Interesting Belichick article

[TTP77]

Cole: Why are there so many bad teams around the league this year?

Belichick: Here’s the only thing I’ll say: I think to have a really good team in this league, you have to make a lot, a lot of good decisions. You have to have a lot of good people, players, coaches, whatever. You need a lot of those. Conversely, to not be competitive, you would have to have a lot of bad decisions. One bad decision is not going to do it, one bad player is not going to do it, one bad coach is not going to do it. You’re going to have to collectively, over a cumulative period of time, make a long series of bad decisions and accumulate a lot of players who are substandard for their position. There have to be a multitude of things that go wrong.

Cole: Because you can keep yourself average for a long time?

Belichick: That’s the system. If you don’t have good players, you have money to spend on players. If you have a bunch of good players, you eventually run out of money and you can’t keep them all and somebody else gets them. That’s the system, it keeps everybody average. We’ve seen teams be really good just on coaching. We’ve seen teams be competitive with just a few good players.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-belichickqa110609

[Yvette]

Jimmy probably said the same thing to you that he once said to me: “You’re really only competing with about 10 teams a year. If you just say out of the way, the other 20 teams will screw it up themselves. Whether it’s ownership or personnel or coaching or some combination of factors.” Ego, internal struggle, something will happen to two-thirds of the teams, that was Jimmy’s theory.
Substitute each 'or' with 'and' in that sentence and you have the 2009 Titans.

One more thing:


I see my kids play and that stuff, but that’s a whole different involvement. It’s more emotional than my involvement with this team, as screwed up as that sounds.
I don't think that's screwed up at all and I was glad to read it.

[MDK Titan]

Belichick: Jimmy probably said the same thing to you that he once said to me: “You’re really only competing with about 10 teams a year. If you just say out of the way, the other 20 teams will screw it up themselves. Whether it’s ownership or personnel or coaching or some combination of factors.” Ego, internal struggle, something will happen to two-thirds of the teams, that was Jimmy’s theory. That leaves you with about 10 teams that you’re going to have to really battle with. Those teams have it together. They’re going to make good decisions and if you play bad football, they’re going to take advantage of it. They’re going to find some undrafted guy or some middle-round pick or some veteran free agent who is going to spark their team. Pittsburgh is always going to be there. Indianapolis is always going to be there. They may not win it, but they’ll be there. You’re going to have to beat them. Philadelphia is going to be there. Yeah, [quarterback Donovan] McNabb might get hurt one year and they might go 7-9, but they’re going to be there. You’re still battling them on every front.

thats an interesting theory. their should be at least 2 winnable games against another division since it's rare that a division has even 3 solid teams, about 3 winnable games against the bottom half of your own division (assuming at least one loss since being in the same division they know you pretty well). then theirs the 4 games against the other conference's division which again their is hardly a 3 deep team division, so another 2 winnable games. That's the way I've always saw it.

[GoPats]

I've always said that whether you love him or hate him, there's no denying that Belichick knows what he's doing.

[TitansGiantsBears]

This was a very good read. Thanks for posting it. I like the confidence in the theory of there only being about 10 teams you're really competing against. I haven't given it much thought before but that's basically true. If you notice it's often the same 8-10 teams with a surprise or two.

I was disappointed to learn that he put more emotional involvement into his kids' games than the Patriots. I like it a whole lot better when I can demonize him as hell-spawn. How dare he act like a decent human being? :evilgrin

[Titansfan777]

smart stuff from the smartest coach in football