New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick addresses the media during his postgame press conference at Gillette Stadium on Monday, October 20, 2008.
BB: That was a real great job by our football team tonight, I couldn't be prouder of them. It was a tough loss last week; we came back across county. We had our best week of practice and we played our best football tonight and we needed to. That's [Denver] a good football team. I can't say enough about the way those guys went about it all week. We played a good complimentary game. I thought the offense took advantage of the field position that we got. Defensively we took advantage of some of the opportunities we had to turn the ball over. In the end it was a good complimentary, complete game. I'd like to give the players all the credit. They played hard. They played tough and they made some plays. It was good to beat Denver. There haven't been a lot of those.
Q: What was the sense of challenge or wounded pride you saw in your defense this week in practice?
BB: I think they prepared well and played well. We did a pretty good job on the deep balls. They have a lot of good receivers, a good quarterback and they can run it. [Daniel] Graham is a good blocker. They put up a lot of points and a lot of yards on offense this year. Our guys played hard. Denver made a few plays but fortunately we were able to hang in there, get a few turnovers and make some third down stops. It was tough but they just kept battling, it was nothing specific. It is always better when you don't give it all up on one play.
Q: How hurt is Rodney Harrison?
BB: I don't know. We will have to see how that is. It doesn't look too good but I don't have any update right now.
Q: Do you have an update on Sammy Morris?
BB: It is five minutes after the game.
Q: Sammy Morris had a big first half running the football, was that the emphasis of the game plan coming in?
BB: No, we tried to be balanced. We ran it and we threw it. I thought all of the running backs ran hard. Obviously the offensive line blocked well and the tight ends - Heath [Evans] when he was in there at fullback. We got some down field blocks from the receivers on a couple of those longer runs too. So you know that is just good team football. Not all one guy but good production from all of the backs.
Q: Can you talk about Matt Cassel's best game yet?
BB: Well offensively it was our best game and he is a big part of that. But we ran the ball well. We hit some third downs in the second half and got the ball in the end zone a couple times down there. They held us to field goals early but in the end we got the ball in the end zone. It was good team football offensively. I am really proud of the way the guys played. They just stepped up, played physical and made some plays when they had to.
Q: You mentioned you cut out the explosive plays all together this week on defense, what kind of emphasis was that during the week?
BB: We always try to emphasize that but we don't go into the game saying we don't care about three or four 50-yarders - we never try to give those up. We worked on it every week, we worked on it this week and the players really did a good job. They played well and we didn't give up a lot of long ones. We made them work for everything and in the end we were able to hold them to seven points - we
