Bill Belichick Quotations

I grew up watching my dad scout games live. They played on Saturday. Sometimes they wouldn't get the films until Monday. Sunday air shipping from wherever the college team was located - Starkville, Mississippi, or wherever the film was coming from. It took two days.

Game management, game decisions, adjustments, seeing things during games - it's all important.

Bavaro's probably as tough of a - physically and mentally as tough a football player as I've ever coached. So, I would put him in the rare category there.

I think that's part of building your team is trying to anticipate where your team is going and to a certain extent where, especially defensively because you have to react to what they put on the field. Defensively you have to be able to defend those things.

You go to the draft board and think, 'Here's a nose tackle. Who needs a nose tackle?' Well, eight teams in front of you need a nose tackle, and there's two nose tackles. It's something you have to figure out where you can get the players to play in your system.

There are changes every year. It's hard to tell how all of those will pan out. But there's a lot of work to do.

There are certainly areas that you can improve in and develop more consistency (in).

There is no new system in place. I don't know what you're talking about.

We've always tried to coach and abide by the NFL rules, whatever they are,

When I was out there, I really enjoyed talking to Al,

We're going to do what we think is best. What we did against Oakland may or may not be what we think is best against Carolina. Last year we played Indianapolis in one type of a defense. We played Pittsburgh in another type of a defense. We played Philadelphia in another type of a defense. We're going to do what we think we need to do to try to match up and stop the opponents. I'm not making any promises to anything or anybody about what we're going to do.

We brought 45 guys here. When one man goes down, that's what the other is there for. He steps in.

We're just one of 32 teams in the 2005 season, ... We're all trying to accomplish the same thing. We respect what has been done by everybody, whether it be the Packers, the Patriots, whoever. But it really doesn't mean anything right now. We're just trying to get our team ready to play -- this year.

We know we're facing different challenges and our team is evolving differently. It's all just part of it. Whatever you have to deal with, whatever changes there are, then collectively as a team you manage them.

We've got good, balanced play from both of those ends as we have from our outside linebackers, Willie and Rosie, or even Mike earlier in the year. So I think being balanced on defense has helped us.

We've got a short week this week with New Orleans, ... It's a team we play in the regular season, so we'll try to put more attention in this game than a normal preseason game because it will come up in the regular season.

We've won a few games here the last five, six weeks and hopefully we can continue to play better.

We were trying to take a little bit of the edge off, give everybody a chance to relax. It's been a good hard week with a lot of concentration. We figured we'd lighten up a little here and be ready to go tomorrow.

We were trying to spread them out with different personnel groups, ... I thought that was pretty effective. I thought Tom did a good job of managing the game.

I'm sure that any current or past player of mine would tell you that the balls we practice with are as bad as they can be: wet, sticky, cold, slippery. However bad we can make them, I make them. Any time that players complain about the quality of the footballs, I make them worse and that stops the complaining.

I had no knowledge of the various steps involved in the game balls and the process that happened between when they were prepared and went to the officials and went to the game. So, I've learned a lot about that.

Tom's [Brady] personal preferences on his footballs are something he can take about in much better detail and information than I could possibly provide.

All sources are not equal. When you get information, you take the information, you evaluate it, and you do the best you can with it. So, there's a variance in the quality and the amount of the information. It's a case-by-case basis. Each one's different. There's no set formulas.

To me the footballs are approved by the league and game officials pregame and we play with what's out there. That's the only way that I have ever thought about that.

I've learned about the inflation range situation. Obviously with our footballs being inflated to the 12.5-pound range, any deflation would then take us under that specification limit. Knowing that now, in the future we will certainly inflate the footballs above that low level to account for any possible change during the game.

I was out of the country for a period of time but followed everything closely through other people in our organization and we've made the decisions that we felt were right for the football team and we'll continue to do that and be as diligent as we can going forward.

We've been cooperative with the NFL investigation. We'll continue to do so and we will turn all our attention and focus on to the Seattle Seahawks, a very well coached, talented, tough, competitive football team.

It's the business that you guys are in too. We try to get as much information as we can and make the best decisions that we can for the football team.

I'm not going to be able to talk about the people who are involved specifically in any ongoing judicial process. We do the same thing with all our players. We take a look, as I said, at their personal family life, we look at the history of what they've done in high school and college.

Some guys, football comes really easy to them; they can see what all 22 players are doing, can see what all 11 guys are doing on their side of the ball, how it all fits together. It's easy for them.

Not all teams use the same tests and certainly those tests are far from being 100 percent as well. It's part of the process.

