Bill Belichick Player Quotations

Bavaro's probably as tough of a - physically and mentally as tough a football player as I've ever coached. So, I would put him in the rare category there.

I'm sure that any current or past player of mine would tell you that the balls we practice with are as bad as they can be: wet, sticky, cold, slippery. However bad we can make them, I make them. Any time that players complain about the quality of the footballs, I make them worse and that stops the complaining.

I'm not going to be able to talk about the people who are involved specifically in any ongoing judicial process. We do the same thing with all our players. We take a look, as I said, at their personal family life, we look at the history of what they've done in high school and college.

Some guys, football comes really easy to them; they can see what all 22 players are doing, can see what all 11 guys are doing on their side of the ball, how it all fits together. It's easy for them.

As part of the process, there are a lot of different ways to evaluate players. There are a number of different companies and things out there that do different things; that have different ways of evaluating and those types of tests and so forth.

That has never been a priority for me and I want the players to deal with a harder situation in practice than they'll ever have to deal with in the game. Maybe that's part of our ball security philosophy.

I could tell you that in my entire coaching career I have never talked to any player, staff member about football air pressure. That is not a subject that I have ever brought up.

Whatever success I've had it is because I've tried to understand the situation of the player. I think the coach's duty is to avoid complicating matters.

I cannot comment on any player who has ongoing criminal charges and legal situations.

My personal coaching philosophy, my mentality, has always been to make things as difficult as possible for players in practice, however bad we can make them, I make them.

You definitely go through a stage, most coaches do, where you see a good player and you get enamored, you really like what the player does, but then when you put him into your system, it's not quite the same player that he was in another system. He has some strengths, but you cant utilize all those strengths. If you try to utilize all his strengths, you end up weakening a lot of other players who are already in your system.

In short, we accumulate all the information that we can accumulate, wherever that information comes from, and try to analyze it and make the best decision we can make for our football team on a case-by-case basis. It's the same for every single player; the process is the same.

There is an old saying about the strength of the wolf is the pack, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. On a football team, it’s not the strength of the individual players, but it is the strength of the unit and how they all function together.

Obviously, it says a lot for the player and what he's been able to accomplish: No. 1, the skill of the player and, No. 2, his durability. He's carried the ball a lot and he's carried it very effectively. He has a running style that can work in a lot of different ways with his speed, his power, his quickness, and his run vision. It's a very significant individual accomplishment.

If a player has a lot of longevity and production, you're looking at two factors -- skill and durability,

He was a very good special teams player with the Giants when he came out. He runs well. He's pretty athletic in the open field. He has some playing strength and some power. He's a pretty instinctive special teams player.

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.

Fifteen years ago, it wouldn't have been the case. When you don't have free agency and all of that, then you can keep the player in your system and keep developing him and keep him as long as you want. Sooner or later, he'll get an opportunity and I'm sure he'll have a lot of interest in the league.

There certainly haven't been many times in the last few years where you release a player and say, 'Well, this guy couldn't help us. This guy just couldn't do anything,' ... It's more a case of you have a few spots and you have more people than you do spots. So then you have to make a decision as to where you want your depth. Do you want it on the offensive line, do you want it in the kicking game, do you want it in the secondary, do you want it at tackle, do you want it at receiver, do you want it at quarterback?

You get into the situation where you have an experienced player that gives you a certain quality of play, and you have a younger player who you think is going to be better but he's not better now,

Every player that dresses for the game, I've told them to be ready to go for 60 minutes just like it's a regular-season game.

Anything any other player would do, that's what he's going to do

Any time a player goes from one system to another, one thing that could be a problem is breaking old habits. It's not that you don't understand what the new responsibilities or plays are, but just the fact that you've been doing something a long time - it's a habit - and that's not what's required in the other system. And that means kind of undoing something before you can even start to do something new.

He's fast and he has good range for the safety position and he's done a good job as a contact player both in hitting and tackling and forcing the run when he's been asked to.

I don't think confidence is a problem. I am sure that every player that played in the game is going to look back on that one and see some plays that they thought they did well on and others that they would like to have back. That goes for everybody.

And I understood that in an age where there was so much ego, because of the camera, that it was very important to look for that kind of player, ... I began to look for the kind of player that doesn't need his ego fed by stardom, but will do what he's supposed to do because he knows the game and loves the game, and will do the job the right way even if someone else gets the glory.