BB: How's it going this morning?
We're in the red area.
Q: You mentioned the red area?
BB: Yes, that's kind of our Friday
thing – red area, goal line, short
yardage, situations like that. It's another thing that the Colts are pretty
good at. They're good at finishing drives.
Q: Do they change much?
BB: Well, they have their red area plays. There are certain plays that
you see more down there than you see out on the field, definitely. But it's
still a high volume of plays and they try to match them up against teams
that give them certain looks. They run certain plays against certain
coverages or against certain looks.
Q: Do you see the three wides still?
BB: Yes, you bet. Again, they do what they want to do. Sometimes they'll
come in down there on the goal line with their regular goal line people.
Sometimes they'll keep three wides in the game. Sometimes two. However they
feel like playing it or however they feel like matching up against you.
Q: Are they running inside the 10 as much as they did with [Edgerrin] James?
BB: If they think it's advantageous, they will. They will do what they
think is best. They don't care.
Q: How much does Peyton Manning beat you with his brain as opposed to his
athletic skills?
BB: Well, he's a good quarterback. He does everything well. It's all part
of it. I don't know where you separate them, but he's a good passer. He's
accurate. He's smart. He reads coverages well and has good timing with his
receivers. He does everything well.
Q: How would you rate him in terms of guys that you have seen read
defense or figure out what you're trying to do on the defensive side of the
ball?
BB: He's a good quarterback.
Q: Is their offense any different this year than it's been in the last
two or three years?
BB: No. No, because they vary it from game to game and from week to
week depending on what they're seeing and how they want to attack a team. So it's not always the same. Although, I would say that we've played them so
much that you rarely watch a game and say, 'Well, we've never seen that before.' We might not have seen it in a while, but then you see why they're
doing and what they're trying to set up, what they're trying to take
advantage of. Whether they decide to do that against you or not, that's
another problem. So you have to work on those things, but a lot of times
they move on. If they did it last week and it was a big deal, then this
week they're onto something else, you have to waste time preparing for
it. But they really have no intention of doing it against you. Then every
once in a while, too, they'll come back and give you something that, if you
don't defend it, they can wear you out with it. They have a lot of those
things. They have probably 12, 14 different kinds of little package
combinations like that that if you're not ready for them, they can really be
a problem. And it's hard to get ready for all of them plus just their
regular two and three spread receiver sets.
Q: You've had as much success against Peyton and Colts offense as
anybody. Have you seen from year to year or game to game where he's figured
out something that you guys were doing and you've said, 'Oh, we have to
scrap that?'
BB: I think the game is always moving. Those things occur within games.
We change what we're doing, they change what they're doing, based on how the
game is going and what plays and formations are being run. I think that's
the game within a game.
Q: When you have a quarterback like Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, does it
change the way a coach and approach the game?
BB: Well, I think anytime you coach a player, you want to do the things
that that player does well, whatever those things are. Whether it's two
things or 20 things. Whatever it is. You want to try to play into the
player's strengths and you want to try to play into your system as much as
those two can be combined. That's what you want to do. Once you have to
start going too far outside your system to play into a player's strengths,
then that affects other people and probably is going to play into some of
their weaknesses. So as much as you can have those two things aligned, then
the better off you're going to be. So a player who has a lot of strengths
then there's a lot of different things you can do with them, whether it's a
quarterback or any other position. There's multiple ways to utilize that
player's talents.
Q: At that position in particular, can a guy who plays as well as Tom or Peyton does, can his confidence kind of permeate through the locker room?
Can it be something an entire team can rally around?
BB: Well, I think that's an important
position. There's no question about it. I mean, the guy handles the ball on
every single play. If you're behind and if you're running pass plays, which
you usually do, a lot of times he's handling the ball in the passing game a
significant amount of the time. The team has a lot of confidence in that
player and I'm sure that if he's handling the ball a lot in those
situations, the team has a lot of confidence in him. Again, to be a good
offensive team you need more than one player and they certainly have a lot
more than one player. Manning is a good player, don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying that. But he has good receivers. He has a good offensive
line. He has tight ends. He has backs. They've been in the system a long
time, so their system has evolved into a very advanced stage. They do a lot
of things and they do them well. There are
a lot of forces at work there. They're well-coached. The offensive line is
good. [Tom] Moore is good as a coordinator. They do a lot of things well.
It's not just one guy or one thing.
Q: With your background being in defense, has this always been the kind
of week that you look forward to just because of the challenge of it?
BB: Every week is a challenge. I look forward to coaching every week, so
whatever the challenges are, and we have them every week, then we look at
those and try to do the best we can with them.
Q: Why did Denver have so much difficulty getting any pressure with that
four-man rush against Indianapolis?
BB: I don't know. You'd have to ask Denver. The Colts have a good
offensive line. They've blocked a lot of good fronts through the years, not
just this year, but through the years. They have good timing in the passing
game with the receivers and the quarterback. Sometimes you see guys coming
free, but if a receiver is open, the quarterback gets rid of the ball, even
though it's a clean rush or good pressure and it looks good. Now if it's a
one-on-one pass rush, it's not necessarily effective on that play because it
didn't time up with the coverage on the receivers.
Q: With that kind of smoking gun evidence just having happened six days
ago, would that in anyway alter what you guys have to do?
