Fridays with Bill

by John Powers

  “As much as we can we try to stay in a routine. If you try to change your travel plans in a week you’re trying to ship, whatever it is, 200 people out to wherever you are—players, coaches, staff, marketing, equipment, everything else. Whatever the FAA regulations and so forth are—I mean, you can’t just throw whatever you want on an airplane now. You’ve got weight requirements, you’ve got packing requirements, things like that.

  “There are things that we did years ago, even as little as a couple of years ago, that we can’t do any more. A lot of times we truck our equipment to the away sites. There are issues with smaller planes and weight and cargo and baggage. Look, we’re moving a lot of people here. Every once in a while something comes up. Like when we played Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship Game [in 2004] and we had the snowstorm. We left a day early and went up there. You see what your options are and make the best of them. Sometimes there’s availability and sometimes there isn’t and then you figure out what the next-best thing to do is. But we’re not in an environment where whatever we want to do, ‘Okay, let’s do that.’ There are a number of hoops to jump through.”

  ADJUSTING TO STADIUMS

  “I think it’s the same every week whether you’ve been there or not. Of course if you haven’t been there [then] there is a newness to it but even if you have been there at most you’re probably playing in that stadium once a year. So just re-familiarizing yourself with the conditions, the sun, the lights, the scoreboard, the 40-second clock—I would say in most of those stadiums the way they’re built there’s a difference in the wind between in the end zone where it’s more protected and out at midfield and usually the flags are no indicator of anything other than it’s the opposite of whatever they are. The turf, the footing, the consistency of that if cleats are an issue.

  “If it’s a turf field then obviously it’s not the case, but if it’s not, then what are the conditions? Cleveland’s surface versus Arizona’s surface—I mean, they couldn’t be more different. Each game is different, so even if you’ve been in that stadium before, if it’s a day game, if it’s a night game, whatever the wind is, whatever the sun is, it’s different for that day. I think fundamentally you always want to go through that process and re-acclimate yourself to the specific conditions for that particular game.”

  GRIDIRON QUIRKS

  “Those old fields like Veterans Stadium [in Philadelphia] that were baseball fields where they would take out the pitcher’s mound and put in a square of turf that they would inlay in there, [there were sometimes] some bad seam areas in various spots. Definitely, players were aware of that. They’re not looking at it, they’re playing, but there’s some awareness of it. A lot of times the sidelines, when you have a multi-purpose field, there are multiple markings out there. We had that when I was in Denver in the old Mile High Stadium where the Denver Bears played. The first-base line ran not quite parallel to the sideline and so it was lighter, but you could still kind of see it, and the way it was cut it was clearly there, but the sideline was a little bit farther. I remember we had a couple of plays out there, one in particular, where a runner thought he was out of bounds and he got hit and it was a yard sale—helmet, ear pads, chin strap. Each stadium has its own little idiosyncrasies and uniqueness.”

  CROWD NOISE

  “There are plenty of times on the road offensively that the crowd noise isn’t an issue and there are plenty of times at home when crowd noise isn’t an issue. But there are times when it is. You just have to be prepared on that side of the ball. Whichever side of it you’re on, whichever game you’re playing, you’re going to have to deal with it at some point. But it’s not 100 percent of the time on every play, in my experience. Except if you get into a game at a neutral site like the Super Bowl, then you kind of have noise on every play all the time. The decibel level goes up and down, but it’s always pretty high. There is no home team. But that’s obviously much more of an exception than the rule.”

  Belichick responds to queries before the 2016 AFC title game with the Steelers. (photo by Barry Chin)

  NOISY STADIUMS

  “Seattle has always been one of the noisiest places, but you get stadiums like RFK [Washington] or old Mile High [Denver] where the seats were aluminum and they would beat on them and it was like 60,000 sets of cymbals going off at the same time. Literally, the whole stadium was reverberating, particularly in Denver.”

  OAKLAND’S BLACK HOLE

  Once the Raiders returned to Oakland after 13 seasons in Los Angeles, a raucous cadre of fans took possession of seats in a Coliseum end zone and turned it into the Black Hole, whose denizens garb themselves like a cross between Star Wars figures, zombie clowns, and S&M devotees, all in silver and black. Still, the Patriots since have won two of their three meetings there with the Raiders.

  “We don’t get a very good reception out there, but that’s the way it is just about every place we play. That’s what playing on the road is. You have to be able to handle those elements, the hostile environment, the crowd noise offensively, just the fact that all you have are the people standing there on your sideline. That’s the way it is just about every away game. We just have to block out all the support that our opponents are getting at home and focus on what our job is and make sure that our communication, our substitutions, and our execution during the game is the best that it can be. Just control what we can control. There’s nothing we can do about the rest of that stuff. We know it will be what it is. You’ve all seen that before.”

