New England Patriots Thread Mod Warning Post #253

eagle eye wrote: »

Well I've had this belief for a couple of years now that the Patriots aren't winding up players to full game fitness on purpose for a couple of games.

Look at our first six games which were and are Chiefs, Saints, Texans, Panthers and Jets.

It's not too hard to go 4-2 there and then have everybody up for the Falcons and Chargers and a bye week before two of our toughest games of the regular season in Denver and Oakland.

As I've said before I may be way off on this but I just feel we are keeping players below full fitness on purpose so that they last the season. Injury had gotten in our way a lot in the past and over the past couple of years we haven't had that bad injury run like before.

When the Atlanta Falcons faltered down the stretch of Super Bowl 51 on Sunday, the New England Patriots kept coming.

Over the course of the game, the Patriots ran 99 plays to the Falcons' 49, according to CSN New England's Phil Perry, simply wearing down the Falcons.

Conditioning can be an overlooked aspect of sports, in part because it's hard to see and define. However, in Super Bowl 51, it ended up being a defining factor. The Falcons defense was tired after spending so much time chasing the Patriots, and down the stretch, they couldn't get to Tom Brady or slow down his receivers.

The secret to the Patriots' conditioning is a basic, old-school drill that players alluded to after the game as a deciding factor: sprinting up a hill.

Julian Edelman, one of the game's biggest heroes, said of the Patriots outlasting the Falcons: "We've got these stupid hills in Foxborough that we have to run, like literally, until we left. We all b---- and complain about it. But hey, we do it. We put in the work. We put in the conditioning."

As Perry documented in July, the hills behind the Gillette Stadium are a big part of the Patriots' training. There are two hills, according to Perry. "One is 20 yards long and steep. The other is 60 yards long and features more of a gradual incline," he wrote. They are both finely manicured, with 5-yard lines so players know the distance left to run.

The Patriots run these hills in training camp, but apparently they were running them up until the week before the Super Bowl.

"We were running the hill last week," said tight end Martellus Bennett. "And I was like, who runs the hill in Week 23? Guys were tired, but guys got out there, they ran full speed up the hill. We're just a team that works."

It's not a fun task for the players. Wide receiver Danny Amendola told Perry that "it's a beast, for sure," while tackle Nate Solder compared it to taking medicine.

However, the act of sprinting up the incline helps players. Nick Caserio, the director of player personnel, told Sirius XM Radio over the summer: "That hill's great. That hill gets them in shape pretty quickly. Those guys don't like it, but they'll probably, in the fourth quarter, realize it's worthwhile."

mcgratheoin wrote: »

I think he means that they may not be at peak sharpness this early in the season - essentially that they're still working on their base conditioning to get it to such a high level. There is a reasonable argument to be made that the Pats (Brady definitely does) plan every season around being at their best for the Super Bowl whereas other teams may taper towards their first game and find it hard to maintain that level throughout the season.


http://www.bostonsbigfour.com/?p=12251

mcgratheoin wrote: »

Didn't he mention at one point that even if the Pats are eliminated he still keeps his workout plan going up to the SB?

I don't disagree with what the Pats do, I'm just pointing out that doing conditioning work consistently through the season is not a typical way of reaching or maintaining peak fitness. If you look at any other sport, you build your fitness through a base phase before tapering towards a peak for your targeted event. There isn't a single athlete out there that would be running hills a week before the Olympics. Given the difficulty in maintaining a peak (the clue is in the name) it appears as if the Patriots have decided to build a plateau of fitness that remains consistent across the season (hence the heavy endurance work throughout the year). The corollary of this is that other teams who may operate a more peak/trough fitness regime could potentially be sharper than the Pats in the early season.