As part of the process, there are a lot of different ways to evaluate players. There are a number of different companies and things out there that do different things; that have different ways of evaluating and those types of tests and so forth.

We never use the condition of the footballs as an excuse. We play with whatever or kick with whatever we have to use and that's the way it is.

I'm trying to coach the team and that's what I want to do.

I'm a football coach. I'm not a doctor ... They don't call plays, I don't do surgeries. We have a great deal here.

I think we all know that quarterbacks, kickers, specialists have certain preferences on footballs. They know a lot more about it than I do. They're a lot more sensitive to it than I am.

I'm not really worried about the other 31 teams.

I feel like I've had a strong relationship with Robert [Kraft] and his family since I was here in 1996 and I think it's gotten stronger every year that I've been here with the Patriots. The more things we do together, talk about together, work together on, the closer we become and the more we rely on each other. I feel like our relationship is very close and continues to grow closer every year as we grow older together.

Each decision will be done on a case-by-case basis and we'll make the decision we feel is best for the New England Patriots football team.

Well this week's all about Seattle, so we've been doing our best to prepare for the Seahawks. I'm doing that, our team's doing that and we'll be ready to go Sunday. That's our focus.

I'll refrain from making any more comments on any ongoing people involved in the judicial process.

I obviously understand that each team has the opportunity to prepare the balls the way they want, give them to the officials and the game officials either approve or disapprove the balls. That really was the end of it for me until I learned a little bit more about this .

That has never been a priority for me and I want the players to deal with a harder situation in practice than they'll ever have to deal with in the game. Maybe that's part of our ball security philosophy.

Some guys are football smart and they're not smart in other ways. Other guys get 1500 on their SATs and can't get a double-team block right. No, that definitely, in my experience, sometimes it correlates, sometimes it doesn't. I don't think you just take it for granted.

I told you the one change we would make in the initial start level of the football pressure, but that's really about it.

I think everyone is a case-by-case basis. Whatever the circumstances are that come with any individual, they exist and you have to make a determination as to what your comfort level is with that person and the characteristics that they bring.

We have absolutely done as much work as we can on finding out things like that and we'll try to get all the information that we can as that would apply to any current situation, which I can't talk about.

The only thing I can cheer for in Philadelphia is the national anthem.

We'll continue to work hard to do a better job in every area going forward. I don't know where those little things will come from but we'll continue to be diligent on them.

We're not polishing fine china here.

I could tell you that in my entire coaching career I have never talked to any player, staff member about football air pressure. That is not a subject that I have ever brought up.

I think it's relatively easy to play defense against a team that can only do one thing. Unfortunately, that's not what we're talking about here with Seattle. They have a great running back - they have a great group of running backs - but Lynch obviously is really kind of in a class by himself. The quarterback's a problem, the receivers are a problem, they have a good offensive line.

I think that we'll continue to try to look at ourselves in the mirror and see where we can do a better job, maybe where we can improve the process. But I think the fundamentals of the process will remain the same.

This is the end of this subject for me for a long time.

I've learned a lot about the process. I had no idea how the balls got from the officials locker room down on the field and so forth and so on and all of that. That's not something I have ever thought or concerned myself about [on] game day. I've concerned myself with preparing and coaching the team.

It hasn't even been competitive. That's the first thing we're going to have to do is just find a way to stay competitive because these (first two games) have been over by halftime. We saw that last year too (on Halloween). It was 21-3 (Steelers) at the end of the first quarter.

It's time for the New England Patriots to move on and that's what our job is. And as I said, our goal is the same: to have a winning football team, to be a pillar in the community. That's what our direction is; that's what we're going to do.

I think a smart guy can learn. Some guys learn - it's just like all of us - some guys can learn electronics, some of us can't. Some people can learn something else, some of us can't. I mean, we're all wired differently.

We're always trying to do a better job on that and that's what we'll continue to do.

Whatever success I've had it is because I've tried to understand the situation of the player. I think the coach's duty is to avoid complicating matters.

I don't think there's anybody in this organization not focused on the 49ers...I mean Chargers.

I am who I am. In the end, I feel that what I'm accountable for is doing a good job as a football coach.

I cannot comment on any player who has ongoing criminal charges and legal situations.

When you get wet, it usually means something good.

The less versatile you are, the better you have to be at what you do well.

My personal coaching philosophy, my mentality, has always been to make things as difficult as possible for players in practice, however bad we can make them, I make them.

I'm tired of pretending I'm not a rock star from Mars.

You definitely go through a stage, most coaches do, where you see a good player and you get enamored, you really like what the player does, but then when you put him into your system, it's not quite the same player that he was in another system. He has some strengths, but you cant utilize all those strengths. If you try to utilize all his strengths, you end up weakening a lot of other players who are already in your system.

