Patriots head coach Bill Belichick has always been vocal about rule changes. He plays to his team’s strengths as well as anyone, and if he sees something he doesn’t like, he’s going to make his opinion heard.
So when a reporter opened the door for him to sound off about touchbacks on the kickoff being moved from the 20-yard line to the 25-yard line this season, he took full advantage of it.
Here’s what Belichick had to say about the rule change in speaking to reporters on Friday, via Doug Kyed of NESN.
“We’ll see when all the numbers come in and all of that,” Belichick said. “Again, I know for us, we look at each situation every week, and we’re not in a controlled environment here. There’s some variables even though we haven’t really had any bad conditions, but potentially there are some variables here that other teams don’t have to deal with. So, it could override any rule that you put in. Anything like that, it will be interesting to see what the league-wide numbers are and all that.
“I’d say last week was a good example of some of the big proponents of ‘we want more touchbacks.’ We saw a pretty big concussed play with a touchback, so part of the touchback is, ‘we think it’s a touchback,’ so everybody’s not really playing at the same speed because we think it’s a touchback, it’s going to be a no-play. But as a coverage team, you don’t know for sure if the guy isn’t coming out or not, so you’re playing it at full speed. Some of the concussions, some of the injuries look to me like they come on touchbacks…So, we want more touchbacks. Is that really solving the problem here as it’s been presented by the competition committee? I think you know how I feel about it.”
Tell us how you really feel, Bill.
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