Bill Belichick met virtually with the media this morning and while his appearance was low on specifics, there were a few key takeaways as the Patriots prepare for the 2022 offseason.
Namely, Belichick continues to like what he does and plans on being the Patriots' head coach for the foreseeable future.
"I would say that would be accurate," he told reporters.
Probably the biggest other takeaways from his morning press conference, which didn't leave a lot of time to reflect on the 47-17 drubbing at the hands of the Bills on Sunday night was that Belichick, multiple times, left it open that this result could have been a one-off.
"Certainly last night's game was important and not in any way trying to minimize that, but at the same time, there were 17 other meaningful games, so 18 in all, that I think we really need to look at and see how we can do a better job of everything," he said in a lengthy preamble.
Later Belichick was asked about this game being non-competitive, and he deflected attention off the one game.
"Yeah, well I think we have to take a good long look again, not at just one game, but at all 18," Belichick said. "You could argue that there were elements of last night's game and some other games, but you're right. Last night's game was the least competitive game that we played last year. So again, is that what we are, or is that a bad night? We'll see when we start playing again next year, I guess."
To me, this certainly sounds as if Belichick thinks that, at the very least, the result against the Bills was made worse by things outside the team's control. Namely, Jalen Mills being in Covid protocols, Matthew Judon (not on injury report), Christian Barmore (knee) and Kyle Dugger (hand in a club) being limited by injury.
Considering the final five games and the last Bills game, I think everyone knows I would think this would be an error is thinking.
One game? Sure. Four poor losses in five games, including two games against the same opponent where they did not punt? This was not a one-off.
Belichick did, however, say the team will look at everything they do — as they do every offseason — to identify what they can do better. Scheme, probably mostly on defense, was on the list.
"I think we really need to look at and see how we can do a better job of everything, coaching, playing, schematically, whatever adjustments we need to make there and so forth, and just in season planning for next year," Belichick said.
"We'll go back and ... talk about each player, everybody's situation and so forth and scheme and all that. So, I'm sure there's probably a number of things that, with every player ... it would be a detailed look at every everything we do. So every offensive play, every defensive call, every player, every aspect that goes into a day, whether it's meeting, practice, walkthrough, film, just how we do things and again, for each player, what they need to work on, what they did well, what we want to continue to do and what we either we're going to change, or they need to change, or maybe some combination of both. Again, all that's part of the offseason, I would say, look back and analysis and then going forward and decision making on again, what we can control and what the player can control, and we'll see how all that comes together."
Other takeaways from Belichick:
- Belichick anticipated being asked about Joe Judge, Brian Flores and Matt Patricia returning to full-time roles on the staff. He said he hasn't even thought about it yet.
- It did not sound like he was unhappy with his current staff. "We have a lot of, as I said, younger coaches on the staff in different areas, offense, defense, special teams that are growing and other coaches that have quite a bit of experience that have been in a lot of coaching situations and a lot of big games. So, that's kind of the blend that we have, and I would anticipate that we would have that going forward. We've pretty much had that my entire time here and I think that kind of progression and that mixes of coaches on staff is a good one."
- As far as player comings and goings, Belichick indicated everything is on the table. Thought it was interesting that he said, "there are some things in looking at next year, on the big picture, some things that we'll be able to control." I thought that was a comment about JC Jackson being a free agent and able to be tagged.
- Belichick is happy with Mac Jones' rookie season. "Mac helped us a lot and we look forward to working with him next year."
- Ditto Christian Barmore. "Christian played a lot of snaps this year. He took a lot of snaps in practice. He was a durable and dependable player for us. I think he has a real good future."
- Belichick also endorsed his free-agent class, but some adjustments will need to be made. "that group certainly made us a better team. They gave us some high-quality play and it was a very solid, hard-working group. ... we'll try to, as I said, take all the things that with each individual player and try to plug them in to their units and from a team standpoint, try to make the team more productive and see if their role is what they need to do to increase their production on team, what we need to do to maybe help their positioning or opportunity to help the team. And I think that's a process again. It's an annual process. It's not specific to this year's group. We've had new players every year, but that's a process that's very common. Sometimes during the year, it's fairly easy to do some things that are maybe beneficial for that player. In other cases, it's harder to do and those are the kind of things you really need to start at back in the spring or in training camp where you build them into the foundation of what you're doing, rather than trying to plug them in. Depends on what it is but there's an element of both there. So yeah, that's certainly part of the long-term conversation."
Also ...
Matthew Judon played 39 percent of snaps, and Jonnu Smith 33 percent.
That's about $25 million annually between them.
