Why Wait? Here’s Reason Patriots Did Not Fly Early To Germany

FRANKFURT, Germany — When the Patriots opened their 2022 season in Miami, Bill Belichick had them practice in South Florida for a week to acclimate to the conditions.

New England took a different tack for this week’s game in Germany.

Belichick’s club held its first two Week 10 practices in Foxboro, Mass., then took a red-eye flight from Boston to Frankfurt that took off Thursday and landed Friday morning. Six hours later, they were out on the practice field at the headquarters of the German national soccer team.

Next comes one final prep day on Saturday before Sunday’s matchup with the Indianapolis Colts at Frankfurt Stadium.

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That’s not much time for players — who were instructed not to nap between the overnight flight and the start of practice — to acclimate their body clocks to the six-hour time difference. So why wait until this late in the week rather than traveling, say, Monday or Tuesday?

Belichick explained his rationale ahead of Friday’s practice at the DFB Campus. He said the Patriots took the same approach ahead of their games in London in 2009 and 2012 and found it effective.

“We looked into it and talked about it,” the head coach said. “This is what we’ve done for the other games. The London game was basically the same schedule, so we stuck with that.”

While the delay in travel might result in some grogginess on Sunday, it allowed the Patriots to practice under standard circumstances at their own facility for most of the week. Belichick said the coaching staff front-loaded New England’s game-plan installation and turned their lone full practice in Frankfurt into more of a review day.

“I think the overall preparation at home, not trying to bring all of our stuff here, but trying to do the majority of the groundwork at home and cover all the things (works well),” said Belichick, who was in an uncharacteristically cheerful mood throughout his 17-minute news conference. “Then come here (Friday) and review it — (Friday) and then (Saturday) — and then play the game.

“It felt like that was the most efficient way for us. But it could be different for other teams, I don’t know. I don’t need to comment on that. For us, we felt like it was the best way for us to operate. We’ve done it that way before. I think everybody is very comfortable with it.”

Three of the four teams playing in Germany this season followed the same travel schedule, with the Colts and Kansas City Chiefs also arriving late in the week. The lone outlier, the Miami Dolphins, who flew out Monday, lost to the Chiefs 21-14 last week.

The Patriots will hope Sunday’s game plays out similarly to their previous three international outings. They outscored their London opponents by a combined score of 80-14 and also rolled when they visited Mexico City in 2017, routing the then Raiders 33-8.