Bill Belichick Hard Quotations

For the short amount of time he was here, he worked hard and picked up things pretty well, assignments and all that. It's tough to bring a guy in here off the street who's not familiar with your system and then put him in the game for a significant amount of plays. To his credit, I thought he was competitive.

He was a guy who was able to go hard and run hard on virtually every single play of the game. It didn't make any difference if it was the fourth quarter, in the middle of a two-minute drive, or the third play of the game. He was always very, very close to his top speed. ... Even if he had good players covering him, he'd wear them down.

He's been healthier this year, ... He's been out there every day. He's got a lot of reps so his technique and timing are better. Tom's a smart guy. He's worked hard to improve his overall body strength since we got him. And he's pretty athletic.

We're certainly giving up too many big plays in the passing game, ... Some of it was the technique ... our judgment on the ball, sometimes we just didn't use our help, or where our help was supposed to be, it didn't get there quick enough. ... Some of it is tied into the rush, the timing of the rush, when the ball is thrown. ... The quarterback stands back there and pumps three or four times, that's hard for anybody to cover those routes. We just need better overall team defense.

We were trying to take a little bit of the edge off, give everybody a chance to relax. It's been a good hard week with a lot of concentration. We figured we'd lighten up a little here and be ready to go tomorrow.

We'll continue to work hard to do a better job in every area going forward. I don't know where those little things will come from but we'll continue to be diligent on them.

There are changes every year. It's hard to tell how all of those will pan out. But there's a lot of work to do.

It would be hard for me to tell Eugene what he did wrong. There were a lot of calls in that game I'd have a hard time explaining.

We didn't make the plays we need to win. There's not much more to say. It's hard to win when you give the ball away.

The thing I thought was Jerry's greatest strength ... was his endurance. I thought he was a guy who was able to go hard and run hard on virtually every single play of the game. It didn't make any difference if it was fourth quarter, in the middle of a two-minute drive or the third play of the game. He was always very, very close to his top speed. Nobody else was like that.

I'm proud of the team. The players played hard and I thought they played well and made the plays they needed to make to win the game.

It's hard enough gaining 10 yards on three downs. If you start trying to gain 12 or 13 or 17 on two, then eventually it's probably going to catch up with you.

They consistently knock the line of scrimmage back. They're hard to block and if you stay on them and block them, then it's hard to get to the next level. It's hard to get up to the linebackers. And if you get off of them too quick, then they penetrate.

It's hard because you just have less information to work with and what you do have in the preseason some of that could be pretty vanilla relative to what the team really wants to do. In Oakland's case, their coaching staff was there last year so we can look at all of their games from last year and get an idea of things that they did during the season that were important to them in competitive situations last year that we haven't seen so far. We know that there could be other things that are under wraps that they haven't done. We just have to be ready to make some adjustments during the game. I think that's the way it always is. There's no question that this is the hardest game.

These players, I can't tell you how proud of them I am, ... They've just been awesome. They've faced every team's toughest competition every week. I pushed them hard. I demanded a lot. They've worked so hard and never made excuses when they lost or played poorly.

It's hard to get four quarterbacks the amount of reps that are really productive. You know, we've got two players that really haven't played any football at all for this organization and we're going to have to make some kind of evaluation on where they are. And the only way to evaluate them is to see them play.

It's hard to win when you give the ball away.