Following the scary scene involving Isaiah Bolden on Saturday night, the Patriots chose to cancel joint practices in Tennessee this week.
New England will still travel to Nashville on Thursday for the final game of the preseason Friday night, but instead of picking up the entire organization and traveling once again, Bill Belichick, his staff and the team will now look to maximize the two days of practice here at home before hopping on the plane.
Belichick explained the decision making process on Monday morning and also provided an update on Bolden.
“It just felt like after the game, you know, we had a little bit of time there in the locker room to just kind of look at the situation and made the decision that the best thing for the team would be to come back here and not go to Tennessee,” Belichick said in an opening statement. “It was a hard decision. As much as we’d like to work against them, just tried to balance the situation. There was a number of things involved. Came back yesterday, Isaiah [Bolden] came back with us. It was good to see him. I had an opportunity to talk to him. He’s alert and traveling with the team, so that was good. I thought that Dr. [Scott] Martin, Dr. [Gian] Corrado, Jim Whalen [Head Athletic Trainer], they were obviously right on top of the situation and did a great job of handling it and taking care of Isaiah. He was able to be released after being in the hospital after the game and come back with us on the plane. Obviously, things checked out medically for him to be able to do that. Back here this week, last preseason game, a lot of things that we still need to work on.
“I thought we made progress, a lot of progress, working against the Packers. I really appreciate the opportunity and the cooperation that we got from Coach [Matt] LaFleur and the entire organization. You know, Joe [Barry] on defense and Rich [Bisaccia] in the kicking game, we got a lot of good quality work that helped our team – players, coaches, staff, everybody – get better. So, we’ll push ahead this week here and go down to Tennessee and finish up the preseason and then start getting ready for the regular season.”
It’s clear that joint practices have become more important than preseason games because of the controlled nature of the practice and the ability to do things over and over again if need be, but still, opting to work at home this week may benefit the team in the long run. Remember the trips to Vegas and then early for Miami last year? They proved to be unnecessary – particularly the Miami trip – and it’s a sign of Belichick having a good read on this team already. The Patriots will take Monday to do some self assessment before figuring out what practices will look like. Starters that would have got useful reps against the Titans during the week this week may play a bit more, but that’s still up in the air right now as well.
“Well, we’ll talk about that today, and we’ll be on the field tomorrow,” Belichick added. “We really have two days this week. It’s a shorter week, so we’ll have practice tomorrow and Wednesday and head down to Tennessee on Thursday. We’ll spend some time this morning, today, going through what we need the most, how to get the most out of these next two days, because it’s really a two-day, I would say, planning process, rather than one. We’ve got to figure out how to maximize Tuesday, how to maximize Wednesday. We kind of know what Thursday is going to look like, and today is going to be a day to review the film and kind of go back over the Green Bay game and even some of the things that came up in practice, and then we’ll be moving on. So, we’ll take today to figure out what the priorities are, but we want to address the priorities over the next two days, so that’s what it’ll be.”