In this morning’s pre-practice press conference media members hit a nerve of Bill Belichick when questions flew in about how different players are doing so far in training camp.
When asked about Austin Carr and his performance thus far Belichick went off saying:
“You know, you guys are asking a lot of questions about what have we seen from ‘this’ guy, what are we seeing from ‘that’ guy. We’ve yet to put on pads, alright? I understand that this is a pretty talented group of evaluators in this room, but in all honesty, our evaluations come more in training camp when we actually practice and we can fully execute the techniques and the plays that we’re trying to do.”
“So the main thing we try to get done in the spring and the main thing we’re trying to get done in these two days is to teach the players what to do to give them the most fundamental instruction that we can, given the restraints that we have on practice. Then when padded practices and, I would say real training camp starts tomorrow, we’ll continue for quite a while after that, including the preseason games, is when the real evaluations start.”
“So I know everybody’s all excited when a guy catches a pass, but when the defense doesn’t jam him or they’re not allowed to really, because we don’t want heavy contact out there, aren’t competing for contact at the end of the play then it’s not quite the same as when all of that’s going on. I’m not taking anything away from the receivers. I’m not taking anything away from anybody. I’m just saying it is what it is.”
“The competitive level out there is not what it’s going to be starting tomorrow, so to evaluate players competitively when they’re not on a competitive level, I have a hard time with. But I know a lot of the people are real good at that and they can make a lot more out of it than I can, but due to my personal limitations and my personal inability to make those evaluations, I don’t make them.”
“We can keep asking about how everybody does on ‘this’ and how everybody does on ‘that’. The main thing for me is to see if they’re doing the right thing, doing it properly, how we can correct that, and then there will be a point in time where everybody will be able to go out and do it to the best of their ability against very competitive players on the other side of the ball and we’ll see what happens.”
“That’s when the evaluations really start, other than if a person can’t take the instruction and do what you’re asking them to do or can’t do it properly, you can evaluate that. But in some cases it’s hard to evaluate how they’re doing competitively against somebody else when it’s really not a competitive situation.”
For those keeping track at home that was 447 words and his longest response to a question this year so far. Needless to say, Belichick is already in midseason press conference form.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
