Patriots have their work cut out for them preparing for the ‘very impressive’ Cardinals
Bill Belichick spoke at length about what makes Arizona one of the best in the West.
You don’t need to remind Bill Belichick how good the Arizona Cardinals look this season.
After falling just short of the Super Bowl in a loss to the Panthers in last year’s NFC Championship Game, the Cardinals are bringing back the same impressive team in 2016, and Belichick has his team taking note and preparing appropriately.
“It’s a really impressive team,” he said. “I think they do a lot of things well. They’re obviously well coached.”
Like the Patriots, the Cardinals succeed with talent and execution in every phase of the game.
“Offensively, it’s probably as good a group of skill players that we’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “They have great receivers, tight ends, running backs, obviously quarterback, a lot of playmakers. The special teams – [Justin] Bethel – one of the top special team’s players in the league. He’s about as good as anybody that we’ll face.”
But it was a high-flying, hard-hitting defense that left most teams unable to keep up with Arizona last season and Belichick is very aware of that.
“Defensively this is a team that turns the ball over very well,” he said. “They have a good pass rush, a lot of big guys up front. They’re hard to block. [Deone] Bucannon, [Tyrann] Mathieu, [Patrick] Peterson are all good ball-disruption players.” If it sounds like he thinks highly of the entire team, it’s because he does.
“It’ll be a big challenge for us down there opening on the road against this quality of a football team and the way they play there,” he said. “We need to have a really good week and obviously need to go down and play a good football game in all three phases of the game.”
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