While the Patriots will benefit from extra rest after their Thursday Night game against the Dolphins, their opponents will be even more rested; Washington is coming out of their bye week.
New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick won't be complaining, but there is definitely a difference when facing teams coming off a bye.
"Normally if a team was playing today, you'd have to break down the film on Monday and put it into the scouting report and get whatever injuries or anything like that that occurred in the game and start to try to factor that in," Belichick said during a Sunday press conference. "We're not really expecting any new information on the Redskins. We have everything that we had for them based on the last game last week against Tampa.
"We were finished with them really early last week with the people on our staff that kind of do the prep work on that. After the game, by Friday, certainly by yesterday, I think all of us were fully caught up on Washington as far as looking at what we already have and normally that wouldn't happen until Monday night."
So while there are benefits to extra rest, coaches also receive extra time to watch tape to evaluate what the other team has shown through this point in the season. Washington will have an extra game's worth of material to dissect prior to the match-up.
"That's the way it always is," Belichick continued. "But from our planning standpoint, it gives us a little more time to get organized on that and figure out what we're going to do."
On the other hand, the fact that the Patriots played on Thursday partially negates the value of extra tape.
"We played on Thursday so they saw what it was," Belichick said. "They saw whatever things we did in that game, they've seen them, they can start preparing for them. I think it washes out, pretty close to washes out anyway."
New England is the major favorite against visiting Washington, and you can count of Bill Belichick to use the extra time to maximize the Patriots' advantage.