New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick addressed the media this morning to discuss the recent additions of WR Chad Ochocinco and DL Albert Haynesworth, he also talked about the veteran cuts they had to make. There was some snarkiness by BB when asked about how the two additions will fit into how he does things.
Many are questioning how the colorful personalities will mesh with the Draconian program that Belichick runs. See more on that after the jump.
Ochocinco also spoke with reporters this morning and said he’s willing to change to fit in in Foxboro.
“I’ll always be me. But there’s a certain way the Patriots do it, and I’ve always been a chameleon, and I’m going to do it the Patriot way, which is win,” he said.
He also knows Belichick doesn’t want him to be quite as outspoken and attention-seeking as he was with the Cincinnati Bengals.
“Bill, we had our talk and without him having to say anything, I’ll say, there’s no need for some of the things that have been before,” Ochocinco said.
On the additions of Haynesworth and Ochocinco:
Both of them came down pretty quickly. With the rules, obviously, we couldn’t enter into any conversations about those. But Mike Shanahan and I had some conversations there late one night and it all kind of came together pretty quickly. And so we had to get a few things worked out and so we did that and consummated the trade with Washington. And I spoke with Marvin [Lewis] and Mike Brown and eventually we got things worked out with Cincinnati as they were reporting to camp, before Chad reported there, so he was able to come here and we were able to get that finished. Those players are here, they obviously have a lot of catching up to do. We’re excited to have them.
Q: On Chad, he’s got a personality that interacts with the public, interacts with the media and he’s been very out there.
Bill Belichick: Any other news breaking stories?
Q: I’m on top of that. I’m wondering since it generally isn’t a way your players have acted.
Bill Belichick: I think every player on this team, every person on this team, has their own individual personality. None us are the same, so that’s probably a good thing.
Q: Have you asked him at all to relax with the Twitter and etcetera? We haven’t had a lot of tweets from him the past couple days.
Bill Belichick: That’s not something I follow, as you know. I don’t Twitter, I don’t MyFace, I don’t do any of those things, so I’d probably be the last to know.
Q: In your discussions with Albert Haynesworth, have you gotten a sense of whether football is important to him? Do you think it’s important to him?
Bill Belichick: Of course, otherwise I don’t think he would be playing football. But those are questions you can ask him. I don’t want to speak for him.
Q: How do you reconcile that the guy obviously has a long rap sheet off the field, with his ability to perform on the field, the way he played in ’07 and ’08? How do you reconcile those two things?
Bill Belichick: We did what we felt was best for the team.
Here’s Belichick’s complete transcript.