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[On the Cleveland Browns' 58-48 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals the day
before]
Host: ...What happened yesterday?
Belichick: Well, I don't know. I haven't seen the game yet. But they've been
playing very well on defense. They came in here last year and held us to
nine points. They're tough on defense, they pursue well, they're a very
aggressive team, they hustle the ball, they're fundamentally pretty good. I
don't really know how Cincinnati got that many points. But I've seen their
recent games, and they did a good job against the Jets. That's a 10-7 game.
They played well on defense. I went back and watched our game last year, and
we had a lot of problems with them. We couldn't score, we kicked three field
goals. But I mean it was tough. And offensively they go out there and put up
48 points against the Bengals. It's 48 more than we scored in Cincinnati.
I think we'll go back and look at it more carefully. But my guess is they
probably did what they normally did, basically, but they did it a lot
better. And I think it just goes to show you what can happen in this league
when you don't do your job, and you don't try to take care of business, and
you don't play the way you really need to play. A team that normally scores
ten points goes out and scores 40. You know, it's not that hard. I mean you
give up five or six plays that you don't normally give up, and there you go.
Like you said, we saw that happen in Cincinnati. You go out there, and it's
31-0 at the half. I mean that game could have been in the 60s. So, we've
seen that before. It doesn't take that much, really, to go from being a
defensive team to [being] a bad defensive team when you give up a few big plays.
And they've got a good set of receivers. We know that. Their
receivers are very good as a group. Holcomb's had a lot of success. A
lot of people thought he should have been in there with Couch. A lot of
people thought he should have been in there last year when Couch was
[inaudible] with Garcia. So you go back and look at what Kelly's
done. He can throw the ball, he's an accurate passer. He's not the most
vocal guy in the world, but he can throw it. And he knows where
he's going with the ball. |
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