Bill's follow-up

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August 18, 2007

Patriots coach Bill Belichick held a conference call with the media (4 p.m.) to wrap up Friday’s preseason game against the Titans. He opened with the following statement:

“OK, we had two roster additions here today -- we signed Vinny Testaverde, and Chris Patrick was a player that we claimed off waivers [Thursday] from the Giants. They’ll be out there this week.

“As I said last night on the game, there were a lot of positive things that we did. We scored a few more points on offense. I thought we played competitively at times in the first half on defense, and hit the quarterback, and played better on third down. And in the kicking game, we got a little bit of production out of our kickoff return game, and at times our coverage on the punts and kickoffs was good –- other times it could have been better. And our punt return game obviously could have been better. We didn’t play very good run defense in the second half and we turned the ball over four times on offense.

“There are a lot of things we need to work on and there are some things that hopefully we can build on as we continue through the whole process of getting the team ready for the season. A number of situations came up that we can learn from. We went into a couple two-minute situations there offensively in the middle of the second quarter so we could get a little work on our communication and that whole process. That’s why we did that and we’ll probably continue to get into some type of hurry-up offense at some point in the game just so we can make sure we get enough work on it as we go through the preseason.

“That’s where we are today. Players will be off tomorrow. We’ll come back Monday and see if we can get back out on the field and continue to build as we finish off the last couple weeks of preseason and continue to build on the base we already established in the first part of camp.”

A few nuggets from Belichick:

On how tough it was to release Artrell Hawkins. “He is a very professional guy. He works hard and is a tough kid. He stepped into a tough situation two years ago, not being with the team earlier in the year. He moved to safety. It definitely is hard. All the cuts are hard.”

On the progression of Le Kevin Smith, who started at left defensive end. “I think Le Kevin has made a jump from last year to this year, in his offseason training, strength and conditioning, quickness and explosion, and I think his technique is better. I don’t think last year I wouldn’t have expected him to play at a position that he hadn’t practiced at very much –- and he hasn’t practiced much at left end. He has a much better understanding of the defense and was able to transition over there, even though he also played some at nose. He still has a long way to go, but he’s improved quite a bit from last year. That’s a positive, and that’s what you like to see from young player, especially guys that didn’t get a lot of playing time in their rookie year.”

On playing in wet conditions against the Titans, and in hot and steamy weather against the Buccaneers in the preseason opener. "I think we've gained some valuable experience in both these games from a conditions standpoint. Even the wind last night was a little bit of a factor."

Posted By: mreiss | Time: 05:06:15 PM | E-mail | Link

Bill's follow-up

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