My overall knowledge of football specifications, the overall process that happens on game day with the footballs is very limited. I would say that during the course of the game, I honestly never - it probably has happened on an incomplete pass or something - but I've never touched a game ball. It's not something I have any familiarity with on that.

You can play hard. You can play aggressive. You can give 120% but if one guy is out of position then someone is running through the line of scrimmage and he is going to gain a bunch of yards.

You get the job done or you don't.

In short, we accumulate all the information that we can accumulate, wherever that information comes from, and try to analyze it and make the best decision we can make for our football team on a case-by-case basis. It's the same for every single player; the process is the same.

I don't Twitter, I don't MyFace, I don't Yearbook,

For a team to accomplish their goal, everybody’s got to give up a little bit of their individuality.

To live in the past is to die in the present.

There are no shortcuts to building a team each season. You build the foundation brick by brick.

Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling

Mental Toughness is doing the right thing for the team when it's not the best thing for you

If you sit back & spend too much time feeling good about what you did in the past, you're going to come up short next time

There is an old saying about the strength of the wolf is the pack, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. On a football team, it’s not the strength of the individual players, but it is the strength of the unit and how they all function together.

The only way you're going to get a good, true evaluation of that play is to put a camera parallel to the goal line.

The only way to evaluate them is to see them play.

We didn't want to play him on defense last year. That was an emergency, desperation type of situation and of course Troy handled it wall...But he's a better receiver than he is a defensive back.

There are only three teams in the league that have a better record than they do.

We're looking at another really good football team this week in Denver. They're probably one of the hotter teams in the league right now. They're playing very well in all three phases of the game. They've been a good team to watch just because they're executing so well. They haven't had a turnover in three games.

We're not defending anything. We're not repeating anything. Nothing that happened in the past really has any bearing on (this year). Don't get me wrong. I'm respectful of what this organization has accomplished . . . but none of that really has any bearing on anything we do.

Most of the time you'd think of doing this if you're ahead. You're up by six, or 10, or 11. There've been very few times, if ever, where you take a safety when you're actually behind. But think about it. There's not a lot of great options in that situation. I just figured, if you're down one or three, what's the big difference? You've still got to get at least a field goal. This just made the most sense.

Mike Tannenbaum is an extremely hardworking individual who moved up from the entry level to the top of his profession. I am happy and proud of him.

Mike?s always been one of our most versatile players. He?s a smart player. He?s been in a number of different situations and handles them all well. We have a lot of confidence in him whenever he?s on the field. He?s a fast learner and he picks up things quickly.

Maybe we can put a ball and chain on him. That would slow him down, ... He's never out of the play. There's a lot of plays that he makes that you actually see him getting blocked and you think, Oh, that was a pretty good job, and then he still ends up on the ball somewhere.

One of the things we wanted to do today was play competitively against a good football team. Obviously, it came right down to the last play. I was proud of the way our players fought. We had a lot of opportunities for a lot of people to play. This was really our last opportunity to do that, so we tried to take advantage of that.

Obviously, we're disappointed. We weren't able to make the plays we needed to make to win, that's why we didn't win.

Of course, the offensive line functions very well together. It just really grows on you. The more you watch them, the more in sync they seem to be. There are very few spaces in their plays. Everything is pretty tightly fit together.

My father was always just part of the team. He willingly accepted whatever responsibility he was given, whether it was coaching the linebackers or the junior varsity.

Maybe they played on their feet in high school, or as a freshman or sophomore in college, and then they got bigger and went down to the defensive line. Sometimes there is something to go back on there -- not always, but occasionally.

need to take advantage of the extra time that we have this week and do a good job trying to solidify everything in all three phases of the game. ... Fundamentally, we have to try to tighten everything up as much as we can.

Obviously, tonight we didn't match up with the Colts in any aspect of the game,

Obviously it was a game where they made more plays than we did. I congratulate Mike and the Denver Broncos. They are a good football team. They earned the right to play here (Saturday) and they played well.

Obviously, it says a lot for the player and what he's been able to accomplish: No. 1, the skill of the player and, No. 2, his durability. He's carried the ball a lot and he's carried it very effectively. He has a running style that can work in a lot of different ways with his speed, his power, his quickness, and his run vision. It's a very significant individual accomplishment.

Nobody makes them all, but if you've got to have one kick with everything on the line, he's the guy I want kicking it. It was a great kick, an awesome kick. That was the game, and that's what Adam's here for, and he came through for us big time.