  EVERY GIVEN SUNDAY

  “It’s a challenge. That’s what this business is, it’s challenging. There’s definitely a thrill, there’s an excitement if the results are good on Sunday—but sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. We’ve seen the highs and lows of that. Every team will have that every season. The challenge is the competitiveness. You’re up against the best players, the best coaches, the best organizations in football…. That’s the way it is in the NFL. Every team is good. Every team has good players, good coaches, good scouts, good everything. If you’re not at your best then you don’t have any chance. If you are at your best, you might run into their best.

  “This isn’t like college where you can play down a couple of divisions on your schedule and that kind of thing. Every week you’re up against a team that has the same opportunity as you do, the same salary cap, same draft choices. The way it’s structured it’s very, very competitive. Every week it’s a huge challenge to be able to compete against that team. That’s what it’s about for me.”

  7. Offense/Defense

  During their best seasons, the Patriots USUALLY have ranked at or near the top of the league in most points scored and fewest allowed. For Bill Belichick, the balance between a productive offense and a stingy defense is crucial to victory.

  “Defensively you always like to be on a long field and just play the percentages,” he said. “And conversely, putting the offense on a short field works in the offense’s favor. Field position is always a critical thing.”

  For the offense, communication along the line and between the quarterback and receivers is vital to sustaining drives, as is taking advantage of individual matchups. For the defense, denying big plays and shutting down opponents inside the 20-yard line are essential. “Those are always two big points of emphasis every week,” observed Belichick. “Not to give it all up in one play and to play well in the red area and hold them to field goals.”

  FIELD POSITION

  “Defensively you always like to be on a long field and just play the percentages. It forces the offense, if they don’t get it all on one big play, to execute more plays throughout the course of the drive and statistically we all know that the further away they are from the goal line, the lower the percentages are that they’ll score touchdowns, field goals, and points. That doesn’t ensure anything.

  “Defenses give up long drives and they give up big plays, but statistically speaking on
a percentage basis, that field position works in the defense’s favor. And conversely, putting the offense on a short field works in the offense’s favor. Field position is always a critical thing. We had a situation come up at the end of the half where one first down, a few yards, makes a difference between a field goal or a scoring opportunity at the end of the half. You can score at the end of the half and then there’s 1:30, 1:40, whatever left, and with good field position you or the other team can be right back in scoring position in a hurry. A few yards makes a difference then between a long field goal attempt and a Hail Mary into the end zone, which is a lower percentage play.”

  TURNOVERS FOR TOUCHDOWNS

  Fumbles and interceptions lose games and damage playoff hopes. So Belichick puts enormous emphasis on ball security, and the Patriots during recent seasons have been first or second in the league in fewest turnovers.

  “You have so many possessions in a game. You have eight to 12 or 13 possessions, depending on the length of those drives and the time they consume and so forth. So if we each had eight possessions and you score on a return when I have the ball then I’ve lost a possession and now I have to make it up the next time I have the ball or neutralize one of those scores. Statistically, it’s hard to do. You look at all the times that happens, there aren’t that many of them. So when you give one up it’s a lot to overcome, because you only get the ball so many times.

  “It’s not like basketball, where you’re going to have 70 possessions. You give up a turnover and you’re going to get the ball another 69 times or whatever the average is in basketball. But in football you don’t get it that many times, so to turn it over and to turn it over for a score…. What’s the difference if you fumble the ball on the 10-yard line and they score on the next play or they intercept it and run it back for a touchdown? It’s basically the same thing. It’s kind of the same result, and that’s why turnovers are so important. That’s why they’re so statistically heavily weighted toward the outcome of games. You don’t have that many possessions. If you lose the ball and you give up points it’s too hard to overcome. You might be able to get away with one of them, maybe, but it’s hard to get away with more than that.”

  PLAY ACTION

  “One of the best things about play action is the opportunity to really get receivers into some open space. When you just drop back and throw, whether you’re throwing against man or zone, for the most part the defense is usually going to be fairly close to those guys, either matching them in zone or running with them in man-to-man. Sometimes when you have a good play action and you’re able to displace the defense and get the linebackers coming up or the secondary going back or get the linebackers or whoever running inside while your receivers are running outside you can create some space in the passing game, that’s much harder to get on a drop-back pass. That’s the advantage of doing it, and the running game helps the play-action passing game. And then the play-action passing game helps the running game in terms of keeping the linebackers from running up there quite so fast.”

  Belichick making a point during the 2016 training camp. (photo by John Tlumacki)

  THIRD DOWN/RED ZONE SIMILARITIES

  “The similarities are tight coverage. On third-and-3 to -6, -7, or -8, something like that, offensively you’re not expecting a lot of easy throws. It’s not like first down, where you might be able to complete a six- or seven-yard pass that’s not that heavily contested. Third-and-6, you have to work for those. You either have to run a real good route or you have to design a play that gets a guy open in the defense. The defense isn’t trying to give that up. Coverage is tight on third down in those situations for the most part and it’s tight in the red area because you don’t have much field to work with.

