Patriots coach Bill Belichick spent 10 years coaching Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor on the Giants. Belichick thinks Taylor is the greatest defensive player he’s coached.
But Belichick says that when he watches Texans defensive lineman J.J. Watt, he sees some of the same effects on an opposing offense.
“Similar to what we saw with teams dealing with Taylor in New York. He’s got that kind of disruptiveness,” Belichick said. “The position he plays, he’s as disruptive a defensive lineman as I’ve seen in the league. In the same general category as L.T.”
Belichick said it’s particularly impressive that Watt can lead the league in sacks even though opposing offenses specifically game plan to stop him.
“He’s pretty special. He does a lot of things really well, and everybody game plans for him every game. He gets a lot of double teams, the line sliding to his side, teams trying to run away from him, teams trying to handle him but he does a good job with all of it. In spite of all the attention he gets and the schemes put in week to week to try to handle him, he still gets a tremendous amount of production,” Belichick said.
Belichick has to hope Watt won’t have an L.T.-like impact when they meet on Sunday night.