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          New England Patriots

          Bill Belichick on 50 Super pass attempts

          • Mike Reiss, ESPN Staff WriterFeb 13, 2015, 05:00 AM ET
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              Mike Reiss is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the New England Patriots. Reiss has covered the Patriots since 1997 and joined ESPN in 2009. In 2019, he was named Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. You can follow Reiss on Twitter at @MikeReiss.
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          Can’t get enough of Super Bowl XLIX?

          If so, here is another leftover, courtesy of New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick’s interview with Mike Krzyzewski of “Basketball and Beyond with Coach K” on Sirius XM College Sports Nation on Thursday:

          Krzyzewski noted how the Patriots had 50 pass attempts in the game, and just 21 rushes, and asked if that was part of the game plan.

          “We never really go in and say, ‘We’re going to run it this many or throw it that many.’ We kind of go in with a running game and a passing game and sometimes you kind of see how it goes. Sometimes one is working better than the other,” Belichick began.

          “We didn’t have great balance, but we had more balance through the first half of the game when it was tied, 14-14. Then in the third quarter, it got away from us a little bit. We had given up a field goal and turned the ball over, and now we’re down by 10. Then we got stopped on the third-and-1 right at the end of the third quarter. At that point, I talked with Coach [Josh] McDaniels. We decided we didn’t have too many possessions left.”

          At that point, the Patriots threw on 17 of the final 20 snaps over their last two drives.

          “The one thing about the Super Bowl, and I’ve been on the other end of this one before, it’s just hard to rush the passer all day, even though you might have some depth on the defensive front. It just wears those guys out,” Belichick told Krzyzewski. “We kind of felt like, even though we hadn’t scored in the second half, our pass protection was getting better, that Tom [Brady] had a little bit more time. We just went pretty much exclusively in our last two possessions there to throwing the ball.

          “Our offensive line did a good job, I think their pass rush wore down a little bit on those 50 attempts, and we were able to have some time and Tom made some good throws. We had a number of receivers -- Julian [Edelman], Danny [Amendola], Gronk, Shane Vereen -- come up with big catches. We scored two touchdowns there in the fourth quarter, so I think some of it evolved that way.”