FOXBORO, Mass. — There’s a reason the New England Patriots don’t seem to get into many brawls on the football field.
“We have a lot of good players, a lot of unselfish players,” head coach Bill Belichick said Friday morning. “I think that’s really the key to it.”
The Browns and Steelers can’t say the same after Thursday night’s matchup when Cleveland defensive end Myles Garrett took off Mason Rudolph’s helmet and hit the Pittsburgh quarterback in the head with it. Belichick was informed it was a hot topic on Friday morning.
“Oh, really?” Belichick deadpanned.
It was a topic in the Patriots’ meeting Friday morning.
“We’ve addressed that, and we’ve addressed that multiple times,” Belichick said about post-play skirmishes.
“Every situation is different. There’s no two that are the same. We can go back and look at 50 of these through the years, some type of fighting or ejections. They’re all different. I wouldn’t say it’s like offsides penalties. There’s a lot of different things happening, different situations and so forth and so on. Yeah, fundamentally, I told players what we should do in those situations, how we should handle them. I think they’ve done a good job with it.”
Belichick roasted the instinct to hop on social media, give a take and see what someone else has to say about a trending topic like the incident between Garrett and Rudolph. Belichick took the media through a hypothetical situation where he hopped on “SnapFace” upon waking up.
“See what happened, check it out, absolutely,” Belichick said. “Interact with everybody, see what they think, get my opinions out there. I don’t want to get left behind on that. Then brush my teeth.”
Garrett was suspended indefinitely, at a minimum for the Browns’ remaining six regular-season games and any potential playoff games. Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey was suspended three games, and Browns defensive end Larry Ogunjobi was suspended one game. The Steelers and Browns both were fined $250,000. Other players may receive punishment from the NFL, as well.
