2014 BB PC Thread: Turn and look for the ball

Dogman

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http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/new-england-patriots/post/_/id/4765098/bill-belichick-welcome-to-football-season 
Following up on Armstead’s retirement. Belichick was asked if he had been prepared for the retirement of defensive lineman Armond Armstead, or if it was something the team had to react to. “Armond had a problem, an issue, come up later in the spring. Then it was resolved when it was resolved. It was a little bit of a process, but I think after everything had come through, it was the decision that he made. As the process was going on, we realized that was certainly a possibility.” 

Deflecting questions on Hernandez. The news conference ended with three questions on former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, specific to text messages that had been exchanged between Belichick and Hernandez. “I think that was addressed by a lawyer last week, and I don’t have any further comment on it.”
 
 
A lawyer.  Not the team lawyer.  Not a PR firm lawyer. Just a lawyer. 
 
I love that BB used more than 75 words for what essentially is a 3 word answer.  "Yes, he retired."
 

soxfan121

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The end was awesome - I was listening to TSH's live broadcast of the PC and when the reporter asked the first (of three) Hernandez questions, the tone shifted from "bored" to "annoyed". On the second question, the sarcasm and disdain was palpable. And I don't think the third question was even finished when he said "OK, thanks" and then skeedaddled.
 
Then it cut back to Fred who laughed out loud and said "well, he's ready for the season."
 

mascho

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"It was resolved when it was resolved."
 
I resolve to make that my go-to expression going forward.  I cherish the thought of driving my wife nuts with it.  
 
"Hey, did you take the trash out?"
"It was resolved when it was resolved."
 

MainerInExile

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There is such a method to his madness.  "We have 90 players on our roster, we care about the health of all of them."  It always surprises me that all coaches don't talk like Bill.
 

mascho

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@judybattista  1m
Belichick just mentioned deep snappers. He is in mid-season form on day one of camp.
 
@jeffphowe  31s
Belichick: "That's the good thing about being the head coach. You can coach whatever (position) you want."
 
@tomecurran  54s
Belichick in awesome filibuster at start of press conference talking changes in personnel, specialization since '75.
 
@PatriotsSB49  58s
Belichick is just showing off now. He's better than you.
 
@thattimwhelan  2m
Looking forward to doing a word count on Belichick's first answer of camp. Easily over 1,000, I'm guessing. #Patriots
 
Apparently I'm gonna need to listen to this later.
 
EDIT:  @judybattista  3m
There is nobody in Congress at skilled at the filibuster as Bill Belichick. A masterful performance this morning.
 

soxfan121

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Belichick: "That's the good thing about being the head coach. You can coach whatever (position) you want."
 
 
Fuck you, I'm Bill Belichick. 
 

Super Nomario

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mascho said:
 
@judybattista  1m
Belichick just mentioned deep snappers. He is in mid-season form on day one of camp.
 
@jeffphowe  31s
Belichick: "That's the good thing about being the head coach. You can coach whatever (position) you want."
 
@tomecurran  54s
Belichick in awesome filibuster at start of press conference talking changes in personnel, specialization since '75.
 
@PatriotsSB49  58s
Belichick is just showing off now. He's better than you.
 
@thattimwhelan  2m
Looking forward to doing a word count on Belichick's first answer of camp. Easily over 1,000, I'm guessing. #Patriots
 
Apparently I'm gonna need to listen to this later.
 
EDIT:  @judybattista  3m
There is nobody in Congress at skilled at the filibuster as Bill Belichick. A masterful performance this morning.
 
What pompous asses the media are. Belichick "filibustering" so he doesn't have to answer their precious questions. You know if they just opened their ears and listened they'd find something way, way more interesting than the non-answer to their stupid questions they were going to get anyway.
 
EDIT: I'd like to specifically exclude Howe and Doug Kyed from the above - they are actually tweeting out substance.
 

Super Nomario

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Super Nomario said:
What pompous asses the media are. Belichick "filibustering" so he doesn't have to answer their precious questions. You know if they just opened their ears and listened they'd find something way, way more interesting than the non-answer to their stupid questions they were going to get anyway.
 
