The cuddly concept of “equal playing time for all” gets phased out once sports get competitive and the score becomes a priority. In my experience, that happens when the players are about 10 years old.



After that, the general rule of thumb is that the best players play the most. Opportunities for everyone else are sought but the desire to have more points than the opposition when the game ends drives decision-making.



Doesn’t matter the sport or the level of competition. If you’re not out there it’s because the guys on the field, court or ice are considered to be better than you.



In the NFL, that’s still a good starting point. Tom Brady plays more than Jimmy Garoppolo because he’s better than him.



But the NFL is also home to so much specialization and personnel decisions based on what an opponent does that sometimes good players get left in mothballs.



During Tuesday’s afternoon conference call, I asked Bill Belichick about divvying up reps and the challenge of finding opportunities for players who don’t have a big role in a weekly game plan.



The question was prompted mainly by the modest amount of reps Jerod Mayo has had this year – 27 of 145 defensive snaps. I know the high regard Belichick and the coaching staff has for Mayo and they know his desire to play. But the Patriots’ front-seven is stocked with players who have varied skills. And offenses are dictating that defenses frequently use five or six defensive backs. That means somebody’s got to watch.



“I give you guys a hard time every week,” Belichick said. “You look at the production sheet and see carries, receptions, targets, whatever and there’s gonna be guys at the top of that and there’s gonna be guys who have fewer and then you always ask, ‘What happened to them, what happened to them?’ Sometimes it’s a function of the game or the game plan or just the way the game played out.



“If they’re on our team and we put them out on the field it’s because we think they can be productive, they earned that opportunity and sometimes they get more opportunities than others,” Belichick continued. “Sometimes after a period of fewer opportunities, then those opportunities come and they do well with them. It looks like different than what it really is, like all of a sudden there was some big improvement and it’s really just a question of opportunity. Some of those opportunities you can control as a coach, a lot of them you can’t.”



So far, Jamie Collins, Devin McCourty and Malcolm Butler have played 100 percent one of the Patriots 145 defensive snaps. Chandler Jones, Rob Ninkovich and Donta Hightower are all over 90 percent. Patrick Chung and Tarell Brown are the only other defenders over 70 percent.



And that makes sense. Collins and McCourty have the most range and versatility at linebacker and safety. There’s never a time when you don’t need your best corner on the field and that’s Butler. You always need to set the edges – Jones and Ninkovich are the primaries for that. And Hightower is probably the best combo player in terms of run-stopping, pass-rushing, edge-setting and coverage.



The guys who can do more play more.



“When the ball’s snapped, we don’t know what’s gonna happen, especially on the defensive side of the ball, we don’t know where it’s gonna go or what they’re gonna do, we just have to react to it,” Belichick explained. “It definitely is a challenge. You want to have guys involved, you want them to have roles but sometimes the scheme overrides an individual player and you have to be in a particular scheme for a period of time that takes certain players out of play but you feel that’s what you need to do to be competitive.”



Could Mayo and Jabaal Sheard play more? Yes. And it weighs on the staff’s mind, Belichick explained.



“(Getting reps for good players) is something we constantly talk about and try to maximize,” Belichick began. “It’s not easy. For me, it went back to my time as defensive coordinator at the Giants. We had a lot of depth at linebacker. Honestly, there were times we could have played six linebackers. There were passing situations where we took the defensive linemen out of the game and just put all linebackers on the field but you know, it’s hard to do things like that over an extended period of time. You have a scheme, you’ve worked on that scheme all week, all year, and then to do something that’s pretty far off of that . . . it’s ok as a changeup but then it kind of takes away from what you’ve been working on and what you’re trying to construct. It’s hard to feature that.”



The Patriots are at the vanguard of specialization. They keep extra tackles to use as third tight ends. They’ve been using situation run-stoppers like Ted Washington and Keith Traylor, situational pass-rushers like Jarvis Green, situational corners like Terrell Buckley, Big Nickel safeties like Victor Green, Tebucky Jones and Patrick Chung throughout Belichick’s tenure. And that’s not even getting into the offensive specialization with extra tight ends, fullbacks and a fleet of situation-specific running backs.



“It’s a good problem to have,” Belichick said. “Better off having more players than having too few where it all falls on one guy’s shoulders. When I got here, with Troy Brown, 15 passes a game were going to him. He was a good player but that was in part because there weren’t a lot of options. It’s better to have a lot of options and use the ones you feel best suit your team and that’s probably something that through the years has helped us win games, is the depth we’ve had at positions and how many different players we’ve had come through. Whether it be at the skill positions or not at the skill positions that help the team when when they are called on. That’s part of having a good team. Particularly on the defensive side of the ball you’ve got to stop what they do and some players on your roster may be better suited to stop certain things than others as opposed to having the same guys out there for every single play.”



Belichick said he gets why people have questions when guys don’t play.



“When I first came into the league it was basically the same 11 guys out there,” he recalled. “It didn’t matter if you had the ball on their 1-yard line or if you had the ball two two seconds to go in the game, it was two backs, two receivers and a tight end. The defense was in 4-3. With such a revolutionary step to add a third receiver or put in a nickel back – which really wasn’t a nickel back, all he was was a linebacker who was a smaller more athletic guy – (the game changed). So you’re used to seeing the same people out there so that production is more consistent and comparable. Now, so frequently in the league, us and everyone else, at the end of the play two or three guys run on the field and two or three guys run off the field. It’s just getting used to that. I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing it’s just different."