After eking out a victory over the rival New York Jets Thursday night on a short week, the New England Patriots are off for the weekend--no practice or team activities.
"I think definitely there’s something to be said for a cleansing of the mind," Patriots coach Bill Belichick said Friday. "We’ve been at it here pretty hard since the end of July. It’s been virtually every day. So, that’s all of August, all of September and we’re halfway through October.
"I’d say there probably wasn’t much more than any 24-hour period there where there hasn’t been, I’d say, quite a bit of substantial, hopefully anyway, substantial thought, preparation, treatment, whatever you want to call it, different aspects of preparation, physical conditioning, mental film study and preparation that hasn’t gone into each and every guy over that period of time.
"I think there’s definitely something to be said for taking a couple days and trying to let the system decompress if you will."
The Patriots return to the game field next Sunday to host the Chicago Bears for the second of three straight home games.
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"I think there’s definitely something to be said for taking a couple days and trying to let the system decompress if you will."
The Patriots return to the game field next Sunday to host the Chicago Bears for the second of three straight home games.
"Certainly we’ll be back at it hard here with the Bears," he said. "It’s another good football team coming in here that we don’t know very well. So, we’ll have a lot of preparation to do for them. That will all come. Hopefully somewhere along the line we’ll be able to take advantage of a little time to rest and not have to think about a game plan, not have to think about a scouting report, not have to think about adjustments, not have to think about all the things that we’ve been thinking about for the last two-and-a-half months.
"Each player has had to constantly try to stay on top of all that. But, there’s certainly a lot of things we can work on, I’m not saying that. There’s plenty to do. But somewhere along the line I think we need to back off and try to find some space to get it out of our system for a couple days and then come back and hit it hard again."
"Each player has had to constantly try to stay on top of all that. But, there’s certainly a lot of things we can work on, I’m not saying that. There’s plenty to do. But somewhere along the line I think we need to back off and try to find some space to get it out of our system for a couple days and then come back and hit it hard again."
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