Josh McDaniels, Matt Patricia Talk Preparation for Steelers
By Joe Lewis
Patriots OC Josh McDaniels and DC Matt Patricia spoke to the media via conference call Tuesday about their preparation for Sunday’s showdown with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Josh McDaniels and Matt Patricia — the brain trust for the Patriots on both sides of the football — spoke at length today about how they are preparing for this Sunday’s road test against a Pittsburgh team without its franchise quarterback.
McDaniels on the nature of the Steelers defense:
“They all play physical, the whole defense is physical. It has been for many years. Every time we play them, it’s the same group. They’re going to make everything tough. They’re going to challenge your ability to pick up the blitz. They’re difficult, stingy against the run. They tackle well; they don’t give up a lot of big plays.”
McDaniels on Tom Brady’s success coming off his four-game suspension:
“He’s worked hard in practice both weeks here and has continued to try to improve in different areas of his game, and also work with some of our players on different elements of our offense that we’re trying to get better at and mesh during the course of these weeks that we’ve had him. It’s just been a consistent approach. I think he’s stayed within himself, he’s played within the game plan, he’s really tried to execute what we’ve asked him to do; read the defense, throw the ball to the open guy. It doesn’t matter which person that is. Our guys are all capable of doing things with the ball and he’s tried to distribute it correctly.”
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Patricia on Sunday’s communications failure:
“We always try to assume that at some point during the game, because it usually comes up at some point during the game, we’re going to have a lack of communication via the technology that’s provided. So, you know, we’re just ready to go with our old school methods trying to make sure that we can communicate to the players out on the field. We have a couple different ways that we can do that that we practice throughout the course of the offseason, training camp, during the week, and just make sure that we’re prepared.”
Patricia on Pittsburgh’s aggressive two-point conversion philosophy:
“We have the same mentality whether it’s a two-point play or any particular play out there on the field. We’re going to try to get the ball if it’s over just lying on the ground. As far as the two-point play in general, we’ve got to prepare for it and certainly teams like Pittsburgh that’s aggressive with that situation and they want to try to get those extra opportunities to score. We have to obviously plan and prepare for it.”
The Steelers rank 9th in points-per-game (25.7) and 11th in points allowed (20.5) while New England is 13th in points-per-game (24.8) and 2nd in points allowed (15.2) this season.