FOXBORO — Bill Belichick has prepped his team for many different trips under many different circumstances. From Super Bowls to a pair of two-week trips to California for back-to-back games on the West Coast, they’ve seen it all.

Different types of goal posts on the pitch at Wembley.

But Belichick’s Patriots have never been across the big pond to play a regular-season game in one of most famous sporting venues in all of Europe.

So, when the team leaves on a red-eye Thursday night for London to play Tampa Bay on Sunday, he and the organization will certainly have done their homework for the trip.

“We’ve certainly spent a lot of time on the logistics in trying to make sure that we’re ready to do the most important thing, which is play the game and prepare for the game,” Belichick said. “That being said, I’ve coached in a lot of games but never one like this, so this is a new experience and one that certainly breaks up the routine a little bit.

“I’ve been to London before. It’s a great city. It’s a great place to visit. We’re not going there to necessarily do a lot of sightseeing and all that, but it’s a different venue and something that’s a little bit new for, basically, all of us — either if you’ve been there but not during football season, not to play a game there.”

Belichick has always appreciated history, and playing at Wembley is no different.

“Wembley Stadium is very historical. I’m sure it will be something that we’ll all remember. I’ve coached in a lot of games and to be honest with you I can’t say that I can recall them [all], but I doubt this is a game that you would play in or coach in and look back in 10 years and say. … I’m sure there will be a lot of memories of the whole – the trip, the game, the venue, the whole thing. Is it different? Yeah. It certainly is something we’re looking forward to, but the most important thing is we’re ready to play.”

Belichick chuckled when asked if he had ever taken a team on a trip out of the country before.

“When I was in Cleveland we played a preseason game against the Patriots in Toronto, which was a barnburner as I recall,” Belichick joked of the 12-9 titanic tilt in 1993.

There was no passport required for that game at SkyDome.

“It didn’t,” Belichick said. “It barely required a plane trip.”

Don’t ask Belichick to wax poetic on the virtues of spreading the NFL game.

“Look, that’s not my [job],” Belichick said. “I’m just trying to coach a team; I’m not trying to solve the world’s problems or tell the league how to run the league and all that. I’m just trying to coach a team. I’ll leave that to…There’re a lot of other people that know a lot more about that than I do.”

This is the third NFL International Series game. The Giants beat the Dolphins, 13-10, in 2007 and the Saints beat the Chargers, 37-32, last season.

In addition to Rob Ninkovich, who played for Miami in the ’07 game, Belichick acknowledged that he did talk with members of those teams to get a feel for what to expect.

“Obviously the biggest thing is the time change,” Belichick said. “It’s the same for both teams. It’s a long trip and you have to readjust. The decision, really, was to either go over early and get used to that and try to take your whole operation over there – all your meetings, film, preparation work and all that – and do it at that end, or do it at this end and then go over and try to adjust to the time change. We’ve selected this option. I’m sure there’re other teams that have done it other ways. We felt like this was what was best for us, was to get our preparation done here and then make the move on Thursday.”

Belichick’s team will gain an hour of sleep on Saturday night when they turn back the clocks an hour, accounting for Sunday’s 5 p.m. [1 p.m. ET] London time kickoff, a mere four hours ahead of Eastern time.

The Patriots will gain another hour on Halloween when they turn back the clocks on their bye-week Saturday, along with the rest of the Eastern time zone.

While the Bucs will be leaving on Friday morning, the Patriots are traveling on a red-eye Thursday night. That was no random decision.

“When the schedule came out and we saw this game on the schedule we looked into it,” Belichick said. “We sent the search party out there in the spring and a little bit earlier this season to look at the different options – where to practice, the accommodations [and] all the stuff that’s different about this trip. They’ve done a great job organizationally of preparing us for it and giving us the options.”

While this game will have the world’s attention, Belichick considers this more like the team’s two West Coast trips in ’08 than a Super Bowl.

“I’d say it’s completely different, because in those situations, like last year when we went to California, we did all of our preparation out there,” Belichick said. “We moved the whole thing there. This is really more like an away game, like a West Coast trip. It’s just a longer one. You get into international travel and that extends the before and after flight time, and going to a place that basically we’ve never been to before.

“There’re hardly any games we play where we haven’t been to wherever it is we’re going – the city, the logistics, the stadium and so forth. Every once in a while there’s a little change, but for the most part we’ve all done that. This is one where there’s just a lot of newness. It will be fun to see what that’s all about.”