New England Patriots React To 26-24 Win Over Saints

Aug 22, 2015; New Orleans, LA, USA; New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick against the New Orleans Saints during the second half of a preseason game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. The Patriots defeated the Saints 26-24. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Shortly after the New England Patriots beat the New Orleans Saints last night, Bill Belichick and a few players met with the media to discuss the win.

Here is the official transcript:

Bill Belichick

"“It was an interesting game. We obviously had a lot of trouble there in the first half, particularly the first quarter. Starting with Brandin Cooks, I’m glad we don’t have to play him twice a year, he’s not in our division. He’s a really good player. The Saints came out and played very well. We couldn’t do anything offensively and we had a hard time stopping them. We made a few good situational plays over the course of the night, Devin (McCourty)’s break-up in the red area, (Bradley) Fletcher’s break-up in the red area, James Morris’ strip. Those were some really big plays that helped us get some stops, save some points, and eventually we got the running game going a little bit and we protected the quarterback well and I thought our receivers competed and made some plays. There was a good punt return for Chris (Harper) that was a good runback. Obviously, there’s a lot of things we have to learn from and improve on but I thought our guys hung in there and competed and eventually made enough plays to make it competitive after being (down) 21-0. We’ll get back to work this week, getting ready for Carolina and keep correcting our mistakes. We gave a lot of looks to some young players and it looked like, definitely, they had some positive moments but we’ll look at the film and take a closer look. Maybe some of these guys showed that they deserve another chance or they deserve a chance to play in this league so we’ll see how it goes.” On Jimmy Garoppolo‘s progression: “He had a chance on a lot of complete passes. He threw the ball pretty accurately, a lot different than last week. There really wasn’t a lot of pressure on the quarterback tonight and that’s always a good thing for the passing game. I mean, there were some good things and, obviously, things we need to improve on everywhere. I thought overall offensively, once we got going we were able to move the ball a little bit, score some points, get in the end zone, kick a couple field goals, got some first downs, convert some third downs. Those were some good things there.” On getting an extended look at Dion Lewis: “Yeah, he had a good week of practice. He missed last week, had a good week of practice. We were able to get a good look at Dion and James (White). We got Jonas (Gray) and LeGarrette (Blount) some carries so all of our backs some decent work done tonight.” On Chris Harper: “Yeah, all of our receivers competed well. They made some plays, made some catches and Chris (Harper) in the return game, showed up a couple times to so it wasn’t perfect, again. There’s things we’ve got to work on but it was nice work.” On Saints’ first two series defensively: “They did a good job, they are a good football team. They are obviously well-coached. I have a lot of respect for the Saints and all of their players; they have a lot of depth on their roster. They put us in a big hole. You have to give credit to their team; they were ready to go with their execution. They have some great players that played well and you have to give them credit. They are a good football team.” On coming back from down 21-0: “I was glad to see us compete all the way through for 60 minutes and that will go a long way. We, obviously, need to play better for 60 minutes and not think that we are going to pull every game back from behind. We need to play from ahead and get ahead. That’s two weeks in a row where we’ve been totally outcoached and outplayed in the first quarter so we’ll see if we can do better than that.”"