How Did The New England Patriots React To Win Over Chiefs?

Shortly after the New England Patriots beat the Kansas City Chiefs yesterday, the team met with the media to discuss the win.

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

Bill Belichick

BB: Well first of all it’s great to win today. I’m really proud of our team. We’ve kind of been battling along here for a few weeks and I thought we had a real good two weeks of preparation – not that we did very much last week on the field but in our meetings and our walkthroughs, just going over the things we went over I think it helped make us a better team. And then this week of practice was probably one of our best weeks ever in terms of focus and concentration, everybody being alert and on top of it. I thought we played hard today. Kansas City is a good football team. You’ve got to give Coach [Andy] Reid and his staff and that team a lot of credit. They’re tough, they’re resilient. They’re going to battle you all the way to the last minute, last second, which they did today. And I have all the respect in the world for Andy and the Kansas City Chiefs. I thought we had a good day. We got contributions in all phases of the game. Tom [Brady] was really sharp. Getting the ball in the end zone early was huge. Defensively, our red-area defense was big early in the game, so those were some key stops for us. Danny [Amendola’s] punt return set up a field goal, which that ended up being some important points. I thought our offensive line did a good job. That’s a good front. Tom really had a pretty clean day back there. He did a good job of getting the ball out, the receivers were open. Defensively I thought we could have obviously played better on third down. We had a lot of chances to get off the field and we just couldn’t do it, but at the same time you’ve got to give credit to Kansas City. They’re well coached. They’ve got a good quarterback. They’ve got good receivers. They’ve got a good tight end. So they’re not the easiest team to handle there. That’s something we would have liked to have done better today. That being said, it’s great to move on to the AFC Championship Game. It’s always an honor to be a part of that game. We’re excited about that. We’ll look forward to whoever that opponent is and get to work on them, try to have a good week and go out there and play our best game next Sunday.

Q: What did you think of the play of the offensive line?

BB: Again, I think the offensive line did a great job. The receivers did an excellent job of getting open and getting separation. Tom got the ball out quickly, so all that worked together. In that first drive, they came after us at least three times, maybe four, and we made plays on all those. We had a third-down conversion, hit James White out in the flat for an easy 20 yards. Amendola – that was another probably easy 20 yards or something like that, whatever it was. They came after us and we hit them pretty good on those, and then that really slowed it down for a while. We didn’t see a lot of pressures. It was a lot of four-man rush, other than when they were in some of their five-down looks, but those were relatively easy to identify. So we didn’t see after that first drive a whole lot of pressure, but I thought again those are good pass rushers on the edge there – [Tamba] Hali and [Dee] Ford, [Justin] Houston when he played, big guys inside, so I thought we held up to them pretty good. A big part of that also was the quarterback and receivers being able to get the ball out on time and make some yards after the catch, which Rob [Gronkowski] did, James White did, Danny, Julian, so it was a good team effort in the passing game. The offensive line had a big challenge. I don’t know how many times they threw the ball but it was most all of them, I know that. They pass blocked well.

Q: Can you reflect on how special it is to go to five straight AFC Championship games?

BB: It’s a real credit to the players. I think that’s number one. Those guys, we demand a lot out of them. This is a hard place to play. It’s from the first day of spring OTAs all the way through training camp all the way through meetings. We’re over 100 practices now this year. That doesn’t count the walkthroughs and the meetings and everything else. Those are just the actual practice practices. You know it’s definitely a grind, but they come in here, like this group, and I’ve said this the last couple of years, too, these guys come in here every day, their pencils are sharpened, they’re sitting right there in those seats, they’re ready to go, they’re attentive, they want to learn, they want to know how to get better, they want to compete and they just do that on a daily basis. That’s been week after week and year after year. It’s really a great credit to those guys. We have some great competitors on our team – obviously Brady and Edelman and Gronkowski and [Sebastian] Vollmer and [Patrick] Chung and [Devin] McCourty, [Dont’a] Hightower, [Jamie] Collins, Chandler [Jones], those guys on the other side of the ball, too,Stephen Gostkowski. Those guys, you just can’t say enough about them. [Rob] Ninkovich, I mean you just go right down the line. The credit goes to them. It’s a tough league. It’s tough to go out and play good every week, especially when you’ve got a target. Everybody is trying to knock us off, as they should be, and we’ve just got to stand up and compete every week. The players do a great job here, they really do. I’m really fortunate to have that group. And the assistant coaches, you can’t say enough great things. I thought Josh [McDaniels] and the offensive staff did a tremendous job this week game planning and play calling. Josh was magnificent. I thought he really had everything dialed in. Pretty much everything he called it came out the way we thought it would. As we were breaking the huddle, we could already see we had what we wanted and Tom and the offense executed it perfectly. The staff did a really good job, as they usually do. Look, these guys work hard here. The coaches work hard, the players work hard, and it’s very gratifying to see those kinds of results pay off for all the hard work. It’s what we do, it’s what we’re here for is to win.

Q: How important was getting the turnover early in the second half and turning it into points?

BB: Huge, yeah huge play. Getting the ball out there, probably would have been a first down or short yardage, either one, but it looked like it would have been a first down, ball came out, it was a big turnover for us and like you said to be able to convert that, because if they score there it makes it a one

or a tie game, if they go for two, two, one, whatever it is. That’s a big swing there. Even if they get a field goal it’s down to a one-score game. It’s a big play. We really thought we’d have some opportunities to get the ball out and we didn’t get as many as we thought we’d be able to get, but that was a big one for us. And as you said, being able to convert it, I thought our complementary football was good today. We got the big punt return from Danny and that set up a field goal. The turnover turned that into a touchdown. So that was good team complementary football there in all three units.

