If the Patriots can win and improve to 5-3, a bye week and two straight home games would give the team a chance to get rolling—not to mention healthier—down the stretch.

“That’s what happens when you go this long and guys are playing with bumps and bruises and certainly nobody is 100 percent at this point and everyone kind of looks at that bye week as a point where, ‘Man, if we can just get to the bye week, get a little bit healthy then we can hopefully put together a great stretch of games,” Brady said at the Grosvenor House Hotel during the team’s media availability.

“You look at this game as a very critical point in our season, where if we can just get to 5-3, we feel like we’re at a decent point where we’ve learned a lot from the last eight games, what we do well, we’ve learned things that we don’t do so well, and you can move forward with mental toughness and playing Patriot football kind of the way that we need to the rest of the year when football season really gets going.”

Mayo, who looked very tired after sleeping a few hours on the flight, agreed with Brady.