Patriots coach Bill Belichick rarely speaks unless he has to. And even then he says as little as possible, at times barely moving his mouth.
So it was surprising, to say the least, that Belichick would say anything more than he’s required to say by the league.
He appeared Thursday on SiriusXM NFL Radio and discussed, among other things, the status of quarterback Ryan Mallett. The 2011 third-round pick enters the final year of his contract, and he arguably has been rendered irrelevant by the decision to use a second-round pick on quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
“Well, that’s not really something that we’re that interested in,” Belichick said regarding the prospect of trading Mallett. “Ryan’s done a good job for us. Fortunately for our team, maybe unfortunately for Ryan, he hasn’t really had any playing time in the last three years but he’s improved tremendously as a quarterback and as a football player and we have a lot of confidence in him. But at the same time he’s in the last year of a contract and Jimmy was a player that we had a high grade on and at that position I just don’t think you can afford to pass up a player that you think has that kind of value. We feel like we have a good quarterback situation. I think there’s a lot of teams in the league that maybe don’t feel good about that position and that’s not a good position to not feel good about. We feel very good about the players that we have at that spot.”
And so it sounds like Belichick is willing to carry three quarterbacks on the roster this year.
“I don’t think that’s a position that you can ever have too much depth at,” Belichick said. “Certainly too much is a lot better than not enough. So, again, we’ll put those players out there, let them compete and see how it goes. But I think all three of them are quality players at that position. We’ll see how it all plays out.”
We’ll see how Belichick’s sudden willingness to talk when he doesn’t have to plays out. Coach, interested in a visit to PFT Live?