Bill Belichick on goal-line offense
The highlight of Bill Belichick’s press conference today was a discussion on goal-line offense and how to deploy one’s weapons in and near the end zone.
Q: For a quarterback to be successful down in the red zone, does accuracy become even more important?
BB: Yes, accuracy and quick decisions. That’s what it is. Yes. The windows are smaller. The ball has to be put in tighter spots and the decisions are quicker because you’re doing it in a lot shorter space. For the most part, the red zone receivers, those guys have to have really good hands because again, they’re tight throws, they’re tight fits, a lot of times the receivers have to extend to catch the ball. They can’t take it around their body. The defenders are too close. Those balls are put in some tough spots. Like Troy’s touchdown catch last week where he has to go down and take the ball pretty much about ankle high and that type of thing. There’s some tight throws in there. A good red zone receiver is a guy that can catch the ball with his hands and really extend and make catches away from his body. A good red zone quarterback is a guy that can make a quick decision and get the ball in a tight spot.
Q: Does route running become almost more important than speed down there?
BB: Absolutely. Speed is really neutralized because they’re not going to defend any deep patterns and you’re not going to run any. It really becomes, exactly, a quickness game, or sometimes a size game, push off or get position and try to throw the ball on the other side of the defender to a bigger receiver or a receiver with a longer reach. That type of thing. The fade patterns, stuff like that. It’s the same thing on defense too. It becomes more of a quickness game. It becomes a very quick decision-making game defensively to recognize the patterns, to match them and get on them and try to create as little space as possible for the offense to throw in.
Deion Branch was a quick little fellow who had good report with quarterback Tom Brady. Now Branch is gone and the only wide receiver with whom Brady is comfortable is old war horse Troy Brown.
Q: And the tight ends can potentially be big weapons down there?
BB: Potentially. Absolutely. Yes.
“Potentially” is quite accurate since New England’s three tight-ends have combined for only one touchdown reception so far this season, a 3-yard toss to Daniel Graham against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Q: Are those some of the reasons why you put Mike Vrabel in there at times?
BB: Well, the big thing with Mike is just our depth at tight end. Most of the time, since I’ve been here, a lot of times, we’ve only had two tight ends at the game. Now this year, we’ve had three tight ends and even last year a number of times we’ve had three tight ends. At times we didn’t and that’s really where Mike fits into that equation, when we only have two. Mike has good hands obviously. He has good size. He’s a tough guy and he can hang in there on the blocking down there on the goal line situations as it gets kind of thick when they put all of their big guys in and it comes down to a hard-nosed, tough, inside game and being able to catch the ball in traffic and in close quarters. He can do all of those things. He’d tell you that he’s better than the tight ends that are doing it. I’m not sure about that, but he’s been effective.
With Graham out against Miami, Vrabel got some goal-line duty last Sunday, but no pass was thrown his way. He is a pretty good blocker, too, as he should be considering his size and the physical nature of his day job.
