Bill Belichick Regular Quotations

Honestly, we went through this at the end last year with the San Francisco game (and the starters played most of the game). Were treating this like a regular week ... I don't think anybody else really knows any other way to do it around here?. I don't think the players do. I don't think the coaches do. It's football season. Maybe I'll see it differently next week. I don't know.

We're doing what we do every year, every spring, (which) is build our team and try to make it as competitive as we can heading into training camp and the regular season in the fall. That goes for every position and every player, across the board.

When you have a football team, everybody has a role on it. And Ro's role, for the most part in the last couple of years, . . . was to get the defense ready. Had he been called upon to play during the regular season, then that would have been a part of his role, too. But, for the most part, it wasn't. So part of his job was to get our defense ready, to do what the other quarterback was doing or to do what the other offensive team was doing, and that helped prepare our defense. In no way can I minimize that.

Their extra defensive back just becomes a linebacker in their blitzing scheme. In sub, it becomes the same blitz, but it?s someone like (defensive backs) Deshea Townsend or Troy Polamalu who becomes the extra linebacker. It?s really a linebacker blitz. It?s the same two guys they?d bring in on regular defense, but they?re actually defensive backs because you have receivers in the game.

We played them last year in preseason (a 31-0 Jaguars romp in an exhibition finale the Patriots' regulars sat and watched). We played them the year before that in the regular season. I think there's some application on those games. I'm not sure how much. We'll look at those But this team is this year's team just like we are and everybody else is.

I think any player that hasn't played football for a while, and then comes back and tries to catch up to a lot of guys who have been playing on a regular basis, they're behind. They have to be. If they weren't, then we should cancel all the practices and just show up for the game.

We've got a short week this week with New Orleans, ... It's a team we play in the regular season, so we'll try to put more attention in this game than a normal preseason game because it will come up in the regular season.

We're treating this like a regular week. Put it in the headline. Bold type. It's a regular week. The players know that, the staff knows it.