TAMPA, Fla. -- The New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be practicing together Wednesday morning.
I’m heading out to One Buccaneer Place to watch practice (at least the 30 minutes of it that are open to the media, which is all you can expect from Bill Belichick and Greg Schiano). I’ll do interviews before and after practice and will be back with much more after all that’s over. Hopefully, I’ll be able to work in an “Around the NFC South’’ post between practice and interviews.
Meantime, Belichick talked about why he likes to practice against other teams in the preseason. The Patriots previously worked out with the Saints before a preseason game in New England and the Patriots will take on the Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium on Friday night.
“If you feel like you can do something that benefits your team then you consider doing it,’’ Belichick said in a conference call with the New England media on Tuesday night. “I’ve talked to many teams about doing something along the lines of what we’ve done this year or in the past with New Orleans and Atlanta a couple years ago. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn’t for one reason or another and that’s true on the other side of it. It has to be mutually beneficial. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t work, then I would prefer not to do it rather than do it and solve one problem but create two other ones down the line.
“Those things are good but they can be all outweighed by other things if it doesn’t work out right for you," Belichick said. “I wouldn’t do it just to do it. I would only do it if I thought it was beneficial to our team."