The Patriots have their rallying cry for the 2024 season
FOXBORO -- As the Patriots continued to run wild late in their Week 1 win over the Cincinnati Bengals, the team found its rallying cry for the 2024 NFL season. Success begins on the practice field, or in New England's case, the hill behind it.
In his first year as head coach, Jerod Mayo rang his team through the ringer throughout training camp. While rules have done away with those grueling two-a-days of yesteryear, the Patriots had some pretty heavy practice sessions throughout the summer.
And when those sessions were done and players thought they might be done for the day, Mayo would send them to run up the hill behind the practice field to get in some more conditioning. No player was eager to attack that incline after a two-plus hour practice, but that extra work was evident when New England had enough left in the tank to close the door on a potential Bengals comeback on Sunday.
The Patriots were pretty set on running the ball on offense in Week 1. The Bengals knew that, but still couldn't do anything to stop it, thank in large part to New England's superior conditioning. Rhamondre Stevenson pounded Cincinnati for 120 yards on his 25 carries, and picked up 118 of those yards after a Bengals defender tried to bring him down.
As Stevenson and the Pats offense picked up yards and ran out the clock, the phrase "Take them to the hill!" kept being repeated on the New England sideline. The meaning is simple: Keep pushing, because the job isn't done until it's done.
Mayo was proud of his team's mindset late in that 16-10 win, and loves that the extra work after practice has been embraced.
"We talked about artificially creating adversity during practice. One of those ways is to go to the hill after a two hour and 15 minute practice where you go one or two ways. One way is like, 'oh man, I got to go to the hill.' The other way is, 'all right, we've got to break down through this wall, and push our bodies.' Most of the time, and I tell the guys this all the time, your mind is going to give up before your body gives up," Mayo explained Wednesday. "Being able to go to the hill or take them to the deep water, as we like to say, because we do have a lot of faith in our conditioning and what we've gone through throughout the summer. The guys that started saying, 'take them to the hill' during that fourth quarter. I love it. That was from the players."
Quarterback Jacoby Brissett was attributed with starting all that hill talk in the huddle and on the sideline, and several other players joined in throughout the rest of the game.
"We got to the point where it was just, we saw what type of game it turned into, and the cool part was it was no egos in the huddle.," Brissett said Wednesday. "Everybody kind of bought into it and realized we're running one play the whole time and they're not stopping it, so why change it?
"I think that was one of the cooler moments in my career," added Brissett. "Everybody in the huddle was saying, 'Let's take them to the hill' because we knew we were in that much better shape than they were, and I think it paid off."
The Bengals made things interesting with a field goal with just over six minutes to go to make it a 16-10 game. As heavy undedogs on the road, the Patriots could have tightened up and let that lead slip away.
But the defense knew it was their time to take it to the Bengals. Cincinnati went three-and-out on their final possession of the game, and the Patriots eventually walked off with an upset road win to start the 2024 season.
"We already knew what time it was -- it was time to finish the game," said defensive lineman Davon Godchaux. "Going forward, that will be the saying, especially in close games."
Now the Patriots need to keep it going, as they'll look to improve to 2-0 when they host the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday afternoon. You may even see a few "Take them to the hill" T-shirts in the stadium.
Just don't expect the players to make any extra cheddar off the phrase. Not yet, at least.
"Someone's probably already done it. I definitely need to copyright that," Godchaux joked Wednesday.