Based on what we've seen on the field and in clips from the locker room, Bill Belichick has really enjoyed coaching his team this season.
That was furthered even more Friday when he was asked about the team as a whole this season, as it has a chance to finish 11-6 with a win over Miami in the regular-season finale.
Belichick brought up how competitive the team has been and how hard it has worked every single week, even at the beginning of the year when the results weren't going their way.
“The team has a good work ethic, and they’ve been competitive," he said on a videoconference. "We unfortunately started a lot of games slowly. Some we started well, others we started slowly. We’ve fallen behind. And for the most part we’ve put ourselves in position to be competitive and have a chance to win at the end of the game. That’s a good thing. It’s a bad thing to start as slowly as we have at times. But, I would say from a competitive standpoint we’ve answered the bell in every round. It hasn’t always been good, but it has always been, I’d say, competitive. The same thing with coaching, we’ve had our moments where we feel good about the coaching and then there’s been moments where it’s hard to feel good about it.
"Through it all, keep persevering, keep grinding, keep getting better. We have improved a lot. We’re a much better team than we were at other points in the season. Even though I thought we had a good training camp, we didn’t perform very well in the early part of the season, in any areas. A lot of that has improved and I think we’re in a competitive position and we’ll see what happens here going forward. Hopefully we’ll play our best football in the coming weeks.”
New England still has an outside chance at winning the AFC East, as it needs a win Sunday and a Bills loss to the Jets. Regardless, a win likely has the Patriots as the No. 5 seed in the AFC and a playoff meeting with either the Bengals or Bills on Wild Card Weekend.
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