Bill Belichick has said that participating in practices with other NFL teams during the pre-season helps his players prepare for the regular season.
The New England Patriots joined the Philadelphia Eagles at their training camp last week, while the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be working out with the AFC East champions this week.
The Patriots head coach told reporters: "It will be a lot of different match-ups this week. The match-ups are different, the style of play is different, the scheme is different, four-man line, three-man line, a lot of pressure on defense.
"It will be good for us to see different players, different scheme. We're going to have to deal with those during the year too so it will be good to get kind of a whole new look this week. I think it's a good way to prepare our team.
"We've seen ourselves, we've seen Philadelphia and now we'll see Tampa. Our players will get a lot of exposure and I think those things will serve us well at some point down the road. We're going to get them eventually."
The Patriots play the Buccaneers in a pre-season game on Friday.
Sian Cowper
