Belichick’s long response on Bills pass defense

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By Brandon J. Koch

When you think about Patriots head coach Bills Belichick, you think of his quick responses, and sometimes zero when it comes to questions. 

When asked about the Bills defense, he talked about it in depth. 

Belichick: “Well Buffalo’s defensive scheme is very well coordinated,” Belichick said. “They’re very well coached. They give you a lot of different looks and they do a great job of disguising those looks so they all kind of look the same. You don’t know what it is until a lot of times after the snap. The safeties in particular, Hyde and Poyer, do a very good job of disguising. So sometimes you don’t get a clear read on the coverage until a second or a second and a half into the play. They hold it even during the play, which you don’t see that a lot. They mix in their pressures, their man calls, their zone calls and they have several different zone combinations and again, they make them look the same but they’re different. Sometimes they’re subtly different. That causes some hesitation with the quarterbacks and receivers in the passing game. Meanwhile, they have a good pass rush. They use all their players on the front. They rotate those guys. They play hard, they rush. A lot of times those guys make tackles from behind on shorter pass completions when they play zone and the quarterback throws the ball into the five, six-yard area with checkdowns or under routes. The pass rushers will turn and chase the ball and make plays from behind and knock the ball out. They do a good job of re-routing the receivers and the safeties do a good job playing the ball. Hyde and Poyer have eight interceptions and have their hands on other balls as well. They make it very hard for you, and if you make mistakes, they make you pay. They all have good ball skills and hands. Shareece Wright had a nice interception last week, made a nice play on the ball. White’s turned the ball over. As I said, the safeties, I think they have about half the team’s interceptions. They’re around the ball a lot and they play it well. You’ve got to do a good job on the protections, you have to do a good job on the route distribution, technique, got to do a good job reading the coverage and making accurate throws. If any of those things are a little bit off then you can have a bad play. They’re very disciplined in what they do. They do it well, but they do enough different things that it hard. They don’t just do one or two things. They have a nice complement. They have a couple new change-ups. They usually put in one or two different things every week, which is just another thing that slows you down offensively.”

Some may say he’s doing what he always does, building up the opponent and talking nice, but when he goes on a long, in depth answer, it’s genuine.