What Bill Belichick had to say about Brock Osweiler and the Broncos offense

When the Patriots traveled to Denver in 2015, Brock Osweiler orchestrated a surprising Broncos win. Two years – and several changes of scenery – later, Osweiler will have a chance to repeat his feat.

The 6’7″ Broncos quarterback will get the start against the Patriots on Sunday, even though he piloted a sputtering Denver offense to a 51-23 loss to the Eagles in the previous week. Patriots coach Bill Belichick – in a conference call on Tuesday – described his opinion on the Broncos offense when run by Osweiler vs. former starter, Trevor Siemian.

“Well, I mean the offense is basically the same; yeah,” said Belichick.

Belichick also explained how he’s preparing for there’s a level of familiarity with Denver, given the two teams’ many games over the years:

Sure, I mean we’ll see most all of it. The most important thing is what he’s done in the offense that he’s in and the reads and where he’s throwing the ball and his progression and so forth in the current offense. But yeah, we have a familiarity with players when we’ve played against them, how there are certain plays – I’d say maybe not every play – but there are certain plays that stick out that are worth noting because of the player’s athletic ability or his experience or, in this case, a throw that he was able to make, that type of thing. There’s some relevance there, but look, we’re eight games into the regular season here so there’s a lot of good tape on Denver to watch including the entire team, but in his role last week.

And in regards to the Broncos’ running game, Belichick offered this:

Yeah, I’d say with Coach Kubiak they were very heavy on the zone scheme. I won’t say exclusively, but it was pretty heavy on the zone scheme. With Coach McCoy there’s some zone and some of it is a different type of zone. They run out of the shogun, but there’s a lot more scheme plays; double teams, pullers, gap-type blocking. They make you defend everything and that’s tough. As I said, when you throw the play-action passes in there with it, it’s quite a bit to deal with.