  “For a quarterback and a receiver, you’ve got to get open. The quarterback has to make a quick decision. He has to get the ball into tight coverage, and a lot of times it’s a lot harder than on first and second down, where the defense is thinking about the run, maybe they have more run defenders on the field. You start putting five or six defensive backs out there and a good coverage linebacker, then they do some different things with their pass rushers and have a lot of different combinations of coverages they can go with, with all those defensive backs and linebackers on the field. It’s hard to throw against even though you have your better receiving players out there. You have to see it quickly. You have to react and the ball has to be accurately thrown a lot of times for those plays to be successful. I’d say it’s similar.”

  SWITCHING FROM OFFENSE TO DEFENSE

  “At whatever point a coach takes a player from offense and puts him on defense, there is usually a reason for that. I would say the reason usually is that he’s not enough of a playmaker on the offensive side of the ball. What coach is going to take your best playmaker and put him on defense? You just wouldn’t do that, all things being equal. If the guy can’t catch but he’s a good athlete or he’s everything but he doesn’t have great hands, at some point you get a receiver who is a better pass catcher and you put this guy over on defense. You get a guy who is big and strong and tough but he’s just not an elusive enough runner. He just can’t run over everybody. You can run over guys who are smaller than you but at some point when everybody is the same size, you just can’t run over those guys and he doesn’t have the elusiveness.

  “Then you put him over on defense and you get a more elusive running back, whether that’s at high school, college, or wherever it is. I tell the defensive players all the time, ‘Don’t kid yourself. If you were a big enough playmaker you would have stayed on offense. They would have put you out there and you’d be having 100-yard receiving games or 150-yard rushing games.’ It’s like the defensive specialist in basketball. If you were that good of a shooter you’d be the point guard, but you’re not. So start covering these guys or we’ll get somebody else in there.”

  SWITCHING FROM DEFENSE TO OFFENSE

  “Why does a coach move a player from defense to offense? It’s usually speed. That’s generally what it is…. You have a good football player. He’s tough, he’s physical, he’s smart, he uses his hands well, he has good power, he has good balance, but he doesn’t run well. What do you do with him? You make him an offensive lineman. That’s his last stop. I tell the offensive linemen that, too. ‘If you could run you’d be on defense. Why are you on offense? Because you don’t run well enough to play on defense.’ Most of the time that’s the truth—the defensive players run better than the offensive players.”

  Belichick in more formal attire before the Super Bowl against the Seahawks. (photo by Jim Davis)

  LINE VERSATILITY

  “There are a lot of guys who are tackles, there are a lot of guys who are guards, there are a lot of guys who are centers and that’s the only position they play. Then you have some players who can play center and guard and then you have some players who can play guard and tackle. I don’t want to say that they can’t play center but that would be the least of the three. Trying to find the versatility of that player changes the makeup of your roster, particularly when you take seven linemen to a game. If you have a guard-tackle swing player then you could potentially go to the game with five inside players—your three starters, another inside player and then a guard-tackle swing guy as opposed to having just a three-position swing guy inside and then trying to find a swing tackle. Somewhere along the offensive line you have to have some position flexibility because nobody takes 10 offensive linemen to the game. You’d have a backup center, backup left tackle, backup right guard—you just can’t do it. You have to find some versatility in there somewhere.”

  LINE CHEMISTRY

  “We can all go out there and play together, but to actually play well and be able to pass things off like you have to do on the offensive line, [to] be able to communicate and see things the same way, that takes a lot of work, a lot of interaction, a lot of communication, a lot of trust. You have to trust
that the other guy is going to be there to do what he’s supposed to do so you do what you’re supposed to do. You really have to trust each other on the line and know that the other person is supposed to be where he’s supposed to be, so you can drop guys or pass guys or move on to your guys and know that you’re protected in an area that you really can’t look back and see and identify. You just have to trust that it’s going to get done right. It’s a hard thing to do.”

  BLOCKING

  “Technique is important, willingness is important, but there are a lot of things that go on in blocking. Number one is doing the right thing, knowing who you have to block. A lot of times, blocking secondary players you have to make decisions as to which player to block. We always want to block the most dangerous guy, the guy that can get there first. Most of the time. Not all the time but most of the time.

  “So that decision of, ‘As I’m going to get this guy, is the guy that’s on me going to get there before I get to that guy? Or do I turn back on him? Do I go get that guy who’s lined up closer?’ Those kinds of decisions—taking the right angle, blocking from in front not from behind because there are a lot of moving targets that they’re blocking—those guys aren’t always just standing there. Playing with good pad level and good leverage, not going in there and getting blown up by sometimes bigger guys they’re blocking. A lot of it is desire, a lot of it is leverage, a lot of it is technique. Playing with a good base and getting your pad level down on contact and having your head in the proper location, things like that.

  “I think that’s an underappreciated part of [the tight ends’ and receivers’] jobs. It’s all about the stat sheet and fantasy catches or however that stuff works. But those guys go out there and compete every play and that helps a lot of other guys. That means a lot to our football team.”