FOXBOROUGH – Will the Patriots starters see any time during Saturday’s preseason game against Philadelphia?
As of now, that’s still to be determined.
With two joint practices scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday against the Eagles this week, throwing Drake Maye, AJ Brown, Will Campbell, Milton Williams, Christian Barmore and others out there for a meaningless game, even if it’s only for a series or a quarter could be disastrous.
That is unless, the team isn’t satisfied with what they get out of those reps with Philly.
On Monday morning, I asked Mike Vrabel if the starters playing or not has already been decided, or whether this week would determine that.
“No, I think you have to use the work that we get and how good the work goes,” he said. “I think, and as long as we get what we set out to accomplish. I mean, two days of joint practices with a lot of reps, I think upwards of probably 28 reps, 30 reps for the first group on each day is a good number. Make sure that the intensity is there, and then we’ll evaluate.”
The NFL could absolutely charge a small fee and stream this practice live and people from both Philly and New England that can’t get to Foxborough either day would be glued to their laptops at work. The anticipation (and constant chatter from Eagles fans and even players) rivals a regular season game, with the obvious AJ Brown story headlining things.
But, don’t forget how good both of these teams should be this season. As far as tune ups go for the regular season, it’s as good as it gets for both squads.
Players understand the ‘more important’ work will come on Wednesday and Thursday, but football players want to play football in a game environment whenever possible. There’s also the whole getting ready for Seattle thing that the Pats need to start ramping up towards.
Following Saturday’s walkthrough, I asked both Mike Onwenu and Will Campbell whether they’d lobby to play Saturday regardless of what happens this week.
Campbell was more diplomatic, while Onwenu seemed hopeful to at least see a few snaps.
“Any ball, that’s my job,” said Onwenu. “Any game I would like to play in. This week, it’s good competition of course, looking forward to that.”
“That’s not my decision, that’s a long way away,” added Campbell. “(Monday) we have practice, that’s really all I’m worried about. We’ve got to have a good practice from start to finish, which we didn’t do the other day. That’s something we’ve got to focus on. We’ve got to go clean up anything we messed up and be ready to go for tomorrow.”
Assuming the fists don’t fly and time isn’t wasted on Wednesday or Thursday, it’s unlikely we see any of the starters on Saturday. But, if Mike Vrabel and the staff aren’t pleased with what they’ve seen, fans may get lucky and catch a glimpse of the real product under the lights at Gillette.