Tom Brady Leads Tampa Bay Buccaneers To Super Bowl Win Over Kansas City Chiefs 31-9

 NPR

RUSSELL LEWIS

Quarterback Tom Brady celebrates with the Vince Lombardi Trophy after leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to Super Bowl victory against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.

Gregory Bull/AP

Tom Brady has done it yet again. The quarterback won his record seventh Super Bowl and the first with his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady and the Bucs beat the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 in what was a home game for the Bucs, played in Tampa, Fla.

Super Bowl 55 capped a difficult and challenging year for the NFL. The coronavirus led to postponements, teams sometimes playing with depleted rosters and many games hosted in mostly empty stadiums.

Brady, the oldest ever to play in a Super Bowl at age 43, showed his experience in the first half, leading the Buccaneers to three touchdowns — including two passes to his favorite postseason target Rob Gronkowski (and setting another record in the process: it was the 13th and 14th touchdowns for a QB-pass catcher tandem in the playoffs). Brady ended the first half with a 71-yard drive in the waning seconds to go up 21-6 at the break.

Tampa Bay's defense stymied Kansas City and quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the first half. Mahomes, who had been slowed by a toe injury two weeks ago, seemed to shake off the pain but didn't show his usual brilliance. The Chiefs made mistakes on both sides of the ball and were penalized eight times for 95 yards. In the last two postseasons, Kansas City faced deficits of at least 9 points and won each of them. The Chiefs were looking to become the first team since the Patriots in the 2003 and 2004 seasons to win back-to-back NFL championships.

KC QB Patrick Mahomes struggled for most of the game. Tampa Bay's defense swarmed him leading to sacks, hurries and knockdowns during Super Bowl 55.

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Kansas City started the second half with its biggest yardage gain of the game when running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire dashed 26 yards. But the K.C. offense could only capitalize with a field goal. The Buccaneers answered on the next drive with yet another touchdown as Leonard Fournette scampered 27-yards for the Bucs first rushing touchdown to extend their lead to 28-9. After a Patrick Mahomes interception, Tampa Bay marched down the field to score yet again, a 52-yard field goal by Ryan Succop, to extend the lead to 31-9. That would be all the scoring of Super Bowl LV and in one of the bigger surprises, the Chiefs did not score a touchdown.

This Super Bowl was marked by a number of firsts: it was the first time that a team got to play in its home stadium. Down Judge Sarah Thomas was the first woman to officiate in the NFL championship. And, for the first time in his ten Super Bowls, Brady led his team to a touchdown in the first quarter.

The coronavirus left its mark too. Stadium capacity was reduced to just 25,000 fans in attendance (including 7,500 vaccinated health care workers who received free tickets from the NFL). On television, the stadium looked even fuller because 30,000 cardboard cutouts filled the empty seats with pictures of smiling people who paid $100 for the honor.

Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady tossed three touchdowns in the first half of Super Bowl 55. It was Brady's seventh Super Bowl victory and his first with the Bucs.

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

It was a record 10th Super Bowl appearance for Brady. He played in nine for the New England Patriots (winning six, a record) in his 20 seasons with New England. This was Brady's first year with the Bucs and he led his new team to only their second Super Bowl in franchise history. Brady also was named as the Super Bowl MVP — for the fifth time, extending his record.

And good news for Bucs fans: During the post-game celebration Brady said simply, "I'll be back."

The Buccaneers Super Bowl win is yet another crowning achievement for the Tampa region in the past year. The Lightning won the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup. The Rays played in the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. And now the Bucs winning the NFL championship in their home stadium caps a stellar run for the region now known as Champa Bay.

GET YOUR KNEE OFF OUR NECKS

A teenager outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal, taking a knee on a block crowded with protesters, relished the feeling lost these last months — of being part of something.

A 23-year-old art teacher, Evan Woodard, was thrilled to see his city at the fore of a nationwide event. “I’m proud to call myself a New Yorker,” he said. “This is everyone’s city.”

People who just last month were dutifully keeping behind doors and masks have turned out by the tens of thousands in the past week to gather in the streets and shout to be heard.

