Leftovers from breakfast with Belichick

Share

PALM BEACH - Bill Belichick spoke - at times reluctantly, at times expansively - for 45 minutes Tuesday morning.

Some leftover nuggets and quotes from the session.

On the competition at the wideout position: "We've always had about that many receivers going into camp 10, 11, somewhere in there. I don't know. We'll see what the roster ends up being this year. Yeah, there's going to be a number of receiverssome guy at that position might not even be on our team right now and we're not even talking about. It's just a process. We're a long way from . . . we signed a couple guys the beginning of March. We're not even a month into the whole offseason team-building process. We've got March, we've got April, we've got May, June, July. Training camp starts the end of July. It's a long process. We'll see how it all comes together."

I saw a list of Miami Dolphins' talking points drawn up for the NFL Owners Meetings in the hands of their PR guy Harvey Greene. Before I stopped reading, because I felt guilty, I noted that there were guidelines for the owner, head coach and GM. Mostly, it was about being open, accessible and that their was a new era beginning. Bill Belichick's talking points for the morning? "We'll see how it goes." He spit that out at least two dozen times.

No word on Matt Light's possible (it's been reported as likely) retirement or Chris Simms joining the coaching staff.

Chris Fiammetta and Spencer Larsen - short-yardage and goal-line options to replace BenJarvus Green-Ellis? "Yeah. Possibly."

Jonathan Fanene being a player similar to Mike Wright? "Sure there are some similarities. Sure there are some differences."

One difference is Mike Wright not being Samoan. "Mike's not Samoan, no. He's about as far from Samoan as you can get."

On an extension for Wes Welker. "I don't know, we'll see how it goes. All the players that are on our roster, there's some degree of looking to thefuture with every player so, we don't have anything to announce or report so Idon't know."

On plans for the London game: "I think last time we played we went out Thursday. We've done the trip before sowe've got a little bit of experience with it. There's a few things we've gottaput in place but that's not really at the top of the list right now. The factthat we've done it definitely helps, no doubt about that. At least we know whatwe're dealing with. I imagine we'll do something similar to what we did lasttime. It all worked out fairly well. Our operations guys and travel guys, Ithought they did a good job. It's a long way to go but all things consideredthe trip went pretty smoothly. I would think we'll do something pretty similarto what we did last time."

Asked why I want to know about the London trip already, I told him I'm thinking about seeing if I can bring the family over and need to know if he's going to screw up the vacation with a lot of events. "You might want to go to Paristhen Amsterdam then swing down to Rome and then back to London for the game," Belichick offered. "Maybe we'll go to Moscow for an afternoonwalkthrough."

Contact Us