Q: What does Julian Edelman add to this offense when he’s out there?

BB: Julian is a good player. He’s a good route runner and he’s good after the catch. He’s a strong runner after the catch, can make yards on his own. The more of those guys you have out there the harder it is to defend. We got plays out ofJames White, Danny, Julian, Rob, [Brandon] LaFell, Keshawn [Martin]. They all made big plays for us. The more play makers you’ve got out there on the field, and Tom knows what to do with them, he can find those matchups, that’s what we need to do and have that in sync with our line, our communication and making sure we’re in the right play when they give us a different look or being able to handle the pressure like we did on the first drive. I thought that was obviously a big drive for us for a lot of reasons. Number one, it gave us a lead, we had points, but number two, we handled those pressure situations and that certainly toned that down for quite a while after that. It’s great to have Julian back. It’s great to have a lot of guys back that we had back today. Hopefully they’ll all be out there again Sunday.

Q: How difficult is it to get the offense to perform at a high level when they haven’t had a lot of game reps together recently?

BB: Well I mean I don’t know. It is what it is. It’s the National football League. Every team has an injury report. Kansas City had theirs. I’m sure some of their guys battled through it to be out there. We had guys battling through it to be out there, to be out there and practice. It’s the National Football League. We have a lot of tough guys in this room, on this team. Again, they come to work every day. Sometimes they’re not able to practice or perform, but they’re in there getting treatment, they’re in there doing everything they can to get back out there as soon as they can. I think the guys that played today it’s a real credit to them and our training staff that they were even back out there. I’m sure we’ll have some of those guys in the same boat this week, and I know they’ll battle hard to be out there and give us everything they’ve got.

Q: What are your thoughts on the passing of Ted Marchibroda?

BB: Yeah, appreciate [the question]. It’s with a real heavy heart that I stand here. I probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Ted Marchibroda. He gave me a great opportunity. I learned so much from him – a lot of X’s and O’s, but it really wasn’t the X’s and O’s. It was a lot more about just being a football coach, being a professional coach – preparation, work ethic, dependability, what goes into having a good football team. Every time I heard about the Kansas City Chiefs – which they had a tremendous this year I’m not taking anything away from them – they start off 1-5 and then won 11 straight or whatever. That was us in 1975. That was my first year in the NFL and we were 1-4 and won our next nine straight, whatever it was, and then lost to Pittsburgh in probably a game similar to this – driving down to take the lead and gave up an interception that was run back 95 yards for a touchdown, so the game kind of got away from us. But it was the same kind of team. It was a young team that got off to a slow start, but we gained our confidence, and that taught me a great lesson in football of just keep working, keep fighting, just one day at a time. Don’t worry about the record at the end of the year. Just have a good day, have another good day, win this week and then move on to next week. That’s what we did in 1975. Ted gave that team great leadership. They were like 2-14 the year before we got there or something like that – 2-12 – however many games there were. They were terrible. But he gave the team great confidence, great leadership. Ted is one of the most positive people I’ve ever been around. He was always confident, even when it was fourth-and-17, he was always sure we were going to make the play or do what we need to do. He was such a great person for me. I lived with Ted. We stayed in the same hotel, drove him to work every day, drove him home every day. We had our staff meetings in the car. We ate breakfast together. He was such a mentor, and I just can’t say enough about Ted. I know everybody that’s coached and worked with him probably has the same exact feelings. They’ll all tell you the same story because that’s what Ted was. My sympathies to Ted’s family and his two kids, his grandchildren. He’s got a great family. He’s a great father and great grandfather. It’s a sad day – just a sad day.

Q: How do you think your defense responded to losing some key players during the game?

BB: It was a battle. Yeah, it was a battle. We were shuffling them in there. We had some guys, but you know what though that’s the way it is in the playoffs – not uncommon. We’ve talked about that with our team. We had guys playing that honestly hadn’t played a whole lot all year or maybe they played a little bit but then their role in this game changed for whatever the circumstances were. We’ll look at the film but I think we definitely got some plays. I think Dekoda [Watson] gave us some plays rushing the passer and it looked like he was in part of that sack, maybe [Alex] Smith tripped over [Eric] Fisher or whatever it was. Darius Fleming came in there and was calling signals at linebacker. We were just rotating guys through – [Sealver] Siliga has had a tough couple weeks. He came back and gave us quite a few snaps in there as well. Yeah, but that’s what it is. Guys have got to step up at this time of year and maybe their roles change in the kicking game or on offense or defense or whatever it happens to be but having everybody ready to go, bringing a guy up off the practice squad for a game at this time of year, whether it be at the end of the season or in the playoffs, again that’s not uncommon. We’ve had a lot of guys from the Sterling Moores to the Malcolm Butlers to Ray Ventrone in the Super Bowl – going down there and being active for two games all year and making a big tackle in the Super Bowl. So, I think everybody on the team has heard that message and we just all got to be ready and I think they all were today. I think everybody was ready to go. I’m not saying we played perfect, we didn’t, didn’t coach great either, but we found enough to get it done against a good team, so we’re proud of that.

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