Media Day Madness

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Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Matt LaPan, Go Local Sports Reporter

Aside from game day, Super Bowl Media Day is often the favorite day of the week for fans, media and even some players and coaches. Despite media members dressed up as super hero’s, silly questions and answering questions for over an hour, Media Day often delivers great information when one looks for it.

Tuesday was no different. 14 Patriots players along with Bill Belichick took to the Super Bowl Media Day podiums, strewn across the floor of the US Airways Center in Phoenix. The major podiums were occupied by Tom Brady, Darrelle Revis, Rob Gronkowski, Vince Wilfork and Bill Belichick. These men faced over an hour of questions from local, national and international media as well as other outlets such as Nickelodeon.

Belichick Takes The Podium

The day started in a predictable way, with a Deflategate question for Bill Belichick. Belichick continued his deflection of these questions, “Well, we’re just focused on Seattle this week,” Belichick said. That’s it. So it’s all about Seattle, it’s all about us getting ready to play Sunday. That’s where all of our attention is. I’m not really worried about the rest of that.”

Belichick continued by speaking about the Seattle Defense and head coach Pete Carroll. “Well, the Seahawks have a great secondary, they have a great defense, period,” Belichick said when asked about the Seahawks’ “Legion of Boom” secondary. “They’re very well coached. Pete (Carroll) is a former defensive back coach, so as you would expect, his teams are very good, they’re very fundamentally sound, they’ve got great schemes, and they have great players back there. They have a lot of them. They played with different guys throughout the course of the year at safety and corner due to some injuries and also their usage of multiple defensive backs. They’re all pretty good.”

He continued by throwing more praise the way of Carroll. “Not a coach in the NFL I respect more than Pete Carroll,” Belichick said. “He’s a tremendous coach. He and I have kind of come up together in roughly the same era. We’ve both been defensive coordinators, we’ve both been head coaches. I have a ton of respect for what Pete does as a coach, how good of a fundamental teacher he is, the way his teams play. I’ve studied him from afar – we’ve never worked together. Studied Pete from afar over a long period of time. I’ve learned a lot from what he does, and indirectly, I think he’s made me a better coach. I have all the respect in the world for Pete and his staff.”

Among The Greats

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady also threw praise at Seattle’s defense. “There’s a lot of challenges,” Brady said. “We’ve had a little insight from Brandon Browner who has talked to us about how he coaches and I think Pete’s (Carroll) run the same defense for a long time. And they don’t give up anything easy, I’ll tell you that. I think that’s a challenge and everything has to be coordinated so well. You need great distributions in your patterns, you’ve got to make great decisions. It’s a very disciplined defense. He coaches his players to be very disciplined. And it’s really a battle of that.”

Brady also spent some time talking to former Super Bowl opponent, and current NFL Network analyst, Kurt Warner about Brady’s legacy. Brady greater Warner with a big small and handshake before fielding questions on whether or not a 4th Super Bowl places him in the same category as his boyhood idol, Joe Montana. “It’s hard to think about those things. Like I said, I’ve just been fortunate to be on some great teams,” Brady said. “Those guys are unbelievable players, they were so great for this league. They were great teams. I was the biggest 49er fan growing up and to watch Joe and Steve Young – who were my two idols – who were just great for the game and great for the sport. And to watch guys like you that I was lucky enough to play against. We had some pretty close games.” 

Getting Gronked

Another member of the Patriots that drew a huge crowd was tight end Rob Gronkowski. Gronkowski faced a lot of the lighter questions, including being asked about an erotic novel based on him, singing Katy Perry songs and his now infamous “Gronkowski Party Bus.” Many of the questions, however, were centered around Gronkowski being fully healthy for the Patriots final game of the season. “Totally back to my old self,” Gronkowski said when asked about his return from last season’s knee injury. “I mean, coming out of training camp I got competitive and treated my knees all week. It just all kicked in. My body felt good. Going into that Cincinnati game in Week 5, everything just kicked in and I felt good.”

Gronkowski also faced questions about returning to returning to Arizona, where he played college football, to play in the Super Bowl. “Yes, no doubt. I definitely started down here, my freshman year at the University of Arizona,” Gronkowski said. “I just learned so much about life. I went to college and also learned a lot of football skills, and bringing it to the next level. It all stared at the University of Arizona. I’m glad to be back here for the Super Bowl.”

