Patriots head coach Bill Belichick addresses the media during his postgame press conference on Monday, December 6, 2010.
BB: Well that was a really great effort by our players tonight. I'm really proud of them. I thought that this was the best 60 minutes of football we've played all year. We had a good week of practice and everybody was really focused and we just got a lot of solid play from really everybody. It was a good night for us. We'll take it. The Jets are a good football team. I'm sure we haven't heard the last from them, but tonight was our night. I'm glad it could be on Tedy Bruschi night. I'm sure this is a game that Tedy is proud of and he was a part of many like this, so I think we got a little inspiration from him tonight
Q: You guys went for it on fourth-and-two toward the end of the first half toward the open end of the stadium. In pregame warm-ups it looked pretty windy down there.
BB: It was.
Q: How much did that affect your decision?
BB: I think it affected it. You know, we kicked earlier but that was fourth-and-seven or eight, whatever it was. Fourth-and-two just kind of felt like it was fourth-and-short and we'd have a pretty good chance to [convert], instead of the long field goal. It was a tough kick. That was a heck of a kick by Shayne [Graham], the first one. What was it 43 yards or something? With the wind and it was a cross wind...It was a tough kick, but he hooked it right in perfectly, just the way I would like to hit a golf shot but never can. But that was really a big part of the decision. If it had been fourth-and-nine, we would have kicked it again.
Q: On Brandon Spikes' pick, how did he end up with it? Did he just do his normal thing?
BB: Yeah, that's where he was on the coverage. It looked like a play-action pass, what we call a pop pass where they fake in there hard and try to hit it over the middle, similar to the play the Colts scored against us on. Similar to that. Brandon made a great play; he made a nice catch. You know, Pepper [Johnson] throws balls at all of those guys every week, fires it in there and makes them catch the ball. And it was kind of like the be on the line drill that the linebackers do with Pepper every Friday, so it was a nice catch.
Q: It looked like you threw a lot of different guys out there in different fronts and did some shifting. Do you think that played a role in your success tonight?
BB: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. We played about what we usually play. I don't think it was any big deal. I'm sure it's nothing that they haven't seen before.
Q: A win tonight doesn't guarantee anything, but you guys talked about how you can't win your division losing to the Jets twice. Can you talk a little about the ramifications of tonight?
BB: Well, we can't do anything about any of that. We just wanted to come in tonight and play well and beat the Jets. That was our goal tonight. At the end of the year, after the standings are in I'm sure we'll know what the situation is, but right now we don't really care about that. We're just on to Chicago and try to do a good job up there against the Bears. It's nice to win. That's great, but there's another quarter of the season left to be played, so there's a lot of football left.
Q: Tom seemed to find such favorable matchups the whole time.
BB: That's why Tom is such a great quarterback. He does a good job of - depending on what the pattern is and where the receivers are deployed and what the matchups are, what the coverages are - of getting the ball to guys that have a good chance to get open. Tom does a great job of that; nobody is better than him. I think that's just part of what makes Tom Brady the quarterback he is.
Q: You alluded to Tedy Bruschi. Having played on all three Super Bowl teams and all the time you've spent with him, what would be your capsule thought about him as a player?
BB: He meant a lot. Tedy was a special player for me because my first year here in '96 was the year we drafted Tedy, so I saw his development as a player, even though I wasn't there for the next three years. But I was there for the the first one and then the next however many it was - 10. He was a special player for me. He brought a lot to this team and the entire organization: his attitude, his effort, his toughness, his work ethic, his playmaking ability, his leadership. He was the best. I was just so fortunate that I have been able to coach the Tedy Bruschis and the Troy Browns and the Willie McGinests. Those guys were just...they've meant a lot to this organization, and certainly Tedy, any recognition he gets he deserves all of it and more. He was great and still is. I still talk to him and he's always got positive words of encouragement, just like he did when he was here. He always had a smile on his face ready to work. I saw that smile a couple times tonight, before the game, at halftime, and I think you saw it after the game. I love to see his smile.
