It’s been quite a week or so for the Patriots. Glenn Ordway, Lou Merloni and Christian Fauria had the unenviable task of interviewing the coach on Tuesday afternoon.

The loss was one thing, but, just the circumstances surrounding the team right now are making the “focus on what you can control” mantra harder than ever to follow. What stood out Tuesday?

Ordway opened by addressing that very topic, asking Bill how he adjusted to Cam’s positive test over the weekend and how the subsequent plan of attack both on the field and off the field came together.

“Pretty much hour by hour,” Belichick said. “It’s hard to have any long-term planning in a situation like that. You just have to take it as it comes and stay flexible.”

Fauria followed up with a broader league question regarding the handling of Covid-19 from handing down no mask fines to then having a team hop on a plane the day after a positive test, and Bill was surprisingly honest.

“Yeah, I think there’s a lot of questions, there’s a lot of uncertainty on a number of levels,” he said. “It’s hard to know what all the answers are so, I don’t know. This is really in the medical area and that’s not my area, so, this is or the medical people.”

A few moments later Ordway brought up the “in the grasp call” on Chase Winovich that negated the Shilique Calhon interception.

“The wing official did,” Bill said when asked if Tony Corrente (head official) had explained the call to Bill. When Ordway followed with “so you knew there was no way you could challenge it? an annoyed “that’s right,” came from Belichick.

Merloni finally got on to some actual game-plan specific stuff, asking how the Patriots were able to limit the production of Patrick Mahomes in such impressive fashion.

“I think our players competed really hard,” Belichick said. “We did a lot of good things, played good team defense with everybody doing their job well against a very talented and explosive team. Whatever success we had goes to the players. The way they play, it’s not an easy offense to stop. We had some opportunities we could have taken a little better advantage of, but, that’s part of playing a good team.”

Damien Harris finally saw some legitimate game action for the first time in his career on Monday and Belichick was asked about it. Unfortunately, for anyone hoping he’d break character and gush about the performance, it was far from the case.

“I thought Damien ran hard, broke some tackles and had some good reads. It was good to have him back out there,” Belichick said.

Ordway followed asking what exactly goes into the decision to switch quarterbacks, and, as you’d expect, it was the usual answer from Bill.

“Well, I think any decision for me is what I think is best for the football team,” he said. “I don’t see that changing.”

Merloni went into the deep end and asked Bill what exactly has gone into Hoyer being the No. 2 QB prior to Monday night’s game, and, again, Belichick was surprisingly non-prick-ish in his response.

“Well, he’s healthy now, but, I’m sure that didn’t help,” Belichick said regarding Stidham’s injury from training camp. “I’m sure that didn’t help with reps limited anyways, not having an opportunity to run the offense or play in the offense. Jarret works hard and he’s a smart kid and has a good understanding of what we’re doing.

“He did all he could do, sometimes that’s the way it goes.”

Fauria soon thereafter asked whether or not Cam would be the starter this week if he’s somehow healthy enough to go.

“There’s  a lot of information we just don’t have at this point so, we’ll wait until we get it and go from there,” said Belichick. Follwing a bit more protocol talk, Ordway brought up the unbelievably outstanding job the offensive line did again on Monday night, putting together a hell of an effort at far less than full strength.

“I think those guys all worked really hard and prepared really hard,” Belichick said. “It’s just one of those things where that’s where we ended up (injury wise) and they competed hard. We had some good plays, a lot of positives things. But, ultimately we didn’t have the results and we weren’t able to play well enough in the red area and obviously when you turn the ball over five times you’re not going to win many games doing that.

“There were some good plays but, when you have too many plays like that it’s just too much to overcome and we weren’t able to do that. That’s collectively, that’s not on any one group, person or play…I had no issues with our offensive line or the physicality they played with.”

Fauria brought up the outstanding job from punter Jake Bailey as well, who might have gotten Bill’s most glowing review.

“He took those two erosive players Hardman and Hill out of the game,” Belichick said. “We almost had a turnover on the punt early in the game, he did an excellent job of not only hitting for distance but placing the ball…

“Jake was a weapon and he really came through for us.”

As the show wrapped up there was of course the weekly Mercedes Benz Question of the week. This one was about adapting to the short week with Denver coming to town on Sunday and what to expect from the Broncos.

“Defensively they have some very explosive players, they’re very well coached,” he said. “Coach Fangio does an excellent job coaching and game planning. He’s one of the best defensive coaches in the league. They do a nice job mixing to it up. They have a variety of coverages and looks, but it’s not so excessive where they don’t play them well. They’re fundamentally sound, they know how to play, they’re hard to run against, they turn the ball over…

Belichick also praised the young offense as well, but, as usual, this week will come down to what the Patriots do more than what the Broncos do.

“You can see that group getting better each week,” Belichick added. “It’s a team we don’t know very well. We’ve got a lot of work together on both the personnel and scheme and it’s a short week so, we’ll have to get on it.”