The lurch between twin crises with opposing aims — isolation and assembly — has been jolting, and to many, positively liberating. People feeling penned for months, then pushed past a tipping point by images of a man’s life ending under an officer’s knee, have surged to the streets — for some, mask be damned — to be part of something.For those coming out day after day to protest, marching with friends and strangers under cheers from the open windows above feels something like normal. If sheltering at home was a reaction to a threat, this is the opposite — action.

Simonez Dega, 23, a waiter at Olive Garden at a protest near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, welcomed the change from making music alone in his apartment to marching elbow to elbow. “It feels truly warm,” he said. “It felt like we were all bees in the hive. Now it’s like, that’s another bee, that’s another person that is here for the same reason. It’s a different energy.”

Mr. Dega added: “As a black male, I had to go out and protest.”

The demonstrations would consume the city at any time, but they arrive at a particularly anxious moment, with virus restrictions about to start easing after months of a curve-flattening quarantine.

Even as new cases ebb, New York City remains the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. More than 200,000 residents have contracted the virus and 21,000 have died, or are presumed to have died, of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested. The arrests continued on Thursday, with thousands of people still on the streets past the curfew, and confrontations with the police again flaring up.

Encircling of Peaceful Protesters Shows Aggressive Shift by N.Y. Police

Officers have charged and swung batons at demonstrators after curfew with seemingly little provocation. The mayor said he would review any reports of inappropriate enforcement.

NY TIMES

It was about 8:45 p.m. in Brooklyn on Wednesday, 45 minutes past the city’s curfew, when a peaceful protest march encountered a line of riot police, near Cadman Plaza.

Hundreds of demonstrators stood there for 10 minutes, chanting, arms raised, until their leaders decided to turn the group around and leave the area.

What they had not seen was that riot police had flooded the plaza behind them, engaging in a law enforcement tactic called kettling, which involves encircling protesters so that they have no way to exit from a park, city block or other public space, and then charging them and making arrests.

The kettling operations carried out by the city’s police after curfew on recent nights have become among the most unsettling symbols of the department’s use of force against peaceful protests, which has touched off a fierce backlash against Mr. Blasio and Mr. Shea.

In the past several days, New York Times journalists covering the protests have seen officers repeatedly charge at demonstrators after curfew with seemingly little provocation, shoving them onto sidewalks, striking them with batons and using other aggressive tactics.

In an interview on WNYC on Friday, the mayor said the encircling of protesters was sometimes necessary for public safety. “I don’t want to see protesters hemmed in if they don’t need to be,” he said, but he added “that sometimes there’s a legitimate problem and it’s not visible to protesters.”

Some protest organizers urge crowds to go home. Others marched on, and were arrested.

The protests that have filled New York’s streets in recent days entered their second week on Friday with thousands of people gathering at sites across the city for demonstrations, marches and vigils that continued to be overwhelmingly peaceful.

While several groups defied a citywide curfew again and risked encountering the forceful tactics the police had used the two previous nights to clear out those who did not disperse, other rallies broke up voluntarily as 8 p.m. approached amid intermittent rain.

“Everybody go home,” organizers of a group on Manhattan’s Upper West Side implored the crowd as a number of officers approached shortly before the curfew took effect. “It’s a wrap.”

In Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood, where mass arrests were narrowly averted on Thursday night, one protester announced to the crowd, “You are nothing less to the cause if you’re not here after curfew.”In Brooklyn, a line of officers blocked hundreds of protesters at Grand Army Plaza, while dozens of patrol cars kept them from retreating. The protesters stopped and raised their arms, led in front by a line of cyclists who had been acting as a buffer.

Randy Williams, 38, stepped forward and began to talking to some of the officers, working with other organizers to try to ease a tense situation. The group negotiated for the protesters to be able to leave peacefully, without arrests.

“This is the first protest people have not feared for their life,” Mr. Williams said. “The protest has ended for the night. We will respectfully go home now.”

But less than an hour later, the police again employed the more forceful tactics they had used on recent nights, targeting a group that had left Grand Army Plaza.