One player who made headlines without being on a podium was rookie center Bryan Stork. Stork said he hoped he would be active for Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday after missing the AFC Championship with a knee injury. Stork spoke about spending time with the Patriots training staff to get his knee ready to play. Stork would be a pivotal piece in the Patriots offensive game plan, adding side to combat a smaller, quicker Seahawks defensive line.

Defensive “OG”

The Patriots also had a lot of defensive players at the podium, including defensive captain Vince Wilfork. The major questions Wilfork faced were on his absence from football last season following an Achilles injury, and his recovery. “Me being out of football last year, it was one of those things that I never imagined being hurt and being away from my teammates and not being able to be on the field with them,” Wilfork said. “My main goal this year coming back was to make sure I was healthy and help my team win. I think we all play football because it’s a team effort. It’s not just one individual. We have a bunch of individuals doing their job, which leads to team success. My goal to the team was to come back healthy and better than I was and hopefully we can get the job done moving forward. Everything I thought about in the offseason – the way I trained, everything that I did, everything was set up for the team – not just my myself, but as a team. I knew if I was at my best, everybody around me would be at their best. That’s how I approached this offseason.”

Wilfork also took time to speak with former Super Bowl teammate, and current NFL Network analyst Willie McGinest. McGinest called Wilfork the “OG” of the team, a label that McGinest said he personally used to hold. With that title comes the leadership role. “The one thing I told them all was that this is the Super Bowl,” Wilfork said to McGinest. “If you can’t get up for the Super Bowl, something’s wrong with you. We’re going to treat this like any other game. It’s a game that we have to go play. Our No. 1 objective is going to be to execute – execute our game plan. If we do that, we’ll put ourselves in a pretty good situation. That’s what we’re here to do.”

Setting The Corner

Highlighting the defensive group was the Patriots starting cornerbacks — Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner. Revis faced a large number of questions about being in his first Super Bowl. “It’s pretty awesome. I mean, this is what you play for every year,” Revis said. In the offseason you work hard to get to this point and when you get there, like right now, it’s so surreal to me. It’s awesome, but it’s also crazy. But at the same time, it shows that hard work pays off, and there’s still work to be done. We have one more game left as a team to accomplish our ultimate goal, which is holding the Lombardi Trophy up.”

Revis also took some time to speak with Hall of Fame cornerback, and current NFL Network analyst Deion Sanders. Sanders asked Revis about the long road to the Super Bowl. “You know what, we had an awesome record season. Our schedule was very tough. It was tough,” Revis said. We played against some great quarterbacks, some great teams. We found a way as a team, as a unit, to go out there and stick together and play just tough football and play great ball and we did that. Overall, we had ups and downs. There was the controversy with deflate-gate and all of that, but that’s adversity. Adversity strikes every time and I think as a team, as a whole, we’ve handled that well. There’s one more game and we are just trying to weed that out and focus on our ultimate goal and that’s holding up the Lombardi Trophy.”

Revis’ defensive counterpart, Brandon Browner, was also a huge draw at Media Day. Browner was a member of last year’s Seahawks championship team, and will now be facing his former teammates looking to win back-to-back Super Bowl’s. “I’m very excited about it,” Browner said. The thing about it, they know my weaknesses and vice versa. It gives me a chance to match with those guys.” 

Browner also fielded questions about his recent comments for his New England teammates to attack injuries to his former “Legion of Boom” defensive backfield mates Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas. “Those are my brothers, at the end of the day there’s no hard feelings,” Browner said. “That’s like in any game, you have a guy that messes his ankle up and you’re going to tackle and make sure you land on his ankle. If a guy messes his shoulder up, then you tackle him and land on his shoulder – that’s just a part of the game. You guys know how close I am to those boys and at the time that felt like the right thing to say.”

With Media Day behind the Patriots and Seahawks, the focus turns to the game. With less than five days remaining before Super Bowl XLIX, the madness and hilarity of Media Day is officially over. The Patriots are now laser focused on their main goal — winning Super Bowl XLIX.

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