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Bill's take

Email|Link|Comments (3) Posted by Mike Reiss, Globe Staff January 21, 2008 05:10 PM

FOXBOROUGH -- Patriots coach Bill Belichick held his Monday press conference (4:30 p.m.) and opened with the following statement:

"It's great to be here and be coaching a team going to Super Bowl XLII. It's a great privilege and honor to be a part of that. We’re certainly looking forward to it. We know what we’re dealing with the Giants. We had a great game with them last month. It looks like they’ve done nothing but get better. Today, we’re just trying to get a lot of our arrangements and stuff like that out of the way. We’ll really start digging in to the Giants the next couple days. That will be a big challenge for us, but certainly a thrill to be able to have the opportunity to meet it, and we’ll look forward to have a good week of preparation here before we head down to Arizona. It was a great win for our football yesterday, our franchise. I’m happy for everybody – for Robert [Kraft] and ownership. The players certainly played outstanding and stepped up and made big plays in the fourth quarter, especially when they had to. And all the other people that contributed to our success this year – all the support people, the assistant coaches and all of them, have done a great job and given us the opportunity to try to do it one more time.

“We’re excited about that. We look forward to it. At the same time we understand what a huge challenge this will be playing the Giants. Unfortunately it counts as a road game for them [the Giants are 10-1 on the road this year] because we’re the home team.”

A few other bits from Belichick:

Belichick said the preparation will go faster because the Patriots faced the Giants on Dec. 29. “If we had played Green Bay, we would have spent a lot of time getting the material ready to analyze,” he said, noting that much of that work is completed with the Giants.

When asked about comments made by Chargers center Nick Hardwick, who called Richard Seymour a dirty player, Belichick said: “I was surprised. That’s the last thing I would say about Richard.”

Belichick said practice will resume on Thursday.

The team will leave for Phoenix on Sunday.

3 comments so far...

For whatever reason, commentators and some fans want to ignore weather conditions as it affects the Patriots' offensive performance. We all know New England wins in the cold and snow. This year, with the nature of their passing game, they have struggled on offense when the condtions are adverse, Brady in particular. In a season when his rating has been atmospheric, his four lowest passer ratings were commensurate with bad weather:
Eagles game, rating 90.0, Wind 8, temp 39
Ravens game, ratiing 76.3, Wind 27, temp 40
San Diego, rating 66.4, Wind 17, Temp 23
Jets, rating 51.5, Wind 17, temp 36.

Brady had no other games worse than a 95 rating. In no other games was the wind above 10 mph or the temp below 37.

What about the Giants? In the Meadowlands, it was 44 degrees with an 8 mph wind. Brady's rating was 116.8. What do we think it will be like in Arizona?

Posted by JonInPortland January 21, 08 05:31 PM

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Nice work, Jon. Factual evidence to support what most Pat's fans have felt about Brady this season. I also thought that he may have been a little under the weather yesterday. Even after winning the game he was more subdued then normal. In two weeks he will be free of whatever bug he has, if any. That with the nice controlled weather on the fast "tray", he will torch the Gints!

Posted by Steve January 21, 08 06:46 PM

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Mike,
I've never seen a team finish out a game with a 9+ minute drive. Is that another record the Pats set?

Posted by Paul Phillipps January 21, 08 09:27 PM

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