Another season has ended with a crushing defeat for the Patriots. And while Bill Belichick was certainly upset following Sunday’s AFC Championship loss to the Ravens, he was his usual self while addressing the media.
What that means is that Belichick provided succinct — and rather uninteresting — answers to a variety of questions, while making it clear that the Ravens are a “good football team.” Belichick was undoubtedly frustrated, though, as he even skipped a postgame interview with CBS, which drew the ire of analyst Shannon Sharpe.
The transcript of Belichick’s postgame news conference is below.
Belichick: Obviously a disappointing end to an overall pretty positive season. Tonight we just didn’t do enough things well enough to win. Give the Ravens credit. They’re a good football team. They just outplayed us and outcoached us tonight. They just made more plays than we did. That’s pretty much the story.
What did they change in the second half that made it so difficult for you guys to score points?
Belichick: They did a good job. I wouldn’t say it was anything they didn’t do in the first half. They just did a better job than we did.
How much did the injury to Aqib Talib change your plan on defense?
Belichick: We had to make some adjustments. We lost Kyle [Love], we lost Talib.
Were you disappointed with the pass rush? You didn’t have the effective pass rush like you usually do.
Belichick: I don’t think anything was really as good as it needed to be tonight. [We] gave up too many points, didn’t score enough. I’d say we probably came up a little short in every area.
How disappointing is it to you that you’ve gone eight years without winning a Super Bowl?
Belichick: I don’t know. I’m just focused on this game.
What did you see in the play where Stevan Ridley fumbled? It looked very close as to whether he was down or not.
Belichick: That was the official’s call.
What was your opinion of the play?
Belichick: It’s their call. They ruled it a turnover so it’s an official review. It’s not anything I can do.
Did you have a chance to see the replay and what did you think?
Belichick: It doesn’t make any difference. The officials call the game.
Did you think Wes Welker’s drop on third down changed the game?
Belichick: There are a lot of plays in the game. There a lot of things we could have done better, all of us. Like I said, it really wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t as good as the Ravens tonight. That’s why they’re moving on and we’re not. They were just better than we were in really everything.
How disappointed are you that you couldn’t take advantage of the field position you had and they did not have in the first half?
Belichick: We’re obviously disappointed that we didn’t win. I said that right off the bat. We’re disappointed in the results. What else do you want me to say?
How big do you think the field position was in the first half?
Belichick: I don’t know. It was certainly to our advantage. We had a 13-7 lead. Look, we missed a lot of opportunities tonight. We were 1-for-3 in the red area. We couldn’t stop them in the red area. We gave up too many points and didn’t score enough.
How much did losing Aqib Talib impact what you wanted to do defensively?
Belichick: We had to make some adjustments, yeah.
Did you want to have Aqib Talib match up and when he went out, you couldn’t do that?
Belichick: We had to make some adjustments to what we were doing. When Kyle went out and when Talib went out, we had to make some adjustments. But that’s the National Football League.
What happened on the last drive of the first half? Tom Brady ran, slid and ended up calling the timeout with four seconds left.
Belichick: Because if we had snapped the ball and run the ball, I think if we hadn’t scored, we wouldn’t have had time to get another play off, so we wanted to take the three points.
Was there any thought to calling an immediate timeout right after he slid?
Belichick: Not really, no, because I thought we could get up there, or we wanted to try to get up there and clock it and have time to run a play and have the timeout to kick the field goal. So no, not really. I guess if we had known that it would take as long as it did to get the ball finally clocked, but then we didn’t get a great look on the play. Tom [Brady] actually called timeout at the same time I did, so we just didn’t have it.
Did they make any defensive adjustments in the second half?
Belichick: No, I thought they pretty much played what they played in the second half, that’s what they played in the first half.
How would you evaluate the running game tonight?
Belichick: I think everything could have been a little better, that’s the bottom line. Nothing was really good enough. A lot of things were OK. It was competitive, but it wasn’t as good as the Ravens tonight, in any area. We just came up short.
On the punt from the 35-yard line, was there any thought of kicking the field goal there?
Belichick: No, there was no thought of kicking a field goal.
