Wearing a grey T-shirt and navy blue Patriots jacket, New England head football coach Bill Belichick gave his first press conference Wednesday since former player Aaron Hernandez was charged with murder.

Sitting there eating my lunch while watching this on TV, I couldn’t help but be impressed with how Belichick handled the situation.

Normally after games, the Patriots coach is short on his answers and shows no to little emotion.

He changed that on Wednesday and it was good to see.

As anybody would say in this situation, Belichick called it a “sad day on so many levels” during his opening statement, which lasted about seven minutes. The Patriots coach heard about Hernandez while on vacation out of the country.

During the opening statement, Belichick said he was shocked and disappointed that Hernandez was connected to this eventful story, which has taken over media headlines for the past two months.

I admit I was shocked, too, to hear that the former Florida tight end committed these alleged acts.

In fact, at the time, I was still in denial that Hernandez had killed Odin Lloyd, until I saw him at his arraignment earlier in June.

Hernandez had a calm demeanor to him, almost like he thought he was going to get away scott-free. He even was smiling a little Wednesday at his what was supposed to be a probably cause hearing.

After his opening statement, Belichick took questions from the media present.

It was hard to hear what they were saying because microphones weren’t set up throughout the room.

From what I gathered, the press which consisted of 80 reporters and 20 cameras, according to ESPN.com, were asking what the process is on vetting or evaluating players.

Belichick said the team will have to examine the process again.

“We’ll learn from this terrible experience,” Belichick said on ESPN.com. “We have so many players on this team that work hard, that do the right thing, that set a great example of being a professional and being a solid representative of this team and the community.”

From the statement afterward, Belichick won’t be answering further questions about Hernandez.

That’s good because I think he did a good job of filling the media’s craving.

Now, on to football, coach.