Tag: App Alert

Bill Belichick and Bill O’Brien share awkward handshake after Week 13

Did Belichick try to skip the handshake with O’Brien?

Bill Belichick barely looked at Bill O’Brien when they shook each other’s hands after the Houston Texans’ 28-22 win over the New England Patriots in Week 13.

O’Brien fought through a crowd of cameras and players on the field after the game to find Belichick, who nearly missed O’Brien (if not for the Texans coach making a clear effort to find the Patriots coach). Belichick quickly stuck out his hand for O’Brien before immediately turning away to eventually head to the locker room.

The moment left everyone on Twitter wondering: Did Belichick attempt to skip the handshake with O’Brien? Was the handshake as emotionally charged as it looked?

Belichick’s grievances with O’Brien and the Texans go beyond the Week 13 loss in Houston. Belichick may still be frustrated with O’Brien for attempting to poach Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio during the 2019 offseason. When the Texans attempted to interview Caserio, New England stopped the process by filing tampering charges. Huston ceased their pursuit of Caserio.

Considering that background, here was the response to the handshake on Twitter.

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Stephon Gilmore’s shutdown performances are breaking the NFL

Stephon Gilmore had more catches than Amari Cooper.

After the New England Patriots’ 13-9 win over the Dallas Cowboys, cornerback Stephon Gilmore repeated what he said all week: Amari Cooper is one of the best receivers in the league.

Maybe that’s true, with Cooper entering Week 12 in the top six in receiving yards (886) and receiving touchdowns (7). But with Gilmore draped all over Cooper for 60 minutes on Sunday, one of the best receivers in the NFL finished with zero receptions on two targets. Gilmore’s nickname is Gilly Lock. Indeed, Cooper was on-lock for the entire night. And that’s relatively remarkable in today’s NFL, with rules that favor quarterbacks and receivers more than ever.

“Then I guess I broke that,” he said. “I guess we broke it.”

Gilmore was quick to credit his teammates and coaches — that’s the “we” he’s referring to. They were excellent, too, whether it was cornerback J.C. Jackson, who made solid work of Michael Gallup (5 catches, 55 yards) or Jonathan Jones, whose only blemish was allowing a 59-yard catch from Randall Cobb. It was a product of a rub route, a good design by the Cowboys’ coaching staff. It was also a product of the Patriots’ scheme, which is bringing the safeties close to the line of scrimmage rather than putting them deep. That puts more pressure than ever on their cornerbacks. And yet that doesn’t seem to faze Gilmore. No safety? No problem.

Considering the Cowboys were the top passing attack in the NFL entering the game, the Patriots should feel good about holding Dak Prescott to a 57 completion percentage, 212 yards and an interception. The interception, by the way, was Gilmore’s. That’s surprising because Gilmore faced just two targets. Somehow, Gilmore finished the game with more catches than Cooper.

Was Gilmore confident he could shut down Cooper?

“Yeah,” he said.

Why?

“I believe in myself. He’s good. He’s a good player,” Gilmore said.

Gilmore was happy to see Cooper lining up in the same spot in the Cowboys’ formations for the entire game. That limited the routes Cooper could run, which helped Gilmore anticipate which route he needed to stop on any given play. But he kept in mind all of the film study he’d done — he found Cooper’s route-running particularly deceptive, with two totally different routes looking the same, until they weren’t.

“He wasn’t tough (to study),” Gilmore said. “He’s just — every receiver has their thing that they do well. … They lined him up in the same spot mostly every time, and I kind of anticipated it and tried to play tight coverage.”

Gilmore’s performance was enough to draw high praise from his head coach during a postgame press conference.

“Another great effort by Steph,” Bill Belichick said Sunday night. “He just works and prepares so hard for his matchups every week. He takes it as such a personal challenge. This is a really good group of receivers and a great quarterback and a great offensive line. Steph’s as professional as they come. He knows his opponents inside out, and his matchups and the overall scheme and how to best play based on what our call is and what the situation is.”

Perhaps fitting with Belichick’s comments, Gilmore stood just a few feet away from his iPad while he spoke to reporters in the locker room after the game. He never seems to let that thing get far — he never seems to stop studying his opponent. And it’s likely that after the game, he was either studying his tape from Sunday or getting a jump on his next assignment: DeAndre Hopkins. He, too, is one of the best receivers in the league.

