Well, it sure didn’t take long for Bill Belichick’s charming personality to come shining through. On Wednesday during his media session with reporters following the team’s minicamp practice, the New England Patriots head coach took umbrage with a specific line of questioning involving progress of individual players.
A reporter asked Belichick about how Julian Edelman — a player who missed the entire 2017 season due to an ACL injury — is looking in practice.
The head coach clearly showed frustration with that.
“Again, I think each player has an opportunity to come out here every day and improve and work on the things that will help them be ready for training camp,” he said, per Ryan Hannable of WEII. “That’s the same for every single player and every single coach that’s on the field. The answer is the same for everybody. I don’t know how else to state it. So, put whatever name you want in there, it’s all the same for all of us.”
Translation: Stop asking me questions about how one guy is doing.
Then Belichick was asked if there was one specific area in which he really wanted to get better, to which he replied, “What are you talking about?”
Classic, cranky Belichick.
When the reporter responded by saying, “Like defense, for example. Or offense, running backs – is there one part where you want the most improvement this upcoming season?” he continued to display frustration.
“Right, well, we haven’t played a game this year and there aren’t any scheduled for a while. So, I don’t know what we have this year. We’ll see. We’ll see how we perform. I have no idea. We have a long way to go.”
Clearly, Belichick still has no intention of giving the media any real fodder to feed to fans, who are desperate for information this time of year.
It’s understandable that reporters would ask these questions, because that’s their job. At the same time, this is just standard fare when it comes to Belichick, who appears to be in midseason form already in the month of June.