The Patriots will be prepared for anything the Falcons throw at them in Super Bowl 51 — or at least that's what Bill Belichick is hoping.

The veteran coach was asked Thursday about a potential X-factor in the big game: Mohamed Sanu. The fifth-year receiver is playing his first season in Atlanta, and set a career high in receptions (59). He has been just one of the many weapons in this high-powered offense.

MORE:

But beyond Sanu's receiving ability, he's also a gadget player. During his years with the Bengals, he attempted five passes, completing all of them for 177 yards and two touchdowns. He's got a pretty strong arm, too.

In addition to throwing, Sanu can be a runner out of the backfield, which is something in the red zone during the NFC championship game. So how does a coach like Belichick prepare for something like this? He actually provided a pretty lengthy response to this inquiry.

"We know he can do it," Belichick said of Sanu's passing ability. "Look, this is the kind of game where a team could be working on a play like that all year and you’re running out of games. I mean it could be a lot of other plays, too; a reverse, a pass, a double pass, some kind of gadget play, so absolutely. The longer the season goes I think the more you have to be prepared for those kinds of plays because, again, if the team has been working on it then at some point they’re probably going to use it and the fewer games there are to call it. If you’ve been working on a play all year, a lot of coordinators, you might as well call it.

"You could draw up any gadget play you want. In the end it comes down to the basic fundamentals of your defense, so every defense is designed to defend the perimeter, to defend the deep balls, whether that’s man to man, or zone, or four-man line, three-man line, whatever it is. It doesn’t matter. You can’t defend an offensive formation without defending the perimeter of the formation, without defending the vertical element that the formation could bring, defend the outside, defend deep, everything is in front of you – every defense has to have those elements to it. Who knows what you’re going to be in? Who knows what play that they’re going to run that you haven’t seen before? You just have to count on the sound fundamentals of the defense to handle all of those things. Every time we put in a defense that’s the first thing we do, is run strong, run weak, reverse, half back pass, passing game, four verticals, three verticals, double moves, deep crossing routes. Make sure that those plays are handled by the assignments in the defense. If you’re going to be light on something you don’t want to be light on those. You want to be light on something else. You don’t want to be light on a seam route or on a post pattern or not have a run-force guy if they run a reverse. I mean it doesn’t mean you have it done right every single time, but there’s somebody that’s responsible for it and it’s their job to make sure that they handle that responsibility based on however the play is designed."

He hopes.