Bill Belichick Press Conference Transcript

Q: It seems like they use a lot of double ‘A’ gap coverage. How does that put pressure on your offensive line?

BB: Well, that’s what they do. [Kevin] Coyle came from kind of the Cincinnati program, which is what they do. That’s definitely a big part of their defense, particularly in third down or two-minute passing situations. It puts six guys really on five. Your tackles, guards, and center and are against their four defensive linemen and two guys in the ‘A’ gap. You have to determine how you’re going to handle those six players. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they line up in there and bring people off the edge, so there’s actually a seventh guy that’s not part of that six. But again, when you line up there it, I don’t want to say it limits, but it makes it harder to get to other spaces on the field than if you weren’t lined up on the line of scrimmage. It puts pressure on one thing, but it also takes them away from something else. It’s like anything else, there’s a give-and-take with it. You definitely have to have a plan to decide how you’re going to treat it and what you’re going to do with it, because they do it quite a bit of it.