Bill Belichick won’t be concerned with Buffalo’s weather until Monday night
The New England Patriots’ Week 13 matchup against the Buffalo Bills is shaping up to be one for the books.
New England (8-4) is currently second in the AFC and leading the AFC East, but the Bills (7-4) are looking to take back their spot on top. The Patriots are entering the game with the No. 1 scoring defense and Buffalo is behind at No. 2, while both teams are in the top 10 in scoring.
One of the intriguing factors heading into the Monday night matchup is the weather — which is calling for 20-40 MPH winds and a snowy mess. Friday morning while speaking with reporters, Bill Belichick addressed the forecast.
“Usually we talk about it once we know for sure what it is, which a lot of times that’s when we get to the stadium,” Belichick said, transcribed by WEEI. “It’s hard to really I think hang your hat on a lot of predictions here. So we’ll go with the known information, understanding what it obviously could be.
“We’re not expecting overheating and fans on the sideline.”
Reporters continued to ask about the weather and Belichick continued to stick with his original sentiment.
“Again, on the weather, we don’t really spend a lot of time on that,” Belichick said. “We practice in a variety of conditions from the start of training camp to the end of the season, so whenever they come up they come up. We learn from those. Those may or may not be what we get that particular week. But somewhere along the line it could come into play. So we talk about that and how it would affect certain plays, situations, ball-handling, etc. It’s kind of a continual conversation on that.”
This game will be Mac Jones’ biggest test thus far due to the weather and Buffalo’s hostile environment.
“Buffalo’s always a challenging place to play because the wind will affect the kicking game more than it will affect the passing game,” Belichick noted. “So as it relates to field position, ball-handling, field goal rang, direction of the kicks, so forth. Obviously it will be a key factor in the game depending on what it is. But that’s part of the challenge of playing there. It will be the same for both teams and we’ll see how everybody handles it. But it will definitely be a factor, again more of a factor in the kicking game than the passing game although it could affect the passing game. But it will affect the kicking game first.”
At the very least, this will be an incredibly entertaining game.
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