Officers appeared to surround a number of protesters on Nostrand Avenue. Videos showed officers aggressively pushing back a man who was filming them as they made arrests, then chasing him with a baton and shoving a reporter who was filming while the man was taken into custody.

On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, police blocked a march that started near Mayor Bill de Blasio’s official residence and arrested around 20 people, rushing at some and forcing them to the ground.

The night’s relative calm came on a day that started with the mayor continuing to defend the police’s actions in breaking up demonstrations, even as videos and photos showed officers employing aggressive and sometimes violent tactics to do so.

“What I saw overwhelmingly, and have continued to see, is peaceful protest being respected on both sides,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news briefing.

But with criticism of the mayor mounting — including from Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, who had helped the tension in Clinton Hill on Thursday — he said for the first time that some officers would be disciplined, and suspended, for their treatment of protesters.

Late Friday, several were.

In a statement released late Friday, the commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, said that one officer had been suspended after video emerged of him pushing a woman to the ground in Brooklyn on May 29. In addition, the commissioner said, a supervisor would be transferred as a result of the incident.

An officer involved in a separate incident the next day was also suspended for pulling down a man’s face mask and then spraying the man in the face with pepper spray, the commissioner said.

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This boy had his hands up when an NYPD ofcr pulled his mask down and pepper sprayed him. ⁦@NYPDShea⁩? Mayor ⁦@BilldeBlasio⁩?

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The mayor also continued to defend the curfew against calls that it be abandoned. He said it would be enforced through Monday morning, when the city is scheduled to begin reopening after a lengthy shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. de Blasio’s affirmation of the curfew came even as the Manhattan district attorney joined his counterparts in Brooklyn and the Bronx in saying he would not prosecute those who were arrested during the protests for low-level offense like unlawful assembly.

Commissioner Shea, who has condemned the killing of Mr. Floyd, apologized at a news conference on Thursday for any instances of misconduct his officers had committed.

But he also demanded that demonstrators stop insulting and attacking his officers and he warned that anti-police rhetoric could lead to continued violence against those he oversees.

“For our part in the damage to civility, for our part in racial bias, in excessive force, unacceptable behavior, unacceptable language and many other mistakes, we are human,” he said. “I am sorry. Are you?”

At his news conference, Mr. Shea ticked off ways in which he said the police had been attacked over the last week and said “anarchists” armed with dangerous weapons had tried to undermine otherwise productive protests.

Late Friday, he sought to provide evidence for his assertion, posting photos on Twitter of items he said had been seized from people who were arrested at a protest in the Bronx Thursday night.“These are not the tools of peaceful demonstrators,” he wrote. They were, he continued, “the tools of criminals bent on causing mayhem & hijacking what we all know is a worthwhile cause.”The items included handcuffs, a backpack, lighter fluid, gloves, a pocketknife, a hammer and a wrench.

District attorneys in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx will not prosecute people arrested and accused of low-level offenses in the protests.

Since last week, more than 2,000 people have been arrested in the city on charges like disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, unlawful assembly, assault on a police officer and burglary, according to the police and prosecutors.

Protesters rallied at a Brooklyn jail where a prisoner was pepper-sprayed and died this week.

There were more than 1,000 people in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn on Friday evening at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail where, the authorities say, guards pepper-sprayed a prisoner early Wednesday. He was found unconscious and later died, officials said.

“We see you,” one person in the crowd shouted. “We hear you,” another said, as detainees pounded on the jail windows. “You are not alone,” the crowd chanted again and again.

The death on Wednesday of the prisoner, Jamel Floyd, has become another flash point amid the protests that have continued for more than a week across the United States over police brutality and institutional racism, including in the criminal-justice system.

Mr. Floyd, a 35-year-old black man who was serving a state prison sentence for burglary, had been moved to the Brooklyn jail in October, the federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement on Wednesday

.

The guards used the pepper spray on him after he became increasingly disruptive and potentially harmful to others, the statement said. He barricaded himself in his cell and was breaking the cell-door window with a metal object, the statement said.

Mr. Floyd’s family has challenged the official account.

