Bill Belichick Line Quotations

Of course, the offensive line functions very well together. It just really grows on you. The more you watch them, the more in sync they seem to be. There are very few spaces in their plays. Everything is pretty tightly fit together.

Our offensive line did a pretty good job last night. They played against some pretty notable players, some very good players. Yes, we had some trouble. I think they had some trouble, too. We blocked them and there were times where we couldn't get them blocked. Again, that was a pretty good group. I thought our offensive line played very competitively.

I think we have some players who are versatile. We have some depth at linebacker, on the defensive line and in the secondary. What we need to do, hopefully we'll have the flexibility to be able to try to do it.

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.

Because the offense usually extends a little bit to try to take care of him, they like to bring the linebackers and blitz them up inside. As the line widens to give attention to Peppers, that opens up a lot of the inside pressures for them. We talked about last week (Oakland receiver Randy) Moss being kind of in a special category, offensively, for the Raiders. I think you have to put Peppers in that same, whatever category that is, defensively.

It?s always good to make those yards when you need them, like in short yardage and goal line situations or like that third quarter (against the Jets) when you're going into the wind. You want to try to control the clock a little bit. Those are important yards, too. I think we can do a better job in running the ball than we did. I hope we can.

It's not like he'll get through the line of scrimmage and you'll run him down for a 10-, 12-, 15-yard gain,

That's a game-breaking skill, but along with that, he has a lot of power. He's good on the goal line and short-yardage situations. (He's) tough to tackle. He's fast, (has) good hands (and) is pretty good in blitz pickup. He does a good job.

They haven't given up many long drives. They're not in the red area very much. They're not at the goal line very much. They usually get them stopped before people get down there against them. They don't give up many points. They're good.

I don't think we had any major problems on the offensive line. We were all at the game. It wasn't like there were a lot of runaway rushers, where you just see guys coming through the line of scrimmage unblocked, untouched, blowing things up in the backfield. There were times when we got pushed back. There were times when we pushed them a little bit. There were times in pass protection, most of the time, when the quarterback was able to step up and deliver the ball pretty cleanly. In relative terms, it was OK. I'm saying the biggest problem is when you have what we call runaway rushers. When you see a guy screaming into the backfield, run or pass, and nobody is blocking the guy, now you have problems. You certainly want to avoid that.