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Friday With Beli

FOXBORO - After press conferences, Bill Belichick will take a few minutes to answer questions on the side with reporters who want to go a little more in-depth on things.

Friday, I wanted to get a quick one in but Michael Smith of ESPN and formerly of the Boston Globe got there first.

I waited off to the side, talking to Belichick's assistant Berj Najarian, a talented guy whose presence basically lets Belichick focus on football while Najarian handles the details of being an NFL coach. And there are a lot of them for Belichick.

I asked Berj about the David Halberstam's book on Belichick which should be out soon. Najarian read an advance copy and said it's amazing. Very, very in-depth the way guys like Halberstam and David Maraniss can get.

Anyway, as Smith asked questions about some scheme or another, Belichick grabbed Smith's pen and notebook and started X'ing and O'ing.

"Sell that on e-bay," I chimed in.

"Yeah, will you sign this when you're done, Bill," said Smith.

Belichick didn't even acknowledge the comments, just kept scribbling and arrowing.

"He loves this stuff, doesn't he," I said to Najarian.

"Yeah, this could be a while," said Najarian.

When he wrapped it up with Smith, I asked him something about reading pass defenses that he alluded to in his press conference.

My question was, if nine guys are possible pass defenders on a particular play, as Belichick said often happens in the zone-blitz age of defense, and seven are likely to drop, how can the quarterback read all seven defenders as he's making his drop.

Belichick said that, if the quarterback reads the defenders on one side, generally, he'll know what the other side's coverage is.

From there, Belichick said, the quarterback knows which side of the field to go to. From there, the ball goes to the receiver depending if the coverage read is "high to low" or "low to high."

I asked what that meant. He grabbed Smith's pen and notebook again.

He drew a slot wide receiver on the right (the Y) and a Z receiver (the strongside receiver on the far end of the coverage.

He then drew a short out pattern for the Y and a depper corner pattern for the Z.

The deeper receiver is the "high" receiver, he explained. If the read for the QB is high to low, he's watching the Z to see if he gets open then comes back to the Y (slot on the shorter out pattern) if the Z is covered.

If it's low to high and the Y comes open, the ball should go there. Some quarterbacks will wait to see if the Z comes open. That can lead to trouble because the Y may have been open, the Z may be covered, then when the QB comes back to the Y, he could be covered and the QB is running out of time and options.

Clues given by the presnap and immediate post-snap coverage dictate where the quarterback looks first, whether that's left or right.

"You guys think it's easy," Belichick concluded. "We just put our little red flag in our pocket and go out there and call plays. There's a lot more to it than that."

Posted by   at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments 0

Words From Harrison

Alert readers who post on the KFFL.com Patriots message board caught a story by good guy Jim Trotter of the San Diego Union Tribune in which Trotter got Harrison on the line. Harrison and Trotter are good freinds.

"I know I can come back from this," Harrison told Trotter after tearing his ACL, MCL and PCL last week. "It's just a matter of how hard and how bad I want to do it. You and I have talked about this before; football is not my life, it's a part of my life. It's what I do, it's not who I am."

Harrison went on to say, "Physically, I'm not doing well. But spiritually I'm doing fine. That's what keeps me going. If you can accept the interceptions and the playoff wins and the lifting of the Lombardi Trophy, you have to be able to accept the other side of it.

"Time heals all wounds," he continued. "I'll be back. I don't know if that means on the football field, but as long as I can run around after Little Man (Harrison's young son), that's what's important."

Nice get by Trotter, a guy who interviewed for the Pats beat job with the Boston Globe last winter but decided to stay in SD.

Posted by   at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments 0