More police violence occurs during protests over police violence.

As protests over the death of George Floyd sweep the nation, the demonstrations have revealed powerful moments of peaceful protest and in some cases among police officers, who have been seen taking a knee in solidarity, reading the names of police brutality victims out loud or quietly crying alongside protesters.

But the protests have also revealed widespread incidents of police aggression, documented with the same tool that captured Mr. Floyd’s death under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis: video.

In Buffalo, two police officers were suspended without pay after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester, who was hospitalized with a head injury. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Miami Herald reporters filmed officers who were shooting a nonviolent protester in the head with foam rubber bullets, fracturing her eye socket. Cellphone videos show New York City police officers beating unarmed protesters and sideswiping demonstrators with opened squad car doors.

Captured by bystanders and sometimes shown on live television, the episodes have occurred in cities large and small, in the heat of mass protests and in their quiet aftermath. A compilation posted on Twitter by a North Carolina lawyer included over 300 clips by Friday morning.

The episodes have emerged over nearly two weeks of largely peaceful demonstrations in at least 600 cities across America, as thousands of people filled the streets in historic protests against systemic racism and police brutality.

Authorities in the city of Las Cruces in southern New Mexico announced on Friday that a police officer would be fired and charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the killing of a man who fled from a traffic stop.

The man, Antonio Valenzuela, 40, died on Feb. 29. The Las Cruces Police Department said he had an open warrant because of a parole violation, and was tased twice by officers while running away after being pulled over. Officer Christopher Smelser then used a chokehold technique on Mr. Valenzuela.

The Las Cruces medical examiner’s office determined this week that Mr. Valenzuela died from the injuries caused by being asphyxiated, the department said.

The death of Mr. Valenzuela, a painter and father of four, has resonated across New Mexico, which was already grappling with some of the highest rates of fatal shootings by police officers anywhere in the United States.

Involuntary manslaughter is a fourth-degree felony. Officer Smelser is also in the process of being fired from the force, said Dan Trujillo, a police spokesman. Officer Smelser could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday, and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer. 

The message from the president is to dominate the streets with force. The message from many of their chiefs and mayors is to tolerate, connect and empathize. The message on the streets, at times, is that they are part of the problem. The message from the news media is watch what you say and do.

In St. Louis on Monday night, four officers were struck by gunfire in a shootout between gunmen at a protest and the police. In Las Vegas, an officer was put on life support after he was shot near the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino as police forces tried to disperse crowds that had hit them with bottles and rocks. In Buffalo, the driver of an S.U.V. sped through a line of law enforcement officers in riot gear, injuring two of them in an episode caught on video.

But the outrage over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis has upended that notion, inciting social unrest and violence that has put urban and suburban police departments across the country on alert. It has been a challenge for officers, at a time when many are also confronting the coronavirus.

“These type of protests take a significant toll on an officer’s mental wellness, and they add so much stress,” said Manny Ramirez, a sergeant with the Fort Worth Police Department and the president of the police officers’ union. “This is Fort Worth, Texas, 1,000 miles away, but yet these officers have become targets for that rage.”

Sgt. Ramirez, 35, was in a command post on Sunday when protesters began hurling frozen water bottles and rocks at officers. One officer was struck on the elbow with a projectile. Another broke his leg while chasing a looter. “There’s got to be some way to ensure that going forward we can have something constructive come out of this,” he said.

“I’ve gone home once in the last four days,” said a Los Angeles officer watching the crowd months after having the coronavirus. “My girlfriend had to drop off clothes so I could change. It’s been hell, for everybody. Monsters and Red Bull, that’s the only thing that’s keeping me up.”

In Austin, Texas, a 20-year-old African-American protester was in critical condition after he was shot in the head with a beanbag round fired by a police officer on Sunday. A protester standing next to the man had thrown objects at the police, and in response an officer struck the victim instead. Others hit by similar police-fired rounds include a woman giving medical assistance and a pregnant African-American woman.

