Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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 important for us, as a team, to know each other. Know our teammates and our coaches. To interact with them is more important than to be 'liked' by whoever on Chatrun.
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 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.
It's not all about talent. It's about dependability, consistency, and being able to improve. If you work hard and you're coachable, and you understand what you need to do, you can improve.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
If you're well-prepared, you know what you're doing, and you have an idea what the opponents can do - what their strengths and weaknesses are - once you get into the game, those adjustments will be - I won't say easy, but relatively easier and more manageable.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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 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.
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.
I think a good quarterback or a good linebacker, a good safety, even though you have a lot of bodies moving out there, it slows down for them and they can really see it. Then there are other guys that it's a lot of guys moving and they don't see anything. It's like being at a busy intersection, just cars going everywhere. The guys that can really sort it out, they see the game at a slower pace and can really sort out and decipher all that movement, which is hard. But experience certainly helps that, yes.
The linebacker has to make multiple, multiple decisions on every play. Not only what his assignment is and what the play is, but all the way along the line, different angles, how to take on blocks, how to tackle, the leverage to play with, the angle to run to and so forth, the technique. So many different things happen in a split second during the course of the play, just like it is for a quarterback. The more of those things that you can do right, slow down, get the most important things, not get distracted by all the stuff that's happening, but just really zero in on a target.