Bill Belichick On NFL Trade Deadline: 'A Lot More Talk Than There Is Action'
BOSTON (CBS) -- Tuesday is deadline day in the NFL, and you can really flip a coin on what the Patriots are going to do ahead of 4 p.m. At 2-5, the team could be sellers, but Bill Belichick could just as easily look to add to the team to improve their chances at making a playoff run,
Or he could do what he usually does and picks up a player on the cheap that will make more of an impact next year. No one really knows at the moment, and that includes the hooded-one himself.
"I dunno," Belichick said when asked about possible moves by the Patriots ahead of the deadline. "Yeah, I dunno at this point."
We're certainly going to hear a lot of rumors between now and when the NFL tells teams to put their pencils down. But as Belichick explained Tuesday morning, don't believe everything you hear on the rumor mill.
"Again, like a lot of things in this general subject, there is a lot more talk than there is action," said Belichick. "Nick [Caserio] has summarized generally what he feels is going on and there may be other avenues of information that we have from one source or another, or a conversation with myself or assistant coach or whoever, and we kind of put that together and determine the level of interest we'd have in talking to someone else or not. Things sometime, as I said before, they seem like they're imminent and they never happen. Sometimes it feels like it's a dead issue and we're not interested, they're not interested based on the conversation, and then in a short amount of time something changes and all of a sudden there is a conversation that is on the table or a transaction that occurs. It goes from not happening to happening or vice versa.
"It looks like the ball is rolling in the cup and then it spins out," Belichick added. "We have to take it as it comes and see [what happens]."
While Belichick has recently been pointing to New England's salary cap restrictions for the team's lack of moves over the offseason, he won't have that safety net this summer when the Patriots are projected to have among the most cap space to work with. That cap space could play a hand in what New England does on Tuesday.
"When you're looking at salary cap, player salaries, you can't look at it in a short-term window. You have to take a longer look at things. We would take those things into consideration and as we look at our team currently, at any potential acquisitions or transactions with our players, we'd keep an eye on all of those things," explained Belichick. "You still try to do what is best for your team and balance all of those out. I don't think anything would preclude a transaction from happening or not happening. You have to make the best decision long-term and short-term for your team. Maybe something overrides the other, but you ask 'how much does this help us now?' and 'how much does this cost for the future?'
"We'd look at all of those aspects," said Belichick.