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Bill Belichick gets snarky over question about Antonio Brown’s apology to Patriots

Bill Belichick was short with the media when asked about Antonio Brown.

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick didn’t want to discuss Antonio Brown during his press conference on Wednesday.

Belichick was informed Brown had issued an apology to Patriots owner Robert Kraft earlier this week on social media after Brown criticized Kraft on Twitter in November.

Belichick was asked if he will monitor Brown’s status amid the league’s investigation.

“You’d have to ask Robert about that,” Belichick said on Wednesday at Gillette Stadium during a press conference. “I mean, every week you guys ask me about a player that’s not on our team, so every week it’s going to be the same answer.”

Brown is facing an NFL investigation amid allegations of sexual assault and rape by his former trainer Britney Taylor. Not long after Taylor filed a civil lawsuit, Brown also faced accusations of sexual harassment. When those accusations made the news, Brown sent intimidating text messages to the second accuser. This all transpired between the time the Patriots signed him on Sept. 7 and released him on Sept. 20.

Despite the investigation, Brown is currently a free agent, and can sign with an NFL team. The allegations he is facing — combined with his long-standing erratic behavior — are surely playing a role in his unemployment.

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Tom Brady unloads ‘frustration’ with offense: ‘The strength of our team is our defense’

“It’s just frustration with the offense.”

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Tom Brady didn’t have to say much after the New England Patriots’ 17-10 win over the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 11. He made his message clear: He’s unhappy with where the offense has progressed — or regressed — to this point in the 2019 season.

Brady said very little during his postgame press conference at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia Sunday, but he didn’t seem to be reveling in the team’s win. He barely smiled when asked about Julian Edelman’s perfect passer rating. “We needed that,” Brady said Sunday. Perhaps Brady was concerned a trick play produced the only touchdown on the day.

During his weekly interview with WEEI on Monday, Brady addressed some of his concerns.

“It’s just frustration with the offense. Just trying to grind them out. I am happy we won on the road, but at the same time just wish we would have scored more points,” Brady told “The Greg Hill Show.”

New England was 5 of 16 on third downs, and averaged a paltry 4.2 yards per play. Brady completed 55.3% of his passes – his second-lowest percentage this season – for 216 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions. After receiver Phillip Dorsett suffered a head injury, the quarterback was forced to work on chemistry with new wideouts like Mohamed Sanu, N’Keal Harry and Jakobi Meyers. Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels also seemed to be pushing Sony Michel into a bigger role in the passing game — with mixed results. With so many players in new or growing roles, the offense looked like it was going through growing pains.

In the meantime, Brady is an accessory to his defense, which is winning games. So long as the Patriots quarterback and his offense avoid turnovers, New England can keep winning games. But as the competition gets better, particularly in the playoffs, the Patriots might be in more trouble. They might need their offense to be better.

“I just think to win the game ultimately you just have to score more points than the other team,” he told WEEI. “That goes without saying. I don’t know what it is going to be on a particular week. We won the Super Bowl 13-3, that was pretty good. We lost the Super Bowl 41-33, that wasn’t good. I don’t know how many points it is going to be. The reality is it is a team sport. It’s complementary football.

“The strength of our team is our defense and our special teams. On offense we just have to take advantage when we get opportunities and understand where our strengths lie and try and play to them — not giving any short fields, not turning the ball over and try and take advantage when we get into the red area to score touchdowns. That is kind of where our offense is. That is kind of where our team is.”

It seems Brady isn’t comfortable putting the game in the hands of his defense. He’d prefer the offense gets its act together and works as in complement with and not just a dependent upon the defense.

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Michael Bennett says the Patriots defense was exceptionally challenging to learn

Michael Bennett explained just how challenging the Patriots defense was to learn.

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The Dallas Cowboys’ defense has been a breeze for defensive end Michael Bennett, who has been an immediate impact player for Dallas with five tackles, two for a loss and a sack in two games.

His acclimation to the Cowboys defense has been natural. The same was not true of his time in New England, where he seemed to be a misfit in their amoeba defense on two-man and three-man defensive lines.

