that…. The person up in the press box that relays that information says, ‘Okay, the ball is spotted. It’s inside the one or it’s on the one-and-a-half or wherever the ball is. Or it’s first-and-goal if we’ve gotten a first down or it’s third-and-one if we haven’t gotten a first down, whatever it is.’ Then you have to make your call.