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The Super Bowl is still 12 days away, but New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick said that Tuesday would be a "major working day." That's because the Patriots know little about their Super Bowl opponents, the Philadelphia Eagles. The teams meet in Super Bowl LII at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
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"I think in this particular case it's sometimes a little different," Belichick said Tuesday. "Every year is not the same but in this particular case, today is very much of a major working day, and I would say kind of a catch-up day for us because we just don't know very much about Philadelphia."
The Patriots have not played the Eagles since December 2015, and Philadelphia has changed head coaches since then. Chip Kelly was the Eagles head coach when they last played New England. Doug Pederson is the head coach now.
"You know," said Belichick, "other years when we had played a team more recently like Seattle, who we had played two years before but in a regular-season game, but there was some carry-over from that or in the (New York) Giant years where we had played those teams in the regular season, there was a little bit less of an acclimation to the opponent this week because we had some background with them.
"In this case we really don't know very much about Philadelphia. We have a lot of ground that we need to cover, so we're at it hard trying to catch up so when we bring the players in, we'll be ready for them and we can do a good job of presenting the information to them efficiently and accurately because, again, there's a lot of information to digest."
Adding to the preparation problem for the Patriots is that Nick Foles was not the Eagles' quarterback for the bulk of the regular season. Foles took over when Carson Wentz suffered a torn ACL on Dec. 10.
"But the bottom line is it's a lot to sort out and then pull together pretty concisely because, again, for all those games that we look at -- let's call it 18 games, just to pick a number -- I mean that's probably 2,500 plays in all three phases of the game and there's just going to be 160," Belichick said. "So they can't do everything that we've ever seen them do.
"We have to be prepared for a lot of things but at the same time we can't be overly distracted by things that either have a low percentage chance of coming up or probably wouldn't be the type of thing they would do against us."
The New England head coach noted that this is an unusual situation in terms of preparation. Although he acknowledges advance scouts have documented what the Eagles like to do, his staff has not analyzed it all for coaching purposes yet.
"Today is a tough day because normally at this point we would have a lot of information on the new team," he said.
The Patriots have used trick plays to scuttle opponents' preparation plans, and they had several against Jacksonville in the AFC Championship Game.
Danny Amendola also used a bit of deception on a punt return when he gave the signal for teammates to stay clear of a punt, suggesting he would not field the ball. But Amendola did catch the punt and converted it into a significant return.
"Well, sure," Belichick said. "I think that's a heads-up, deceptive kind of move by the returner, by Danny, to get the coverage to relax or pull up a little bit and give him an opportunity to create a little bit more space and make a play."
The two weeks of preparation have already begun.