In many ways, the police response to what is happening on the streets illustrates a kind of post-Ferguson era of policing. Officers — not only chiefs but even the rank and file — have embraced the demonstrations and aligned themselves so much with protesters that they march alongside them. In some parts of the country, chiefs have become more politically outspoken and more emotional than they have been in decades.

The N.F.L. commissioner said the league should have listened to black players’ concerns earlier.

After President Trump renewed criticism of N.F.L. players protesting during the national anthem, Commissioner Roger Goodell delivered his strongest support yet for their right to demonstrate to fight racism and police brutality.

In a swift response to a video montage that featured star players asking the league to address systemic racism, Goodell said he apologized for not listening to the concerns of African-American players earlier and said he supported the players’ right to protest peacefully.

During the 2016 season, Colin Kaepernick started the movement within the league when he knelt to call attention to racial injustice and violence by police, but no team has offered him a contract since then.

Goodell’s comments were diametrically opposed to the president, who spoke out to defend New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who said this week that it was disrespectful to kneel during the pregame playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Brees apologized on Thursday after immediate backlash. But the president said on Twitter that Brees should not have backtracked and that people should stand when the anthem is played. On Friday night, Brees directed an Instagram post to the president.

“We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities,” Brees said. “We did this back in 2017, and regretfully I brought it back with my comments this week.”

More than any other major sports league, the N.F.L. has wrestled in recent years with the issue of race, the lack of African-Americans and other people of color in positions of power in the league and the rights of players to protest social issues on the field. While three-quarters of the league’s players are African-American, nearly every team owner is white and several of the most prominent owners are strong supporters of the president.

Tom Brady 'is joining the Tampa Bay Buccaneers': The 42-year-old free agent will fly south for the winter 'on a $30million-per-year deal' after announcing his exit from New England

Tom Brady's first foray into NFL free agency is expected to be a short one as the 42-year-old quarterback is reportedly on the verge of signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after announcing his intention to leave New England earlier on Tuesday. According to multiple reports, Brady will sign a new contract with the Buccaneers on Wednesday. NFL Network's Ian Rapoport is reporting that the deal is worth $30 million per season, although the length of the contract is not known. Fox Sports Radio's Colin Cowherd was the first to report the news. Both ESPN and Boston radio station WEEI have since confirmed the reporting independently. Brady's agent did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation from the Daily Mail. Former Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston started at quarterback for the 7-9 Buccaneers last season, throwing 33 touchdowns and a whopping 30 interceptions to lead the league. He is now a free agent and is expected to sign elsewhere. Brady became a free agent for the first time in his career this month. Players can officially begin signing new contracts on Wednesday.

How does Bill Belichick sustain a winning culture? Three ex-Patriots dish on their  ‘gold standard’

NY DAILY NEWS

FOXBOROUGH — Bill Belichick won’t give away his secret recipe.

He won’t reveal his ingredients to creating and sustaining the winning Patriots culture that has become the envy of the entire NFL.

“That’s a tough question, probably a long answer, might need a book on that one,” Belichick said Monday, too deep in preparation for Thursday night’s game against the Giants to dish on the Daily News’ inquiry. “The question you asked is a little more than I can handle right now.”

There is no reason for Belichick to spill his secrets, though, is there? The NFL has a parity problem, and Belichick’s Patriots are the reason why.

New England is the reigning Super Bowl champion and 5-0 to start this season. It has won six of the last 18 Super Bowls beginning with Belichick and Tom Brady’s first win together in 2001.

[More Giants] Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley endorse Pat Shurmur, but does the Giants coach have to win to save his job? »

It has represented the AFC in half of those 18 Super Bowls, including each of the last three and four of the last five. And it has won 16 of the last 18 AFC East titles, including the last 10.

Bill Belichick and the Patriots have been perennial Super Bowl contenders since winning their first championship in 2001. (Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

Sure, there have been 10 other Super Bowl champions in that 18-year span, including the Giants and Steelers, who have won two each. And there have been 18 different NFL teams represented in the Super Bowl from 2001.

But that means there are 14 NFL franchises that haven’t reached the Super Bowl this century. Essentially, AFC wild-card qualifiers and other division winners might alternate, but almost no one dethrones the Pats.

