Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling

I've learned a lot about the process. I had no idea how the balls got from the officials locker room down on the field and so forth and so on and all of that. That's not something I have ever thought or concerned myself about [on] game day. I've concerned myself with preparing and coaching the team.

I'm sure that any current or past player of mine would tell you that the balls we practice with are as bad as they can be: wet, sticky, cold, slippery. However bad we can make them, I make them. Any time that players complain about the quality of the footballs, I make them worse and that stops the complaining.

In short, we accumulate all the information that we can accumulate, wherever that information comes from, and try to analyze it and make the best decision we can make for our football team on a case-by-case basis. It's the same for every single player; the process is the same.

I feel like I've had a strong relationship with Robert [Kraft] and his family since I was here in 1996 and I think it's gotten stronger every year that I've been here with the Patriots. The more things we do together, talk about together, work together on, the closer we become and the more we rely on each other. I feel like our relationship is very close and continues to grow closer every year as we grow older together.

You can play hard. You can play aggressive. You can give 120% but if one guy is out of position then someone is running through the line of scrimmage and he is going to gain a bunch of yards.

I'm not going to be able to talk about the people who are involved specifically in any ongoing judicial process. We do the same thing with all our players. We take a look, as I said, at their personal family life, we look at the history of what they've done in high school and college.