TB: You like my look?
Q: How are you sleeping?
TB: Great.
Q: No pajamas? [Referring to his new line of Under Armour sleepwear]
TB: I'm wearing them.
Q: Really?
TB: Yeah, every day for 18 months.
Q: How would you describe your level of excitement at this time of year after all these years?
TB: It's a great time of year. These games are pretty intense. You have no entitlement to move on. I said last week, you've got 70 plays on offense left in your season and you've got to earn the right for another 70. Coach [Bill Belichick] has talked a lot the last couple days about what it's going to take and the kind of games that these are and how critical every decision is, and he's right. It's about going out and playing really well and I think that starts obviously with us with our preparation and knowing our opponents, and then putting together a plan and trying to go out and execute it. It's a great time of year.
Q: What are your thoughts on the wide receiver position and group and how competitive they've been, and how beneficial is it for you to have five guys like that at the position?
TB: Well, it's good to have everybody healthy, minus Danny [Amendola] who is trying to get his way back. We've had - I always think we have great players at all our positions. Everybody is going to have a role and everyone is going to be counted on. It's that time of year where it's all about the dependability and we try to carve out roles and try to go out there and do your job the best you can.
Q: What inspired you to write a letter to the family of Calvin Riley as was told in a recent Sports Illustrated article?
TB: Well I had just - a friend of mine from high school had kind of told me the situation and how special of a kid Calvin was. It was just something that I thought I could do to maybe raise their spirits a little bit. [It was] a very tragic situation.
Q: How challenging is it for you to play at a high level in the games when you're not practicing that much leading into those games?
TB: Yeah, think you're trying to - you always want to feel great on Sunday. You'd always like to practice every day, too. I think just some weeks it's about prioritization. I'd like to do everything all the time, but sometimes that's not possible just based on - practice is pretty demanding. Our practices certainly are, so sometimes if you practice it might set you back a little more than you would want. But everyone is dealing with different things and I think as a player you just have to try to be smart. You obviously want to practice because you want to be prepared to play, but sometimes if you overdo it, you're not feeling as good as you want to on Sunday when you are playing. I think after 17 years I've got a pretty good balance for those things. I'm the type of person who likes to practice a lot. I've also been around long enough to know you've got to be smart too, so it's just trying to find that right balance.
Q: Bill Belichick emphasized the focus on next Saturday night and indicated that nothing in the past matters except for this next game. Is that something he has stressed to you as players and something that you in turn are stressing to your teammates?
TB: Yeah, I think everyone has different experiences at this point based on the way their career has gone. Coach [Bill Belichick] has been coaching for 42 years, so I think when he speaks about it, it carries a lot of weight with a lot of players. For some guys it's their second year, it's their first opportunity. For Chris Long, it's his first opportunity to pay in the postseason, so I think there is just a lot of different people in a lot of different situations in their life, career, that are trying to understand what next week is going to be all about. I think it just boils down to playing well. It's a football game, it's the same thing that we've been doing, it's just there's more at stake. There's no next week. I think you have to earn the right for that. It's not about what you've done or what you say you could do, you've got to go out and do it. The teams that do it advance and the other ones, their season ends.
Q: Are you going to pass your new pajamas out around the locker room?
TB: Yeah, it would be very wise for everybody, for you too. Recovery, that's what it's all about, T [Tom Curran].
Q: How do you balance this bye weekend between your family and preparing for next week?
TB: Well I think it's a lot of, for me, it's a lot of preparation. I think you're trying to get a jump on who it may be, because we play now on a short week, basically. It's going to take until Sunday to figure out who we play. We play Saturday night, so I'm going to try to watch a lot of football. We've got a lot of work to do over the next three or four days physically and mentally so that when we do figure out who we're playing, we're ready to go - as ready as we can be on Monday.
Q: What does it mean to you to be in the position you're in and be able to uplift a family like you did with Calvin Riley's family?
TB: Well, I think it's just, everyone faces different challenges in their life and that would be something that would be, like I said, just very tragic. I've had different people pick me up at different times and it's just, you always appreciate those things and you always remember them. I could never imagine having to go through what the family's had to go through over the course of this period. I think our team does a lot of things and a lot of players in our locker room do a lot of things to try to make positive impacts in the community when we can. You hate for it to be under those circumstances, but unfortunately, some tragic things happen and you just do what you can do to help.
Q: What do you attribute your efficiency to after throwing just two interceptions this season?
TB: I think you're just trying to make good decisions back there with the ball. Those two that I threw, I wish I wouldn't have thrown those. I think what it comes down to is you try to practice those as much as you can and you try to make those decisions on the field that are going to impact the season, and turnovers are a big part of the reason, at least for our team, why we've won and lost. I get it hammered home pretty much every day about taking care of the football. You try to limit them the best you can. It's nice when you're playing with leads because you don't have to necessarily force the ball into certain areas where the coverage may be really tight, but it's going to be the same formula for next Saturday night - not turning the ball over, making good decisions with it, and that's what the game's going to come down to.
