FOXBORO, Mass. — The New England Patriots practice hard. They always have under Bill Belichick.
They practice in the elements. They practice in pads as often as the NFL allows. They hit, even late in the season. They eschew the veteran rest days many other teams dole out and rarely work reserves into their starting units. Some players hate it, but the results, for two full decades, were undeniable.
It was surprising then to see Belichick radically alter the format of last Wednesday’s practice — typically the team’s most intense of the week. The Patriots shifted their operation to inside the Socios.com Field House, swapped full pads for helmets and sweats and held a toned-down walkthrough, with Belichick citing the “quality of the last couple games” as the reason for the change.
Those couple of games were a 37-26 loss to Baltimore in which the Patriots were battered by Lamar Jackson and the Ravens rushing attack, and a 27-24 defeat in Green Bay that featured a full overtime period. With a matchup with the offensively explosive Detroit Lions next up on the schedule, Belichick, after conversations with his staff and team leaders, opted to dial things back.
The results? Ideal.
The fresh, aggressive Patriots dominated the Lions, shutting out the NFL’s highest-scoring offense en route to a 29-0 victory Sunday at Gillette Stadium. After the game, safety Devin McCourty and edge rusher Matthew Judon both said the lighter practice schedule benefited the players, allowing them to play with more energy and focus.
“We had, I would say, a less physical practice Wednesday, and I think sometimes everybody’s like, ‘Oh my goodness, they’re not full pads,’ ” McCourty said. “But I think the good thing about that is guys being locked in. … I thought you saw that progress throughout the week with our play calls, and I thought then Sunday, we were able to come out and play fast.”
Added Judon: “I think it was helpful. This is a tough sport, as you can see, and it just allowed us an extra day to get our bodies back right. (And) mentally, going through the walkthrough and everything like that, we were mentally locked in. When you’re able to rest your body and sharpen your mind and the two work well, that’s something you’ve got to do. We took advantage of it, and we came out here and we played very well.”
Indeed. The Lions went 0-for-6 on fourth down and 0-for-2 in the red zone against the Patriots’ defense. Offensively, New England dominated on the ground (career-high 161 yards for Rhamondre Stevenson) and got an efficient, responsible performance from first-time starting quarterback Bailey Zappe.
Belichick, who also scaled back the team’s workload during training camp, offered a lengthy explanation Monday for why he altered last week’s practice setup.
“It’s a judgment I have to make as the head coach,” Belichick said in a video conference. “Whether they’re right or wrong, who knows, because we don’t do the other one. But I think over the course of the season, as a head coach, you kind of get a feel for your team. It may not be the entire team. It may be what most of the team needs. So you have to sacrifice some of the other part of it for practice schedules, or meeting schedules, or time commitment, however you want to look at it, time management. We have so much time we want to try to use it as productively as possible. So those decisions on how to practice, or how long to practice, or how long to meet, or how long to allocate certain timeframes to different things are based on where our team is, who the opponent is and sometimes what I feel, and sometimes the staff will recommend that as well to me. Like, ‘Here’s what I think we need.’
“It may be different from week to week. A lot of times it is. So even though we have a general routine, which I think it’s important to be on a routine, … if you change it, then I think you need to have a reason to change it. Last week, I just felt like that was the right thing to do. (I) talked to the players and talking to the staff, as well, I think we all kind of felt like that.”
Belichick said the “players responded extremely well.”
“I thought we tried to play hard and physical (Sunday), which we need to do and continue to do,” he said. “We’ll just have to manage it from week to week. Our schedule is going to change a little bit coming up here in the coming weeks, but we’re on another Sunday-to-Sunday week this week. So we’ll talk about it here after the game, and try to figure out what’s best for this one. But I thought the players … did a great job of that this week. Our captains and our veteran players gave us a lot of leadership there, in terms of the way we handled it. That’s really important.
“So they took the change and, I thought, utilized that time to lock in and spend extra mental preparation time in the understanding of the Lions offensive, defensive, special teams systems, personnel and so forth. So when we did actually practice and then play, that was reflected in the execution for a team that we really didn’t know hardly at all based on the number of new players that they’ve had since the last time we played them. So I think really more than the schedule, the credit needs to go to the players for the way they handled it, the way they applied it and got the most out of it.”
Longtime special teams captain Matthew Slater said Monday he doesn’t expect Wednesday walkthroughs to become a weekly staple in New England. There’s a reason the Patriots practiced as hard as they did throughout their dynasty era, and the payoff spoke for itself.
But watching his team put on by far its most impressive performance of the season, perhaps we’ll see some permanent shifts in Belichick’s philosophy moving forward. The Patriots will visit the Jacoby Brissett-led Cleveland Browns this Sunday.