The Giants, who have missed the playoffs in six of the last seven years, are one of many NFL franchises looking to order what the Patriots are having.

They have pursued Belichick assistants Josh McDaniels and Matt Patricia (now the Lions’ head coach), and GM Dave Gettleman constantly talks about building a new culture as a foundation for success with head coach Pat Shurmur at the helm.

[More Giants] Saquon Barkley will not be shut down for rest of 2019 season »

Sources have told the Daily News that Belichick’s self-sustained winning culture is one of the most distinguishing characteristics to his success. Generally, this refers to high expectations that Belichick has created, maintained and reinforced with Super Bowl rings to cement in stone.

To get a grasp on the details of how Belichick has done this, though, I spoke to some of those who know him well. This isn’t the book Belichick referred to, but it is a window into how he operates and achieves consistent success.

NATE SOLDER, GIANTS LEFT TACKLE, TWO-TIME PATRIOTS SUPER BOWL CHAMPION (2014, 2016): “I think they put a lot of thought into creating that (culture), and I think it all starts with Belichick honestly. He does a great job getting them to buy into the process, what he calls eliminating bad football, making dumb mistakes, believing the team mentality that what’s best for the team is not always best for you — getting guys to buy into that.

Nate Solder, seen here on the Patriots in 2016, won two Super Bowls with Bill Belichick. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

“I don’t think it’s self-sustaining. I believe the guys that are there are doing a tremendous amount of work to maintain that standard. I think there’s a misperception that once you win a championship the next one kind of flows, and that’s not the case. As you see, most teams don’t do that. So it’s about the next season being able to turn the page and still have that same sort of drive and mentality that you did to win the first championship for the second one.

“And that gets more difficult. I think you have incredible leaders, guys that are so driven to be successful at what they do, starting with Belichick and the coaches and a lot of the players.”

[More Giants] John Mara and Steve Tisch owe Giants fans an explanation on franchise’s direction »

MICHAEL LOMBARDI, FORMER GM, BROWNS/PATRIOTS EXECUTIVE, AUTHOR OF ‘GRIDIRON GENIUS’ ON BELICHICK: “It all comes down to the owner (Robert Kraft). The owner has got to be willing to buy in to the program the coach is selling. And the reason Bill sustains it is that he doesn’t view being a head coach as designing new plays, he views it as being the guy who maintains culture. So everything about his behavior is doing what’s right for the culture and making sure culture is adhered to.”

(Editor’s note: Lombardi’s 2018 book, ‘Gridiron Genius: A Master Class in Building Teams and Winning at the Highest Level,’ chronicles a lot of what makes Belichick unique. Belichick even wrote the foreword for the book).

“He comes in, educates the team on how to handle winning and losing, what’s expected each week, how each week’s a new week. They don’t celebrate after a win. They’re on to the next team. There’s no contentment. There’s no ‘I want this.’”

CARL BANKS, TWO-TIME GIANTS SUPER BOWL CHAMPION LB WITH BELICHICK AS DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR (1986, 1990): “The roots go back to the Giants. He was part of setting a gold standard with the Giants, and I’ve known him since he was a position coach (linebackers/special teams). I think part of sustaining a successful and winning culture is No. 1 it starts with teaching, No. 2 it starts with accountability at both ends, with staff and with players. And they set expectations for each other and hold each other accountable.”

Giants LB Carl Banks, seen here in 1991, won two Super Bowls with Big Blue when Belichick was defensive coordinator. (Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

SOLDER ON B.B.’s EXPECTATIONS: “So we’d go over goal line, as most teams do, towards the end of the week, either Thursday or Friday. And at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, he asked Sebastian Vollmer what is their goal line front personnel? And Sebastian’s like we get to that on Friday, I have no idea (laughs). So he just started making stuff up. But those were the expectations: This is not what you’ve been coached, but you’ve already done so much research, you know going in what you should know on Friday on Wednesday morning. That was the expectation.”

