Highlights from Belichick's meeting with the media.
Dane FletcherFOXBOROUGH -- New England Patriots linebacker Dane Fletcher was starting to grow into an increased role on defense but a thumb injury knocked him out of action in Week 6 and we haven't seen him since.
So, what's keeping him sidelined? Is it just a thumb? Bill Belichick explains:
"I think it’s a combination of things," Belichick said. "It’s a combination of being healthy enough and then be able to get enough reps on the practice field to perform your job well enough to play. There’s conditioning, there’s execution, there’s timing, there’s all those things. When that happens, then the player is ready to play. Until that happens, then he is less than ready to play. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t play him anyway, but optimally I think you’d want to play the guy when he is fully ready. That’s true for every player. It’s not just being healthy; it’s being able to perform on the field at a level that’s at a high competitive level for what we’re doing."
Here are some other highlights from Belichick's meeting with the media Wednesday:
On finally picking up a win in Washington: "No. Well, of course we want to win in Washington. We want to win because Washington is the next game. If we were playing in the parking lot at the Expo Center, we’d want to win there too. It doesn’t make any difference. We want to beat Washington because that’s our next game. That’s what we’re here for."
On James Ihedigbo's leadership skills: "I think that’s one of James’ strengths too. Again, very smart, professional guy, works hard. There were times that he had a smaller role on defense; now he has a larger one but, I think we saw him prepare the same way regardless of what he was being asked to do. He really worked hard at his job, tried to be the best he could, tried to be fully prepared and ready. He was thrown into some situations that he didn’t get a lot of reps on or a lot of practice opportunities but he was prepared for them, he was ready, took advantage of them and those led to more opportunities. I would say those two guys [Andre Carter and Ihedigbo] are very much alike and a lot of the things that they do in terms of their approach, preparation, professionalism off the field, communication, all those things are exceptionally good."
On new players getting experience on defense due to injuries: "They’ve been thrown into the fire, so they’ve had to, yes. They’ve just been forced into action. Some guys, like last week, guys that haven’t even played ended up playing a lot for us in that game. Everybody has to be ready; you never know when those opportunities are going to come. I know that the players that get the opportunities – you never want to see anything happen to anybody, but the same time, they’re excited for their opportunity and their chance to play and to take the hard work that they’ve had on the practice squad or as a backup player or whatever, to be able to now go out there and now have an opportunity to play in game situations is exciting for them and they’ve taken advantage of that in a lot of cases. It’s challenging but at the same time, it’s an opportunity. If you’re looking for an opportunity, then you embrace it when you get it."
On running back Stevan Ridley turning his back to contact: "I mean I think there are a lot of things to talk about with running backs and each back has their own style. In the end, backs want to gain yards and we want them to gain yards. There are still some fundamental things that you want to start with. If you evolve off those as the back becomes more creative in his run style, then there is certainly a place for that, but hopefully that will come as a secondary part of it and the first basic fundamental part of it will be the same for all the backs as far as their entry point into the hole and their basic technique of ball handling and approaching the line of scrimmage and so forth. It can get creative after that. There’s certainly room for improvement, I’d say, with all of our backs in their running techniques, just like there is at every other position. You just don’t get the ball and start running. You use the blockers that you have in front of you. Sometimes it’s not always clean and there’s a little bit of a feel for that between the back and the linemen and so forth. There are things we still need to work on and get better at."