BB: I think you look at the whole body of work for the season, including
our recent games against them. I wouldn't think you'd just want to make a
game plan based on one game – good, bad or indifferent. We have a lot more to
work with than that. We'll take a look at the Washington [game], and Jacksonville, and Tennessee and the Jets, all the other teams that have
played them and our games last year and see what…because we're not Denver.
We're not Jacksonville. We're not anybody. We're the Patriots. So we have to
do what's best for us and what fits within our system. I'm sure there are
definitely things that can apply from other games and other systems, I'm not
saying that. We have to try to do what we do and do it well.
Q: With these particular series, Patriots-Colts, Patriots-Steelers, in
this particular era, could you look at some of the other rivalries that
you've been involved in, whether it was in Baltimore you're first year?
BB: That whole division goes back a long ways. Minnesota, Green Bay and
the Bears. There's was no love lost in any of those division games.
Q: Would the NFC East in the 80s have been as fervent a rivalry as those?
BB: It's pretty good, yes. Twice a year, at least. Washington, three
times once. Washington, Philadelphia and Dallas. And the Giants.
It worked
in different combinations, but that whole division, it was very competitive.
It was a great rivalry there.
Q: Did you feel a difference in the tempo in the week leading up to it?
BB: Yes, well certainly, there's not much slack in the line this week.
Let's put it that way. You don't ever want there to be, but there's not much
slack in the line this week.
Q: You might have covered this earlier in the week, so forgive me, but
what is Adam Vinatieri's legacy in your mind here with this franchise?
BB: That he was a great player here. I think it's all been pretty well
documented. We've covered that a thousand times.
Q: All right, I'll try this one and you can punt it if you wish, but what
was your level of confidence in Vinatieri?
BB: I have confidence in all the players we put out on there on the
field. If we don't, then we should get somebody else. High obviously, he is
a great player.
Q: This might be a personal question, but has your mother ever asked you
about the way you dress on the sidelines?
BB: I'll punt that one, too. There
are a lot of things that my mom's not too
happy about with me.
Q: How much time goes into the selection of the wardrobe pregame?
BB: I don't know. I'll have to break it down one week and let you know.
Q: Is there any reason why you wouldn't just run it right at the Colts given their run defense history?
BB: That's what Denver tried to do at the end of the game last week. They
got nothing in two carries, missed it on third down and ended up kicking a
field goal. I think the Colts have a good defensive team. They turn the ball
over. They can rush the passer. They have a very active front. Last year we
ran it for 34 yards. I don't know if you were at that game or not, but we
had 34 yards rushing. I didn't really think that was very productive.
Q: When you are jamming receivers at the line, how important is it to be
able to generate a rush without blitzing and without bringing an extra
rusher?
BB: Well, if you can be disruptive to the quarterback the fewer people
you bring, the more you have in coverage and that's probably the optimal
situation in some of the great defenses in this league through the different
decades that have been able to generate big-time pass rushes with a four-man
front. It gives you a lot of options in coverage. The more people you bring,
you can generate that pressure, but you have fewer coverage options and that
can lead to some other issues. I'm not saying you can't handle them, but it
just creates some other problems. I learned that my first year in Baltimore with that 'sack pack', with [Fred] Cook, [John] Dutton, [Mike] Barnes and Joe Ehrmann. Fifty-six sacks, 58 sacks, however many it was.
That was a great pass rushing front. We started off the year trying to play
one type of defense and the pass rush was so strong, and they were pretty
good against the run too, and it was a very young group. Barnes was maybe in
his third year, Ehrmann four, Dutton three, Cook four. It was a young group. I don't
think they knew how good they were until it kind of really got going there.
We started off trying to play a little man-to-man combination coverages and
stuff like that like the Redskins played when Maxie Baughan was there with George Allen and we ended up becoming really just a team that only played
two coverages, two-deep and three-deep zone, the whole year and won,
whatever it was, nine straight. It changed our whole defensive approach
because there was so much pass rush out of those four guys. We hardly ever
blitzed and didn't need to and they had, like I said, if they had 58 sacks,
they probably had another a hundred times that the quarterback was knocked
down just as he was getting rid of the ball type of thing that weren't
sacks. It really changed our whole style of defense, and that was a good
defensive football team, but it had a lot to do with the pressure of the
front four on the quarterback.
Q: An effective press coverage can be negated if you can't get to the
passer, right?
BB: Yes, well especially if their receivers come open quickly. Sometimes
you see guys unblocked and the ball still gets out of there. The problem
with bringing more than four guys is that it just takes up space for your
defensive linemen, so they don't have the freedom to rush that they have in
a four-man rush. You're bringing more people, but everybody kind of has to
be in their own gap or else you start running into each other. So if you
can only rush in one gap, then you really only have one rush. Whereas if you
have four guys spread out, then you have the ability to have a two way go on
the different blockers and there's just more space to work with. Indy is a
good example of that. They have good pass rushers and they blitz a little
bit, but they don't blitz a lot. They take advantage of their quickness
and their pass rushing ability and give the guys some space to work. Because
like I said, when you start bringing extra people then everybody has to be
in their one lane, or you'll just end up running into each other and then you
don't have any pass rush, and you've lightened up the coverage. |