EDIT: I'd like to specifically exclude Howe and Doug Kyed from the above - they are actually tweeting out substance.
Unsurprisingly, the full transcript is pretty interesting: http://www.patriots.com/news/article-1/Bill-Belichick-Transcript-We-have-a-long-haul-ahead-of-us/e25a5aec-182b-4582-84c4-bd2a39aa6d6d
 
On his first NFL gig (also covers the history of substitution and specialization in the NFL):
 
I remember one of the first things I did in 1975 was break down the Washington-L.A. Rams game. The Rams used two tight ends, two receivers and one back. It was a revolutionary kind of tactic or personnel group. It created a lot of problems for Washington’s defense because it was always a strong side, weak side 3-on-2, 4-on-3 matchup. That personnel group ended up creating a real problem because you were able to get three receivers out to either side after the ball was snapped; defense didn’t know what it was. That really struck me, that’s one of the first things that [Colts defensive coordinator] Maxie Baughan had me do, was break down that game from the ’74 season. It really struck me as to how creative that formation and that personnel group was to causing a defense problems. We worked hard on that that year and of course never saw it.
 
On evaluating players (especially young players), we get a clue as to some of the purpose to joint practices:
 
If you’re always seeing them against the same guy, they might be good on that matchup or they might not be good on that matchup, but how they do against other matchups and other players, not just the one or two that they’re facing on a daily basis on your team, so preseason games, preseason scrimmages, that’s part of the evaluation too. I think it’s important to know who the player is competing against. A guy looks good against somebody who is really not an NFL player then that’s good but that’s not really the true evaluation. Eventually you want to see NFL players play against NFL players. 
 

soxfan121

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The first half of the quote SN pulled above regarding joint practices is also fascinating:
 
Q: Does that give an edge to veteran players? 

BB: Sure. I think it’s always been that way though. I think that’s always been the case. Look, there are some young players that come into the league that you know are going to be good players and that’s an easy decision. There are other young players that come into the league that are below the veteran players because of experience, maybe possibly because of physical development, especially some of the bigger guys, bigger positions. You have to try to estimate where those lines are going to cross, where the younger player is going to pass the veteran player, if he’s going to pass him. If the veteran player is going to decline, if the younger player is going to continue to improve or reach his potential and so there’s some, obviously guesstimation in that. That’s a big part of evaluating your team. A lot of that comes down to, in all honesty, a lot of that comes down to the opportunities that those players have. Players miss time, you get fewer opportunities.
 
 

dcmissle

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Super Nomario said:
What pompous asses the media are. Belichick "filibustering" so he doesn't have to answer their precious questions. You know if they just opened their ears and listened they'd find something way, way more interesting than the non-answer to their stupid questions they were going to get anyway.
 
EDIT: I'd like to specifically exclude Howe and Doug Kyed from the above - they are actually tweeting out substance.
Awful, including the supposedly serious ones. The culture war is over, and ESPN has won.

Just listen. And be a little patient and attentive . BB will go off with no notice on the most interesting things.
 

soxfan121

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Actually, the rule seems to be "ask general questions". Dude will GO ON in great detail if the question has historical relevance. 
 
Ask him about specific players or worse, specific player injuries, and you get what you get. 
 
It is really frustrating to read these transcripts (and shitheads like Judy Battista prattling about 'filibusters' when that was interesting, thoughtful stuff) and realize that almost everyone in that room is more interested glorifying  themselves than in whatever knowledge could be gained from asking actual questions.
 

Stitch01

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Yeah, see whining over that less conference is why BB disdains most of the press. That was far more interesting than 15 minutes of questions with no meaningful answer like "how did Revis look in practice number 1"

I think asking specific, well thought out questions are fair game, but they have to be better than "hey how did Gronk run around out there for 20 minutes" if you want to get something out of it
 

SeoulSoxFan

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Thank god for the age of social network & the interwebs. The morons no longer wholly control the discussion channels and there are a ton of thoughtful and interesting sources to chose from (Loyko & the rest of the staff from NEPatriotsDraft.com for one).