[More Giants] Saquon Barkley has day from hell against Jets »

LOMBARDI ON B.B.’S TENETS: “Their four things when you walk in are do your job, be attentive, put the team first, and speak for yourself. Speak for yourself means you don’t speak about other guys’ business, and no one answers for you. You answer for yourself (to media).”

SOLDER ON B.B’S THREE RULES FOR REPRESENTING NEW ENGLAND: “Be prepared. Speak for yourself. And don’t fuel the noise.”

BANKS ON WHAT B.B. LEARNED WITH THE GIANTS: “I think the lesson for him was to have great players to coach. I say this with humility, but he learned how important it was to have great players who could take coaching that he could make better. So if you know you can challenge Lawrence Taylor to be better on a block, and that player will learn and work on it — and he knows he’d better know the answer in film study the same as the expectations are for a guy on special teams — that message goes all the way down the food chain.”

LOMBARDI: “He’s not afraid of confrontation with a player.”

Hall of Fame receiver Randy Moss recently told a story on ESPN about how he could not believe when he arrived in New England that Belichick would point out Tom Brady’s mistakes in team meetings the same as he would any other players’ gaffes. Solder nods his head.

[More Giants] Giants owners must decide if Dave Gettleman, Pat Shurmur and Daniel Jones are their future leaders »

SOLDER: “I think the way (Belichick) sees the game is very objective, so he wouldn’t just call you out, he’d show you on film where you screwed up and how you screwed it up as a teaching point. It’s one thing to say you need to play better, it’s another thing to say well you did this wrong and you need to fix it by doing this. And you’d be like, OK, you’re right, that was embarrassing, but you’re right. I need to work on that!”

BANKS: “He’s an extremely consistent person. He drills the hell out of you. There’s a purpose to every movement you make in practice, and you actually look forward to doing it in a game because you know it works. It has a purpose as to how you fit in the scheme.”

SOLDER: “Say they’re putting in a play in practice. They won’t put in a play for the Giants. They’ll be putting in a play for an opponent five weeks away. So they’d put in a play for a team coming up in five weeks, we’d start working on it, and we’d have five weeks to perfect that play before we actually used it in a game. (If they did that this week) they’ll have no intention of using it against us. They’ll just have it in the playbook and they’ll be able to practice it that much more by the time it’s actually ready for the game.”

(Solder, who still has plenty of Patriot in him, admits the Giants “do some of that, too, but I don’t talk about what we do.”)

BANKS: “Ask any person who played for him if he ever heard Bill say I didn’t make the right call or I gotta do a better job of getting you guys all on the same page. You hear that all the time with him. He is the most collaborative coach you could ever imagine when it comes to things that will make his team successful. There’s not a single bad play or good play that happens that he doesn’t ask a player what went on during the course of that play. And he’s taking notes on it. You always see him he’s constantly in the moment, coaching the moment.”

LOMBARDI, EXCERPT FROM ‘GRIDIRON GENIUS:’ “Whether the Patriots have just won the Super Bowl or not, the first thing Belichick does is wipe the slate clean. One of his favorite sayings is ‘To live in the past is to die in the present.’ It’s why you see no Super Bowl trophies as you walk through the players’ entrance and why all the photos from the previous season are removed as soon as the season is over. That clean slate demands a trip back to basic principles and fundamentals after a detailed examination of the current process.”

SOLDER ON ONE BYPRODUCT OF A WINNING CULTURE: “I think they’ve afforded themselves — if there is such a thing — they take some risks, I think, that maybe a new head coach might not be able to take, personnel-wise or strategy-wise.”

BANKS: “It’s called the gold standard. You win because of that. He’s uncompromising when it comes to fundamentals, with the way his coaches teach football, and he’s uncompromising when it comes to the accountability of both coaches and players.”

SOLDER: “They’re not perfect. Every time they’ve won a championship they’ve had very close circumstances. There’s something that’s just out of their control in the whole deal. Because say if they always did this then they would always win, but they don’t always win. And there’s certain cases where it’s really close and they barely win and it could have gone one way or the other based on the way the ball rolls. But they’ve done a really good job of putting themselves in those situations where it’s competitive and it’s close and they give themselves a chance to be successful, I think.”

No kidding.