Why Jabrill Peppers spent Sunday at a Holiday Inn pool before Patriots’ upset win over Bengals

"I was up all night, probably only got like two hours of sleep on Friday."

Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers made his presence felt in Sunday’s season-opening win over the Bengals.

A vocal leader and feared thumper in New England’s secondary, Peppers doled out six tackles in New England’s 16-10 road win against Cincinnati — solidifying a New England defense that limited the Bengals to just 13 first downs and 154 passing yards.

But just a few days ago, it looked as though the Patriots captain was going to spend Sunday’s game watching from the sideline.

A late addition to the Patriots’ injury report on Friday, Peppers was deemed questionable to play on Sunday due to a hip injury — with Peppers acknowledging to reporters that he suffered the injury during Friday’s practice at Gillette Stadium.

“I kind of landed funny,” Peppers told the Boston Herald’s Doug Kyed. “And I kind of felt it, but later on that night, I really couldn’t sleep. I was up all night, probably only got like two hours of sleep on Friday,” Peppers said. “Came in, couldn’t really walk Saturday morning. And I didn’t know that they had to list me as whatever they listed me as. I attacked the treatment, and they had a good game plan for me.”

While the Patriots’ training staff formulated a last-minute game plan to get Peppers on the field for Sunday’s season opener, they were dealt a significant hurdle. The team hotel that the Patriots were staying at in Cincinnati did not have a pool in it — limiting Peppers’ options to work his ailing hip without any restrictions.

The solution? Peppers and New England’s trainers went across the street to a Holiday Inn Express, where they were able to use the pool on both Saturday night and Sunday morning, per NBC Sports Boston’s Phil Perry.

“Had to go to the hotel across the street to use the pool, get my legs going and everything,” Peppers told Kyed. “There was no way I was going to miss the first game of the season, my leg would have had to fall off to miss that.”

It might have been an unorthodox recovery routine, but it was well worth it for a Patriots defense that feeds off of the energy that Peppers provides during a game.

“I would say at this point, nothing ‘Brill does is surprising,” Ja’Whaun Bentley said of Peppers gutting through his hip injury. “The stuff that he’s able to fight through, and his grit and his tenacity and his intensity, it just trickles off to the defense, even I found myself paying attention to what he’s doing, and we all just feed off of that every day. … You’re not going to have the juice — quote, unquote — every single day. That’s why you lean on each other. You’ve got 11 different guys.

“You just lean on each other. If you ain’t got it, we know he got it. … Whether it’s physical or mental, things happen in the game, that adversity, you got to be able to lean on each other. And it’s proven each and every day in practice. It starts on the practice field, and we just hope every day: process, progress, pay off. That’s what we preach in our building. That’s what we show today.”