The New England Patriots played their fourth and final night game of the 2018 NFL regular season Sunday night when they grabbed a 31-17 win over the Green Bay Packers at Gillette Stadium.
The remainder of New England’s games will be played in the afternoon. Unless, of course, one of their remaining contests gets flexed. For now, though, New England fans can look forward to not losing sleep due to a night game.
One person who certainly is happy to not be playing at night anymore is Bill Belichick. During his weekly appearance on WEEI’s “Ordway, Merloni and Fauria”, the head coach noted how much of a toll night games take on everyone.
“It is nice not to play at night, absolutely,” he said, as transcribed by WEEI.com’s Ryan Hannable. “The night games kill you. They get you the next day, and really it takes you a couple of days to get by them. Four out of the last five, but the schedule is what it is and for every long week there’s a short week and so whenever we play we just have to be ready to go. They are hard.”
Despite playing back-to-back games in prime time, Belichick praised his team for how they prepared for the schedule and the Packers.
“I thought our team did a great job this week. I told them that after the game,” he said. “I thought they did a great job coming off the Monday night game on the road and facing Green Bay, which is a hard team to prepare for. Very hard to prepare for. With less time and less opportunity I thought they really worked hard all week and obviously last night. It’s good.”
The hard work paid off, as Sunday’s win marked New England’s sixth straight and bumped its AFC East-leading record to 7-2. Now, the team must get ready for a Sunday afternoon matchup on the road against the Tennessee Titans at Nissan Stadium.
