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Bill's take

FOXBOROUGH –- Patriots coach Bill Belichick just held his daily press conference at Gillette Stadium. He opened with the following statement:

“OK, we’re plugging along here. As we talked about yesterday, we’re trying to combine some training camp stuff with getting ready for Tampa, and mixing in some situations. So today will be kind of like a Thursday practice, sort of like what we do during the regular season -- work on the passing game, third down, two-minute, things like that. We’re only a couple days here from the first game and we have a lot of work to do. But I think it’s exciting to start getting ready for another opponent, start hitting someone new besides the guys in blue and white, and see how we’re coming along, especially for some of these young guys, to get a chance to see them out there for the first time and see how they do in a live situation. That’s where we’re at today.”

One nugget from Belichick that stood out: In his 33 years coaching in the NFL, he hasn’t been around a center that is better at making line calls than Dan Koppen.

“Dan is an integral guy in the overall offensive scheme, because of the position he plays, in the middle of the line. He’s football smart, instinctive, and does a great job [with] communication on the line of scrimmage with the offensive line in the running game and passing game – when we change protections, or when the front stems and moves before the snap, things like that. He can identify that, and a lot of times he anticipates it before it happens. That makes it easier to communicate and eliminates some confusion. He’s a real smart player. As far as the overall blocking scheme and pass protections and audibles and checks and things like that, he probably knows it just as well as the quarterbacks do. Just seeing the front seven, even sometimes the secondary rotation on a particular play, he does that very well and is on the same page with our quarterback.

“He’s really good at that, probably as good as anybody I’ve ever coached.”