And you can make this stuff interesting too -- I enjoy the hell out of the PFW's daily training camp podcasts & the always excellent Around the League podcast from NFL.com.

The lazy and self-absorbed ones (hello Borges) continue to produce shit and take the same for it.
 

Reverend

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So, by "filibustering" they meant "giving in-depth explanations of how he does his job."
 
Semantics.
 

dcmissle

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They are looking for least common denominator, Shank-Borges-FM level crap -- and that's all they've been looking for since BB hit town. Controversy.

This parallels the dismantling of the great American newspaper as an institution, and the rise of ESPN.
 

Mystic Merlin

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What gets me is that we're going on 15 years of the BB regime, and the media - including the local reporters/columnists - still ask the same LCD questions every single presser.  Without fail.  He has never given them the red meat they desire, but the exercise in futility continues.
 
Do they think they have some kind of duty or obligation to ask him this shit?  Or that, perhaps, one day BB will go off the reservation?
 
I suppose BB's condescending reactions are actually what they're after at this point.  That IS the red meat.  Writing an article or tweet about the evolution of special teams and the specialization of football teams won't generate clicks or #hotsportstakes.  What will is bitching about BB's arrogance/dismissiveness/price of genius.
 

Dogman

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And that is essentially all they have to bitch about.  They can't complain about performance since BB has been at the helm since they have been at least a top 10 team every single year.  Most years, top five. 
 
BB is a  jerk unless you give him a reason to actually talk about football. But then, to them, that is boring. 
 

PedroKsBambino

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It's the ESPN/talking headization....they want a controversy, an issue, or a soundbite that can show up in a talking-head answer or with a question mark at the end during a SportsCenter promo.  Anything of more substance than that is unhelpful, and anything else is realiably what he gives them.
 
Fortunately, he has F-U credibility with the owner and the fans, so it's amusing rather than a problem around here.
 

RoyHobbs

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Most of the time he give them Faulkner or fragments, but he does give red meat ("Gronk is cleared to play") only to see it turned into Alpo ("BB says Gronk is cleared to play, but here's what he really means!!1"). I'd be sick of that kind of psychoanalysis, too
 

simplyeric

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I wonder what he'd do if someone asked something like 'Bill I know you don't want to talk about Hernandez, but do you have any thoughts about how off-field behavior has changed over the years, and how it affects the team or a coach's relationship with the players and how to coach them?'
Something generalized and historical, but somehow germane. Maybe he wants to talk about the Hernandez thing but not in a specific way. It could be an opportunity to say stuff like 'all the coaches I know really do stay separate from the lives of a player, even though over the years it seems like we try to know more about a player, it's really just about their performance.'
Not that he'd say that, specifically. Or maybe Hernandez is too hot a topic.
Basically, try to glean some ideas of his mindset on a current situation by getting him to talk about history.
(Not that I phrased a great question, but a good journalist might try to craft something interesting for him to respond to)
 

ifmanis5

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Actually, an interesting answer on the tablet experiment...
 
The tablets were a new experience for all of us. We’ve never used those during the game, it’s always been pictures basically on a printed piece of paper off a printer so you could write on them. They’re paper copies. The tablets have the ability to hold all the pictures in the one tablet so you can scroll through them, certainly much more concise. I’d say the quality of the tablets is good and the clarity of the pictures and all that is good, better than what we had. The issues are that those are wireless tablets down on the field and if the WiFi isn’t connected or isn’t working or something happens, then you have nothing, you have zero. That happened in our game and it’s happened in other games, from my understanding of talking to other people that had been involved there too. So, we wanted to get a little feedback on that, on the subject.
 
Can't wait for Tabletgate.
 
http://www.patriots.com/news/article-1/Bill-Belichick-Transcript-Im-looking-forward-to-this-week/22e01185-1a2a-4e06-847d-e97a17ab9dc9
 

bradmahn

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I just read this from his first presser of training camp:
 
 
Things were what they were.
...and I love it.
 
