Patriots HC Bill Belichick

PATRIOTS HEAD COACH BILL BELICHICK

PRESS CONFERENCE

August 7, 2023

BB: Alright, afternoon. Kinda rolling into the next phase of training camp here, playing Thursday. It was a good experience in the stadium on Friday night, good tempo, got a lot of work done. The guys did a lot of running and ran pretty fast, so it was good to see that, you know, get some confidence in the stadium and be able to handle some situations and whatever the conditions were. That was good, especially for some of our young guys. Back at it here, back in pads and let’s grind through some fundamentals here and work towards Thursday night.

Q: Were the officials here today?

BB: Yeah, they’re here. I guess they’re the ones that are going to do the game, yeah. We’ll see what that is.

Q: Did they do anything with you guys with the rules and the rule changes or anything or is that sort of an offseason thing?

BB: No, there’s a rules meeting that is required by the league. I don’t know if we’ll do it here or in Green Bay, but obviously we’ll do it. We’ve talked a lot about the rules, so covered a lot of that on our own as well.

Q: We haven’t spoken with you since Matthew Judon’s deal was reworked. We spoke with him yesterday, and he said he’s happy, the team’s happy and it’s on to football. What made that a good piece of business for the New England Patriots?

BB: I’m not going to get into any contract talks, before, during or after.

Q: Are you at least happy that it is resolved?

BB: Yeah, any time we sign a contract, then we were happy with it, they were happy with it, and it’s done.

Q: How important is it to have him out at practice this time of year?

BB: He’s been here every day. He’s been a pretty active participant in everything. I won’t say he’s taken every rep, but he’s been out there. He’s been working hard; he’s been doing stuff inside.

Q: How aggressive is the classroom part of training camp? How far along in an install do you guys get before the preseason game this Thursday?

BB: I mean, we’ve got most everything in that we’re going to do. We’ve been through every situation on a practice field. We covered most of them in the stadium the other night. I mean, there’s always more to do. We’ve covered all of the situations. We haven’t covered every single play we’re going to run, but we’re pretty far along.

Q: We haven’t talked to you since we saw Jack Jones walk off the field on Thursday, left early from practice and then came back. Was that disciplinary or was that him voluntarily walking off?

BB: No, we’re just working through practice day-by-day. I think Mike [Pellegrino] talked about it. I don’t have anything to add.

Q: I saw Trent Brown in pads. Are you hoping to get a few more pieces back on the offensive line this week as you get ready for the preseason?

BB: Yeah, we’ll see. It’s always good to have as many players as possible out there participating. Guys are in different stages of participation and activity, so whatever they can do. It’s always good to have as many as possible.

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