NFL Draft: What Did Bill Belichick Have To Say On His Picks?

Q: What does it show you about a guy like Devin Lucien who was able to pick up a new offense really without even a full season to learn it?

BB: Yeah, I mean that’s a very unusual situation. You very rarely see a player do what Devin did. Transfer within the conference. Of course he came back and played really well against UCLA. I think there was a relationship that he had with the quarterback and that certainly benefited him and he had a good year at Arizona State, better than what he had previously had at UCLA. But it’s an unusual situation where you have a player like that go in the same conference and so you can kind of see him against the same competition but with a different team and a different offense. It was interesting but he did, he went down there and had a good year with like you said, not much practice, not much lead up. It’s good. It’s good for him.

Q: Does it tell you that a player takes to coaching well when you see a guy like Elandon Roberts increase his productivity under a new coaching regime?

BB: Yeah, well I think Elandon’s a very instinctive player. I think you can see that on film. Whatever his measureables are, he plays to them. He plays fast, he plays strong, and he’s very productive in terms of being around the ball so we’ll see how all that translates at our level. He seems to be a very instinctive player, a smart player, has good awareness and can find the ball.

Q: Ted Karras comes from an illustrious football family. Did that factor into your decision at all to draft him?

BB: No.

Q: It seemed like you added some depth along the interior portion of the offensive line. How important is it to have depth across that position in particular?

BB: Well you can really never have too much depth in this league. So, we’ll see how it goes but I think we’ll have a good competitive situation there. Overall, I think [there’s] competition on the offensive line. We’ll see how it all plays out. Some of those guys play multiple spots. I would say [Ted] Karras, [Joe] Thuney, and then we have a lot of guys that haven’t played a lot of spots including [Jonathan] Cooper, [Bryan] Stork, [David] Andrews, [Tre’] Jackson, [Shaq] Mason, even Josh Kline hasn’t – he’s been primarily a guard. Our tackles have been primarily a tackle even though Cam [Fleming] and Marcus [Cannon] have played guard briefly so having  a little more flexibility with some players so we have some moving parts instead of again, there was times where we carried eight lineman in games with the center, guard, and tackle as the sixth, seventh, and eighth guys. When you don’t have that kind of flexibility it has a little bit of impact on the roster.

Q: D.J. Foster from Arizona State indicated on Twitter that he may be joining your team.

BB: Yeah, no, I’ve been all over it studying social media all day. There’s nothing I do more than just get on Snapface.

Q: I’ve seen your Instagram.

BB: Not mine. You’ve never seen mine. Once that happens just sign the papers. Just sign me out.

Q: Can I ask you about him even though it hasn’t been announced?

BB: Obviously, we talk to a lot of players and I’d say until anything gets official and turned in and the contract is signed, all of that which I have no idea. That’s an ongoing process and as you can imagine there’s 32 teams and hundreds of players and agents and fax machines and phone calls and everything. Sometimes those things get done, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes a guy you think you’re not going to get you get. Sometimes a guy you think you’re going to get you don’t get. Sometimes you get the guy you’re going to get and you lose the guy you think you’re going to lose so we’ll just have to see how it all works out.

Q: So you can’t trust Twitter?

BB: I haven’t seen Snapface or whatever it is so I don’t know. Regardless of what’s on there we have to go by what the league office [says]. A signed contract is a signed contract.

Q: When it comes to filling out the roster do you look at how the decision to potentially carry three quarterbacks will impact you?

BB: That’s way too far away. Right now with the whole rookie class and let’s see if we can get them into the locker room, into the meeting rooms, dressed out onto the field, in the huddle, up to the line. I’d say that’s – we’ve got a lot in front of us here.

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