Postgame Transcript – WK7 CHI – Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick
PATRIOTS HEAD COACH BILL BELICHICK
POSTGAME PRESS CONFERENCE
October 24, 2022
BB: It’s obviously a poor performance tonight. We were badly out-coached, out-played. Just didn’t do anything well enough in the game to have a chance to win or deserve to win. The Bears did a good job. Totally controlled the game in all three phases. We have obviously a lot of work to do here and need to perform a lot better than that. Need to compete better than that and perform better than that. It’s not any one thing. Just collectively it’s all of us, and we just have to all perform better. Simple as that. That’s where we’re at. It’s not about any one player or one coach, one thing. Just collectively we’ve got to perform better, so that’s what we’ll work toward doing this week.
Q: Did the Bears do anything to surprise you tonight? Because, except for a couple of occasions, it seemed the defense had no answers whatsoever for Fields or the receivers.
BB: We didn’t have a lot of answers for anything. We didn’t play well in the kicking game. We didn’t play well on defense. We didn’t play well on offense. Obviously, we didn’t coach well. Pick whatever you want. You can say the same about every phase of our game.
Q: I believe you told ESPN that the intention was to play both quarterbacks in this game. Was that because of Mac Jones’ health?
BB: Yeah, that was a factor, yes.
Q: Who is the starting quarterback?
BB: We just finished the game.
Q: So when Mac came out of the game, Bill, was that a medical decision, the timing of pulling him?
BB: No.
Q: Was that related to the interception? That was his last play tonight.
BB: No, we had planned to play – I told the quarterbacks that we were going to play both of them, and that’s what we did.
Q: Was the plan for three series? It seems, when his last play is an interception, it looks like a benching for performance.
BB: That’s not what it was, but you can write whatever you want to write. That’s not what it was.
Q: Was Mac Jones aware he would play only part of the game?
BB: Yes.
Q: At what point in the week did these guys know at the beginning of the week that this was the plan all weeklong, or how did it work out with reps at practice?
BB: We went through the week.
Q: So they were aware of the situation that they were going to split reps?
BB: We went through the week of practice. Mac was inactive last week.
Q: Bill, was there any consideration toward putting Mac Jones back into the game as the game went on, or was the decision to stick with Bailey after the third series sort of set in stone?
BB: No, he would have gone back in. The score got out of hand. I didn’t think that was the right thing to do.
Q: Just going forward, as you have the Jets coming up next, do you see a situation where you might go one quarterback one week and one the next and have kind of a platoon situation, or are you going to start one quarterback each week?
BB: No, I don’t see that.
Q: Do you think Mac got enough work tonight to have confidence if he has to play against the Jets next week?
BB: I don’t know.
Q: What was a benefit of the preplanned rotation at quarterback?
BB: I think it was the best thing to do based on the situation.
Q: What was the situation?
BB: The whole situation.
Q: A lot of Justin Fields’ runs so far this year have been improvisational. Today they did a lot more designed runs. Is that something that the defense was prepared for?
BB: We knew what his ability was. Once a couple of those started hitting early in the game, then we could see that’s the way the game was going to go. So, yeah, I wouldn’t say it was a total surprise. Once it declared, then we were definitely playing for it. We didn’t do a great job defending it, but yeah.