Editor's Note: Every so often, Bill Belichick will expand on one of his favorite players, whether it's Matthew Slater or Devin McCourty or Mark Bavaro. These are actual quotes from Belichick on Brandon Bolden; we've just changed the "he" to "you" in brackets. We've also added words of context based upon Belichick's actual responses to the line of questioning. We haven't changed anything else. Enjoy.
Dear Brandon,
"How many [snaps] can [you] play?...as many as you want, but I don't know if that's the best role. But [you've] done it before and [you] can do it."
"I can't even tell you how many games we've gone into with three backs and [you've been] the third back as really being able to play on first, second, third and fourth down and play well and be one of our best fourth down players.
"That's a lot, and you start talking about third-down backs and all [you] have to do in terms of blitz pickups, formations, coverages and all that, and then same thing on early downs being able to run the ball, handle the running game and blitz pickup on play action passes, which is a different set of protections and defensive looks.
"Then you get into fourth down and a core special teams player that's involved in four phases of the game - kickoff, kickoff return, punt, punt return and all the things that go on there and all the situational plays that happen in those units - the volume there, that's a lot.
"That would be a lot for a guy to do one of those things - third down or special teams or first and second down. For a guy to be able to be as competent as [you are] in all those areas physically and mentally, there aren't many guys in the league that can do that now."
"Again, [whether we use you or another player] is more of a product of everybody else than it is [you] because [you] can do all special teams, all third down, all first and second down. [You] can do all the running back stuff.
"I don't know. But who else do [we] have? Who else is part of that and what can they do?
"It's not like we're sitting there saying here are the things Bolden can't do. That's a pretty short list. What [you] can do is pretty much everything. It's a question of where [we] want to use [you]."
We'll figure it out. With love,
-Billy