Belichick of the Week

I realize that I am awarding it far, far too early.  But this one I like a lot.  Upon being asked about any concerns he had about TB's health after the car accident yesterday:

“I always worry about the health of our team. There is nothing more important than the health of our team. Without players, you don’t have a team.”

Genius.

Also, anyone else notice just how rusty and old Favre looked last night?

He wins

Belichick is back and in fine form.  When asked about any possible injury to Tom Brady's fingers, he answered as follows:

"I don't think it's life threatening."

He also expressed great (sarcastic) joy in filling out injury reports this season.  And with that, the title goes to the master with Belichick taking home the inaugural Belichick of the Week.

If you're curious, I do feel slightly icky about just having posted a link from the Boston Herald.  Hopefully we will all get through this together.

Congratulations to Wes Welker

Apparently Wes's knee is doing okay, which is fabulous news. But even better is the fact that he managed to construct a sentence that combined almost every single Patriot cliche:

"So we have to make sure guys are setting good examples and kind of channeling that down to younger guys and making sure we’re on the same page and working hard together and playing together and being mentally tough together."

If only there had been a 'it is what it is.' Nonetheless, Belichick of the Week for Welker on that one.

Your Belichick of the Week (off-season edition)

Yes, he got one in while discussing the draft. As usual, the master is...well, the master:

'When we look at the board, based on everything we want in a football player at that particular time, we evaluate them and take the player that fits best for our football team. That’s what we always do, and I think the last nine years we’ve put a pretty competitive team out there on the field every year.'

Let's see, in 9 years we have won 3 Superbowls, made 4 Superbowl appearances, and been in the playoffs 7 out of 9 times. Yeah, I guess we haven't been too bad, now that you mention it.

I spoke too soon, clearly

This week's Belichick of the Week needs to be reassigned. From the master's mouth:

“That’s the way it is every week,” Belichick said. “The game is over, it’s over. Move on to the next one. We’ve had big wins. We’ve had tough losses. We haven’t had any ties, but it would be the same on that, too. We move pass that game and move on to the next one, and this is the most important one.”

Current Belichick of the Week

I'm awarding it early seeing as he is not even done with the press conference yet:

'They were just the better team tonight. You had to see that, you were there.'

Bill is sad :( If I could, I would give him a hug.

Randy Moss delivers turkeys, good cheer, Belichickisms

Randy Moss went back to his home state of West Virginia to help out with distributing food on Thanksgiving. Notice the use of the Belichickism, 'It is what it is.' I know that Bill didn't coin that one, but it certainly shows up a lot in his press conferences.

And for the 80 billionth time, to all of the haters, maybe this will convince you that the Patriots are not 'classless'? Incidentally, I'm still pretty sure that classless is not a word.

And the Belichick of the Week goes to...

I don't even know why I'm pretending to hand this out to anyone else anymore:

'But from a standpoint of production, what you produce, that’s what you’ve produced.'

Congratulations are in order to Coach Belichick, as usual. Here's the original.

They are moving on

I have it *on authority* that the Patriots have moved on from Sunday, so I vow to do the same. In Bill I Trust. Still. Yes, I do have something bordering on unconditional love for this team, so I will overlook the times that they don't quite execute as well as I would like. They have still given me more joy and entertainment over the past years than anything else I can think of. And for that, my Pats, I love you still.

As you may recall (or not), the last time that the Pats lost two games in a row was in 2006 against the Colts and the Jets. That cannot happen this year. We need to stay strong through the rest of the season, lock up the playoff spot, and be able to focus on January early. So we need to stay on top of the division. So far, Miami has lost one divisional game, so we're okay in that department. But it behooves us to beat the Jets this weekend...okay, maybe not 'behooves,' but sure would make things easier down the stretch.

One of my friends unearthed this week's Belichick of the Week. As usual, no one can top the master:

Interviewer: "Did you disagree with that spot [on the Faulk catch]?"

Belichick: "It doesn’t really matter."

And he is right. Remember: you can't change penalties or injuries, so just let it go.

Again, you can't beat the master

This week's Belichick of the Week goes to the man himself, again:

"I thought it was a real good effort by our team today all through the fourth quarter. I'm real proud of them. I thought we executed pretty well, made some big plays in both the running game and the passing game, from all of our defense, good solid all-around effort."

'Executed pretty well.' Not 'well' or 'very well.' Pretty well. Clearly there is still work to be done, according to Coach Belichick.

Congratulations, Josh McDaniels

And no, that's not sarcasm...he won the Belichick of the Week in the post-game interview:

"It was a big win for the football team, a great team we played today. They were very well prepared and we knew that it would be a 60-minute game, or longer in this case.'

Belichick of the Week

This week's Belichick of the Week goes to the man himself. When asked why he decided to go for it on 4th and 1 on his own 24 yard line (at the time, I said that was crazy), his answer was, "I thought we could get a yard."

Nobody does it better than the master.

Belichick of the Week

Congratulations to Vince Wilfork, this week's winner of the Belichick of the Week comment, talking about the match-up tonight against Buffalo:

“You won’t get to this level if you can’t play football. There’s a reason they’re there. Watching them in five preseason games, each week they’ve gotten better and better. We need to do a good job of recognizing formations and what’s going on, communicating, and going forward..."

I could have sworn there were only four preseason games. But he absolutely nailed it with the 'each week they've gotten better and better.' Truly inspired.

Stephen Neal provides this week's Belichick of the Week

Answering a reporter as to whether the Patriots' offensive line is still among the best in the league:

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that at all. We’re just out here sweating, trying to get better. We’ve got a long way to go to be that.”

That's pretty much textbook, I would say.

He's back and in fine form

It's a Belichick of the Week, even though it is paraphrased from Tom Brady during a post-practice interview: 'Coach said yesterday, ‘don’t look for any light at the end of the tunnel because it’s dark.''

Incidentally, how happy does he look to be back?

Some are now calling for Casselgate

Oh good grief.

Let it go people. The second-round pick makes sense. Was it the best trade ever? Maybe not, but it did clear cap space and let the Patriots get on with things. Also, this whole three-way trade thing was never fully established and it would seem that Jay Cutler hasn't been drummed out of Denver, yet, so just let it go. At any rate, I don't think that there is any call for investigation into collusion or anything else. I need to stop reading these stories, they will age me prematurely.

Also, Bill sports a lovely pair of shorts (WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE? MY EYES! MY EYES!) while talking to Cassel in practice. Wow.

Not to be outdone

"When 11 people are doing a good job on that you're probably going to have good offensive production. When you don't have 11 people doing a good job on that or it's poorly coached then you're probably not going to have a lot of production on that." Straight from the horse's mouth as to why Matt Cassel alone should not be getting the credit for two 400+ yard weeks in a row.

Belichick of the Week

The Belichick of the Week is the quote that most sounds like it should have been said by Belichick:

“At times we sputtered. We’ve got a little work to do.” - Randy Moss