Thursday marks the first public practice for the Patriots and for Bill Belichick, it’s time to start getting his team ready for another NFL season.
The Patriots head coach finds himself in a difficult situation this year after the league suspended his starting quarterback for the DeflateGate debacle, but now he’s forced to make the best of it as he gets back-up Jimmy Garoppolo up to speed to hopefully keep his team in the playoff hunt over the first four weeks of the season.
The team has four straight days of public practices beginning today, with the Patriots set to practice from 9:15am-11:45am today, tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday at Gillette Stadium. It’s one of the most exciting times of the year, and it’s an opportunity for fans to get an up close look at the players as they start getting to work to prepare for the upcoming season.
One of the only constants in this game is change and as Belichick heads into his 42nd year as a coach in the NFL, he admitted that while some things are similar, this year, like every other, is certainly a little different.
“It absolutely is even though fundamentally I think a lot of things are the same; things you have to do in camp in order to prepare for a season, but each year is different,” said Belichick. “Players are different, teams we play are different, things change in the league, there are some rule modifications, or whatever. Things like that.”
“So, every year is different and the chemistry – each team is different. Even with some of the same players there’s still always a little bit of a different mix. We’ll just have to see how it all goes. I don’t try and predict it. I don’t try and control it. It will just work itself out. We’ve got a lot of snaps out there, a lot of days, a lot of training camp days. It will all take care of itself.”
For now it’s a long road as they begin getting ready for the regular season. It’s all about getting out there and putting the players through the repetition of practice as the Patriots start the process of building the version of this year’s team. It’s a new beginning and while Belichick is anxious to get started, he knows that they have a long way to go.
“We’ve all got a lot of work to do and there’s no shortcut to it,” said Belichick. “There’s no magic pill you can take. You’ve got to go out there and do it. So, that’s what we all need to do; me, assistant coaches, veteran players, rookie players, everybody.”
“We just need to go out there and grind through it day after day and work at it and get better. There’s no shortcut. There’s no secret to it. We’ve just got to go out there and grind our way through it.”
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
