The New England Patriots did not appear as though playing in Mexico on Sunday bothered them at all, as they rolled to a 33-8 win over the Oakland Raiders. However, Bill Belichick made it clear that playing in another country presented enormous challenges.
On Monday, Belichick told WEEI that he is not anxious to play another game in Mexico City despite the success his team had.
“Personally, I wouldn’t be in any big rush to do it again,” Belichick said, as transcribed by Mike Reiss of ESPN.com. “It’s a long way to go for a game. There’s a lot in terms of all the logistics of it. They are not used to having an NFL team, so you have to go in there and handle a lot of the logistics. It took a lot of manpower, a lot of hours, a lot of energy out of our organization to do that. We are exhausted from the trip.”
Veteran offensive lineman Joe Thomas believes another NFL team — the Atlanta Falcons — had it much tougher than the Patriots or Raiders this week.
I hear Belicheck complaining about traveling to play in Mexico City… well the real complaining should be from teams that have to play on the west coast on Monday night… my friends on the @AtlantaFalcons just got home at 8:32am. New week starts in less than 24 hrs.
— Joe Thomas (@joethomas73) November 21, 2017
It feels like there has been more talk than ever this year about the imperfections with NFL scheduling. We have already heard numerous concerns about the supposed dangers of playing games on Thursday night, and complaints about international games are nothing new. Unless the NFL is planning to schedule games only on Sundays and in appropriate time zones, don’t expect the talk to fade out anytime soon.
