William Stephen Belichick is an American professional football coach who is the head coach of the New England Patriots of the National Football League. He exercises extensive authority over the Patriots’ football operations, effectively making him the team’s general manager as well.
Bill Belichick: News conference| Maryland| Post game today
News conference:
One week before the game, then–Giants defensive coordinator Bill Belichick began a meeting with his players by telling them that if they let Buffalo running back Thurman Thomas run for 100 yards, they’d win the game.
Think about it for a moment, and realize that this suggestion was going to require some salesmanship.
The 1990 Giants had the NFL’s top-ranked scoring defense and fourth-best rushing defense, and NFL defenders are typically not inclined to let opposing offenses do anything if they can help it, so forgive Belichick’s players if they didn’t immediately approve of his suggestion.
Maryland:
The Bills had beaten the Giants in their regular-season meeting and were the highest-scoring team in the NFL that season because of their explosive no-huddle offense. Belichick didn’t think the Giants could keep up with them in their base defense.
The Bills played so fast that to show his players film from Buffalo’s 51-3 win over the Raiders in the AFC championship game, Belichick had to splice together coaches film and broadcast film because the coaches film regularly missed plays.
He was convinced that Buffalo was committed enough to that style of offense that it would keep passing even if the Giants swapped a down lineman for an extra linebacker and tried to cut off crossing routes and swing passes.
Post game today:
“I didn’t feel like we wanted to get into a game where they threw the ball 45 times,” Belichick said, according to the Giants’ 25th-anniversary series on that team.
“I knew if they had some success running the ball, they would stay with it. And I always felt when we needed to stop the run, we could stop it.
The more times they ran it, it was just one less time they could get it to [Andre] Reed or get it to [James] Lofton or throw it to Thomas, who I thought was more dangerous as a receiver, because there’s more space than there was when he was a runner.”