“The scheme is very familiar to something I’m used to,” Bennett said of Dallas on Monday, via The Athletic’s Jon Machota. “I just came from the place (New England) with the most defenses in the league, so any other defense is pretty much easy to learn.”

Bennett’s time in New England seemed somewhat dysfunctional, with his playing time decreasing over his tenure until he received a one-week suspension for conduct detrimental to the team. He returned from the suspension, though he didn’t seem to carry a particularly positive attitude. Ultimately, the team parted ways with Bennett in trade for a conditional Cowboys’ sixth-round pick in 2021. Despite apparent differences, Bill Belichick spoke positively about Bennett after his departure.

“Mike’s a good player,” Belichick said on Oct. 25. “We brought him here; he helped our team. I think he would help us, but we’ve only get a certain number of – certain things we’ve got to work with and work around, and that’s what we have to do.”

While Bennett seemed likely to have a large role in New England after the departure of defensive end Trey Flowers, Bennett proved a schematic misfit, which led to philosophical problems with the Patriots.

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Bill Belichick mum on whether Patriots will attend Colin Kaepernick’s workout

Bill Belichick deferred questions on Colin Kaepernick.

Bill Belichick said he didn’t know if the New England Patriots would be attending quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s workout, organized by the NFL to take place on Saturday afternoon in Atlanta.

“It’s something we can check with (Patriots director of player personnel) Nick (Caserio) on,” Belichick said Wednesday during a press conference on Wednesday. “I’m not sure.”

The Patriots did not respond with comment from Caserio at the time of publication of this article.

Kaepernick has been out of the league since he played for the San Francisco 49ers in 2016, which followed his protest efforts by taking a knee during the national anthem at NFL games. When he’d spent an extended time out of the NFL, he and former 49ers teammate Eric Reid filed grievances against the league through the NFL Players Association, and Kaepernick and Reid received an undisclosed settlement.

The league put together a workout for Kaepernick on short notice, and informed him of the potential meeting with teams on Tuesday, at which point they gave him just hours to make a decision, according to ESPN. And while most NFL teams will be traveling for games on Saturday (and Kaepernick’s representation asked the workout be moved to Tuesday, a day when evaluators will be freer to travel), the NFL declined to move the date, per ESPN. It’s unclear how many teams will attend the workout, but former Patriots linebacker coach and current Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores confirmed his staff will send someone.

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Tom Brady says he’s not over Super Bowl LII: ‘A lot of mental scar tissue’

“That was a tough game.” -Tom Brady

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is hung up on the one he didn’t win. Yes, Brady has won three Super Bowls in the last four years. He also won Super Bowl LIII after losing Super Bowl LII. But that didn’t seem to soften the blow of the loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in Minnesota.

“You assume I’m over it? Come on now,” Brady said on WEEI’s “Greg Hill Show” on Monday. “That’s a lot of mental scar tissue from that year. That was a tough game.”

The game essentially ended when Brady fumbled on a sack in the fourth quarter. New England had the opportunity for a fourth-quarter comeback drive after trading touchdowns with the explosive Eagles offense for most of the game. But Brandon Graham forced a fumble, which allowed Philly to put their lead out of reach.

“In a lot of ways we learned from that year and we came back stronger the next year,” Brady said. “We won the Super Bowl in ’18. I think everything is a matter of perspective, and when you play in that game and you play great teams, you’re not going to win them all. This is not the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals. This is all about tough competition against the best teams. They deserved it that year, and now a couple years later we get a chance to play the organization again. We’ve had a lot changes, they’ve had a lot of changes. It’s totally different circumstances. Huge game for us. Big game for them. The better team is going to win.”

Brady and the Patriots are coming off a bye in Week 10. They had a long weekend off and will resume work on Monday in preparation for the Eagles in Week 11. There might be an extra level of focus after New England lost 37-20 in Week 9 against the Ravens in Baltimore.

“Hopefully everyone got a chance to decompress a little bit mentally, physically, and now we’ve got to get ready for a great week of preparation and then get ready to go in the there and play our best game of the season on the road, in a really tough environment,” Brady said. “It should be a great Sunday afternoon for football.”

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