Forget "It is what it is," "things were what they were" has arrived.
 

Reverend

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He should respond by releasing video of coaches of other teams having ice water dumped over their heads.
 

mascho

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"The ice bucket thing?  Yeah, that thing on Friendbook or whatever it is?  No, I don't think I'll be doing that, we've got the Eagles coming to town."
 

Ed Hillel

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If the team scores a TD in one of the drills against the Eagles, one of the players should pour the ice over his head and film it. It's for charity, so you know it would go over well with BB.
 
Also, "Friendbook," lol. I assume that was intentional.
 

mascho

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Ed Hillel said:
If the team scores a TD in one of the drills against the Eagles, one of the players should pour the ice over his head and film it. It's for charity, so you know it would go over well with BB.
 
Also, "Friendbook," lol. I assume that was intentional.
 
I was trying to recall what he had called social media sites in the past.  Seems he's referred to "twitter, myface and yearbook."
 

Reverend

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Belichick's post pre-game press conference was awesome, by the way. Can't embed, but here's the link--it's like we lost the war in Europe.
 

RedOctober3829

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BB is on Gresh and Zo right now.  Called social media InstaFace and MyFace again.  Love it.  Promoting his Hall of Fame Huddle for his foundation next week.
 
On joint practices: "Gave our first-team guys a chance to get 80 plays instead of 10-15 plays in an actual game."
 
On what he likes about this team: "You never really know where you stand until midway through the season until you've been game planned against by multiple teams and against multiple matchups.  Sometimes your strengths aren't your strengths and your perceived weaknesses aren't.  I like this team's work ethic.  Worked very hard since Day 1 of OTAs.  They've been coachable and the younger players have taken coaching from coaches and vets very well.  We'll see how this all plays out but I think we're making progress and have a long way to go."
 

soxfan121

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Unexpected: When I ask football coach football question, I get nine sentence, 153-word response about football topic. 
 
I mean, DUH.
 

Reverend

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soxfan121 said:
Unexpected: When I ask football coach football question, I get nine sentence, 153-word response about football topic. 
 
I mean, DUH.
 
Is this forum literally the only major group of people who understand this about Belichick?
 
This is a serious question for those who talk Patriots with more fans in real life than I do. Because the expression of surprise--I find it almost jarring.
 

soxfan121

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I went and looked up Sheil Kapadia's biography, hoping he was new and that "unexpected" was a reaction to what he'd been told by the other salty denizens of the press room. But he's been around as an Eagles beat guy since 2008, meaning he has been to more than few Belichick press conferences and he's just another in a long line of lazy media people who think that their reaction to BB's press conferences is more interesting than anything said AT said press conferences. 
 
These guys make the BBWAA look diligent and insightful by comparison.
 

Dogman

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Last night's 2nd and 3rd question and answer:
 
Q: When you put Ryan Mallett in in the first quarter, how important is it for a guy like that to show he’s prepared to go in at any moment in the game? 

BB: Well, it’s a situation that a quarterback could be in. That’s our opportunity to do it, so we did it. 

Q: Was there any thought to playing Ryan in the second half or have you seen enough from him this preseason? 

BB: We do what we think is best for the team.
 
 
Bland question=bland answer. 
 
Asking something like what 121 posted above produces something tangible.  Seriously, it isn't difficult.
 

epraz

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It's not only bland, it's not really a question.  The reporter had an idea of an angle they wanted to write about, and asked a question designed to get a response that would facilitate that angle.
 

Reverend

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Belichick might has well have come to the podium, surveyed the audience, leaned into the mic and said, "I ain't tellin' you shit."
 
Edit: This is really a remarkable exercise in wasting time.
 
Edit2: We have a new one!! "This year is this year. This year is this year."
 
Time to rename the thread again?
 

SeoulSoxFan

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BB on Gronk's announcement that he'll play on Sunday. Per Jeff Howe:
 
"I'm glad Rob is optimistic about his situation. We'll go through the week of practice, take a look at everything.. with all due respect for Rob"