Bills’ Sean McDermott downplays Bill Belichick’s impact after Patriots loss
Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott picked some interesting words to discuss New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick after losing to his team on Sunday.
The Patriots (9-4) only won 14-10 over the Bills (7-5), but New England appeared to be in more control than that. That feeling started and finished at the line of scrimmage.
The Pats were clearly better than Buffalo there, and on both sides of the ball.
Perhaps McDermott was trying to point out that it came down to each individual player, but he dismissed the idea of factoring in Belichick in the equation… pretty much entirely.
“Let’s not give more credit than we need to give credit to Belichick in this one,” McDermott said via video conference. “Whether it’s Bill or anybody else, they beat us, right?”
The Bills coach continued, saying his team had some numbers and field position in their favor in an attempt to explain why it wasn’t exactly Belichick’s doing.
“You sit here and you tell me when we start with an average starting field position at the 40-yard line and he starts at the 23-yard line — and I’m rounding up in both cases — and we were 1 for 4 in the red zone, and they were 0 for 1 in the red zone? You give me that ahead of time then I like my chances. I like my chances. So, with all due respect, it’s not a Bill Belichick-type thing.
It’s what are you doing with the opportunities you got? What are you doing with the opportunities you got? We turned the ball over at the plus 30-something yard line. It’s sloppy football. It’s sloppy football. So, I’m very comfortable in that situation,” McDermott said.
But in a sense, if the Bills did have all these things in their favor as McDermott suggested… shouldn’t that mean his team should have won? Yes.
However, if we’re being honest, McDermott isn’t really one to jump at another coach or player. his words likely came out in a wrong manner and he was probably trying to point out that his own players did not do their jobs.
Regardless, after the fact, it certainly sounded like Belichick played a big role in his team’s decision to run the ball so much… and to only throw it three times.
Some that, on the surface, indicated Buffalo should have known what was coming their way.
“Again, I think if it had been a different type of game and we would have needed to throw there in the fourth quarter then we would have thrown,” Belichick said per Patriots Wire. “We were able to manage the game the way we did and that worked out all right for us.”
And the easiest indication that Belichick had a hand in beating the Bills.
“We played the way we felt we needed to play to win,” Belichick added.
The Bills coaching staff did that exact same thing: played how they thought would win the pivotal matchup.
But that didn’t happen.
