INDIANAPOLIS -- The game has changed.

Yesterday at the NFL Scouting Combine, Patriots coach Bill Belichick used “change” or some variation of the word eight times in his press conference: Changes in the nature of the combine, changes in the New England brain trust, changes in the way you have to evaluate players these days and changes in the NFL’s attitudes toward veteran coaches.

In the midst of it all the transition, Belichick keeps rolling along, preparing to start his 35th season in the NFL this September. He’s one of the few active coaches in the league who can recall when the combine was a simpler time, a time that meant standing out on a field at Arizona State at sundown as William “The Refrigerator” Perry was getting ready to attempt his vertical leap. Now, the combine is one of the centerpiece events of the NFL offseason, attended by hundreds of media and broadcast from start to finish on the NFL Network.

“It’s amazing how the combine has grown at every turn — the media, the agents and the players,” he said in his first sit down with the media of the offseason. “It’s become quite an event.”

Belichick touched on a number of topics in a 22-minute press conference yesterday, but it all kept coming back to change. While standing at a podium wearing a bright red and black Rutgers lacrosse pullover, he talked about the metamorphosis that’s been going on across the league, as well as the transformations taking place in Foxborough.

“We’ve had some changes since the end of the season in New England,” Belichick said. “We’ve had those in the past, so it’s not something we haven’t dealt with before.”

Since the end of the season, those changes include the loss of the de facto GM Scott Pioli, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, tight ends coach Pete Mangurian, special teams coach Brad Seely and secondary coach Dom Capers. In their place are Floyd Reese and Nick Caserio, who will take over the day-to-day personnel duties, while Shane Waldron will become tight ends coach, Scott O’Brien will be the new special teams coach and Josh Boyer will be the new secondary coach.

Belichick was extremely gracious to all the departing coaches and execs, saying Pioli was “awesome” and adding, “There’s no way I can express into words how much he’s meant to us.” He also singled out McDaniels, saying he considered him “a good friend” and adding his departure was a “great addition for the Broncos and certainly a loss for [the Patriots].”

He was enthusiastic about the new staff, lauding the work that Waldron and Boyer have done in working their way up from being coaching assistants to become positional coaches. And Belichick added that it has been “invigorating” to work with Caserio and Floyd over the last few weeks as they reorganize and revamp some things in the personnel department.

“As much as we’ll miss Scott, we’re moving on in that direction,” Belichick said.

In the middle of its first combine as a team, the current New England personnel department has been given a lot to think about. The Patriots are likely spending a lot of time with an eye toward getting younger on the defensive side of the football, but because more and more teams are making the switch to the 3-4 base defense — a scheme New England has been working with since 2000 — it’s getting harder and harder to find those collegiate defensive ends who are able to make switch to outside linebacker in the NFL.

“I think there’s an awful lot of teams playing the 3-4 defense now, certainly compared to 2000 when I came to New England, when it was pretty much us and Pittsburgh,” Belichick said. “Now, you have teams in our division, many teams in the AFC, a couple of teams in the NFC. You’ve probably got eight, nine, 10 teams basing out of a 3-4 defense, and that’s made those positions, those outside linebacker positions, the 3-4 nose tackle position, very competitive and very unique.”

When it comes to assessing talent, that’s not the only position on the field that’s changed. Belichick said there’s also been a fundamental shift in the way you measure the skills for a defensive backs. In the past, if a player came to the combine as a cornerback or a safety, you could pretty much count on them making that transition to the NFL at the same position. Not any more.

“I think the demand for [defensive backs] have changed, and I think that’s changed the evaluation a little bit,” he said. “There were times when some of the safeties, particularly the strong safeties, fit more almost like linebackers than they did as defensive backs. I think that’s changed gradually, now to the point where your defensive backs a lot of times have to cover wide receivers or they have to cover tight ends who are very, very good in the passing game.

“So maybe some of those hybrid guys who played corner and played safety — like (Ohio State cornerback Malcolm) Jenkins, for example, is a guy who played both, what his best fit would be for a team, where he’s most valuable, is certainly an interesting discussion for all teams.”

Belichick acknowledged — as he has many times before — that change is part of life in the NFL. However, he lamented the loss of many of his peers who have been fired the last few seasons, saying it was “a little bit of an empty feeling” to see people like Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick, Steve Mariucci, Mike Martz and Jim Haslett at the combine without coaching jobs.

“It’s hard to believe that coaches like Mike Shanahan and Jon Gruden aren’t coaching in the National Football League. But that’s not my decision,” Belichick said, who would later single out Shanahan as a “Hall of Fame coach.”

“I’m not trying to comment on anybody else’s situation, but it’s just odd for them to be here, but not in a coaching capacity. But that’s the National Football League.”

Christopher Price covers the Patriots for WEEI.com.