How Did The Patriots React To Win Over Jets?

Oct 25, 2015; Foxborough, MA, USA; New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick adjusts his head set during the fourth quarter against the New York Jets at Gillette Stadium. The New England Patriots won 30-23. Mandatory Credit: Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports

Shortly after their 30-23 win over the Jets yesterday, the Patriots met with the media to discuss the big win.

Here is the official transcript: (via Patriots.com)

Bill Belichick

BB: I’m really proud of our team again today. It definitely wasn’t our best performance – a lot of things that we left out on the field, just didn’t do well enough, but in the end we were able to make the plays we needed to make when we needed to make them, and that was critical in all three phases of the game. Some of the good things – not turning the ball over – that was certainly a positive. We were able to make some stops defensively at the right time and that was good. And we had good field position in the kicking game. That set up a couple good opportunities for us. Typical hard-fought game against New York, and it’s always good to come out on top. We’ve got a long way to go here. Short turnaround, we’ll have to get ready in a hurry now for Miami, but it’s good to get a win here today. The players did a good job fighting through this week after a couple tough road games. They laid it out there today when they had to and I’m proud of the way they played.

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Q: There was not much of an effort to run the ball today. Was that by design coming in or was it based off what you saw after the game started?

BB: Yeah, they have a pretty good run defense. We felt like we had good matchups throwing the ball, so we tried to take advantage of those matchups. The runs that we ran, we didn’t get a lot out of.

Q: The way you guys respond week after week when things get tight, does that ever get old to you? Not every team responds like that week to week.

BB: You’ve got to be ready to play situational football. We did some good things situationally at the end of the game and some things that weren’t so good, things we could have done better. That’s always important. So many games in this league just come down to the last few plays or the last possession or last two possessions, whatever it is, so being able to make those plays at the right time determines the outcome of a lot of games. So, we work on that every week. We never know what the situations are going to be, but hopefully we’re prepared and we can execute when we need to.

Q: Were you pleased with the way Danny Amendola stepped up?

BB: Yeah, Danny made some great plays, like he always does for us – big catches over the middle, big catch on the sideline. He did a good job inside there like he always does, gave us some field position in the return game as well. I thought we competed hard. Like I said, it wasn’t perfect. We missed plays out there and [there are] things we can coach better and perform better, but the guys played hard, they played with a lot of toughness and a lot of effort, and fortunately we were able to make enough plays to win.

Q: Brandon LaFell just said that he would give himself an ‘F’, but that it was a matter of timing. What did you see from him out there?

BB: Like I said, I don’t think any of us really felt great about the way we performed today. We can all do a better job, so I’m sure that everybody feels that way. I do, and I’m sure everybody else does. We just left too many plays on the field too often.

Q: Can you talk about the anticipation of Tom Brady on his third-and-17 conversion to Julian Edelman?

BB: We got split safety coverage on that. It looked like they were in kind of a quarters look. Julian got up on top of the safety and broke to the inside, Tom hit him there. It was a well-executed play. You know when you get split safety coverage generally speaking somewhere on the inside part of the field is where you want to go and that’s where that one ended up going so it was a good read. I thought overall our line gave us pretty good protection today – obviously not perfect, they have a good front and we took some hits. We also held the ball. We also didn’t execute the passing game as well as we need to. But they hung in there and that was a big play for us. I thought they handled some of the blitzes on the last drive well. Yeah, third-and-17, third-and-18, although we were giving them up on defense right and left so it was one of those kinds of games where third-and-17 is sometimes easier to pick up than third-and-one.

Q: How impressed were you with the defense in the second half, particularly limiting Ryan Fitzpatrick from scrambling around like he did so successfully in the first half?

BB: We had our moments. Never good to see them drive the ball 80 yards or whatever they did. I thought we had them in third-down a number of times. We just couldn’t make enough third-down conversions. But overall our first and second-down defense was competitive and for the most part we were able to give ourselves a chance there. We just didn’t convert on enough third downs. We had the big one at the end where [Justin] Coleman broke up the pass down the sideline. But overall we’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to do a better job at everything – coaching, playing, all the situations, you name it. There are plenty of things we can improve on from tonight.

Q: What were your impressions of the Jets defense today?

BB: They’re a good defensive football team. They don’t make it easy for you. They have a lot of good players and they have a good scheme. We were challenged.

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