BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Even now, Troy Brown finds it hard to understand. Thirteen years ago, in the final minutes of Super Bowl XXXIX between the Patriots and Eagles, the tortoise-like progression down the field by Philadelphia at a time when it had a chance to mount a comeback continues to puzzle the former Patriots receiver.

“We were looking at each other like, ‘What’s going on?’ ’’ said Brown, who watched as Philadelphia took nearly four minutes on its touchdown drive, with more than 30 seconds ticking off the clock between several plays.

“We just couldn’t figure out what the heck they were doing. After the fact, rumors were floating around that [quarterback Donovan] McNabb was dry-heaving. Whatever it was, it sure did us a big favor.’’

McNabb has disputed the dry-heaving notion, but regardless, those Eagles couldn’t give themselves a chance to win, in part, because they weren’t ready to play at full tilt in the waning minutes against the Patriots.

They aren’t alone.

The decisive drive in each of the Patriots’ seven Super Bowls with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady has come in the fourth quarter. New England has won the four times in which it scored at least 10 fourth-quarter points. It lost two of the three in which it scored 7 or fewer.

In the most recent Super Bowls, furious fourth quarters — 14 unanswered points against the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX and last season’s 19-point blur against the Falcons — were part of two of the biggest comebacks in Super Bowl history.

New England’s ability to outplay its opponent in the waning minutes of championship games is not an accident. The Patriots are pushed to be ready.

“That’s the way Bill [Belichick] coaches this football team,’’ said Brown. “It shows up every single year, every single week.

“He feels like if the games are close, his team has the better shot of winning, just because he feels like they’ve been trained and taught to play through those situations better than the other team.’’

Nothing has come to epitomize the pursuit of a late-game advantage more than The Hill.

‘Put it in the bank’

The Hill is actually two hills that the Patriots installed behind their Gillette Stadium practice field prior to the 2013 season for sprints at the conclusion of workouts. According to running back Dion Lewis, the longer one is 60 yards, while defensive line coach Brendan Daly said that the steeper hill is roughly 20 yards.

The Patriots don’t use The Hill after every practice, but they do visit it frequently, starting with their May OTAs. According to strength and conditioning coach Moses Cabrera, the team spent time on it every week this season save for the weeks preceding their back-to-back high-altitude games in Denver and Mexico City. As recently as last week, they were still ascending the slope.

While players typically might be asked to make 6-8 sprints up the hill, the number isn’t fixed. It is determined by one man.

“That’s Coach Belichick’s call,’’ said Cabrera. “They ask me, ‘How many do we have?’ I don’t know. It’s up to him. Whatever he decides, he’s got that 40 years of experience, so whatever he feels it is that day, that’s what it is.’’

As the players whoosh by, Belichick exhorts them to keep pushing. He often provides reminders that the purpose of the undertaking is practical, not punitive. Among his oft-heard phrases: “60 minutes’’ and “Put it in the bank.’’

Players quickly come to understand his meaning.

“Put it in the bank and take it out when you need it,’’ said running back James White.

“We’re a mentally tough team, a physically tough team, and we put a lot of work in to try to prepare ourselves for that fourth quarter, overtime, whatever it may be,’’ said center David Andrews. “We’re going to go the distance.’’

All teams have conditioning programs, and every one of them is mindful of building stamina in its players. Still, the first time a player is confronted with The Hill as a member of the Patriots, it becomes clear that things in New England are a bit different.

“You can see their faces when they first start doing it — kind of, ‘What are we doing here?’ ’’ observed special teams coach Joe Judge. “By the end, they understand it.’’

As a rookie in 2015, Andrews’s first time proved, quite literally, a slog.

“I think it stormed the first day we were there,’’ recalled Andrews. “My shoes are splashing, I feel like I’m 400 pounds soaking wet. I was like, ‘Man, this is tough.’

“But you get into a rhythm, you realize some day you’re going to need to reach down and use that experience.’’

Linebacker Marquis Flowers’s introduction to The Hill following his trade from the Bengals in late August offered immediate evidence that he was in a new program.

“It was just like, ‘Yo, the rumor is true. These dudes do run hills after a hard practice,’ ’’ said Flowers. “I just felt like everybody was ahead of me from where I came from.

“I didn’t really condition after practice [in Cincinnati]. Practice was conditioning. I felt like I had to catch up.’’

One part of larger plan

The payoff isn’t immediately apparent, but it usually comes to light. The Patriots’ advantages tend to become more pronounced as the season progresses, and the same goes for their performance late in games.

In seven regular-season and playoff games since the start of December, New England has outscored its opponents in the fourth quarter, 58-13. Against Jacksonville, in particular, the disparity seemed evident.

“You could see they were tired,’’ said Flowers. “We were looking over there and saying, ‘It’s time to go.’ We’re on the uphill. If y’all can’t handle it, you can’t handle it.

“Against a good defense like that, we had to have an edge. I thought that was a great edge. We’re looking faster on tape. We’re not tired. We’re not breathing heavy.’’

That wasn’t the first crucial game in which conditioning made a difference. The Patriots sensed the same advantage against the Falcons in last year’s Super Bowl.

“Around the fourth quarter, we noticed that their energy was just dying down,’’ said safety Duron Harmon. “Once we catch onto that, that gave us more energy.

“I saw the receivers’ body language. When you’re tired, you mentally get out of it, too. I feel like they broke down in the fourth quarter, while we were still giving out energy.’’

The Patriots don’t rely exclusively on The Hill for end-of-practice conditioning. They’ll also employ more common practices such as gassers (sprints from one sideline to the other and back) and striders, as well as no-huddle drills.

Moreover, they don’t rely solely on conditioning to keep them playing their sharpest at the end of the game.

The emphasis on conditioning for 60 minutes is complemented by a broader notion of workload management and player rotations tailored not only to game situations but to the overall effort to keep them performing as close to their peak levels as possible.

“The last thing you want is at the critical situation at the end of the game, you’re out of gas. You’ve got to figure out a way to prevent that from happening,’’ said Daly. “It’s not just the conditioning after practice that goes into that.’’

Nonetheless, the Patriots’ preparation for a four-quarter game seemingly has been a separator — both on the way to the Super Bowl and in it.

That is no coincidence.

“We go into every game talking about how this is going to be a 60-minute game,’’ said safety Devin McCourty, “especially as we get into bigger games — the playoff games, now being in the Super Bowl.

“These games are rarely decided by midway through the third quarter. It’s going to go down to the last two minutes. We’re willing to put in the work. That makes a difference.’’

Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on twitter at @alexspeier.