Image courtesy of Yahoo Sports
Following another historically bad loss at home on Sunday, the Patriots locker room sounded like a funeral home during a wake.
A few guys were willing to face a hoard of media cameras and reporters and answer questions. A few of them chatted with a reporter or two for a few minutes, but most sat quietly at their lockers – David Andrews in particular spent about 10 minutes alone with his head down before heading to the showers – got dressed and headed home. Very few small conversations amongst locker mates took place, but there was no laughter, not a smile to be found..
“We’ve got to just take it on the chin right now,” Patriots linebacker Jahlani Tavai said while sitting at his locker. “The Saints outplayed us today. They did their thing coming in. We’re going to take it on the chin and keep rolling. Look in the mirror.”
It’s the roughest time this franchise has gone through since the early 90’s and there’s little reason to believe. More importantly, the defense currently has zero reason to believe the offense has it’s back when it comes to the scoreboard. At some point, human nature is going to kick in. This team still has long trips to Germany, a Christmas Eve trip to Denver and multiple division games. It also hosts the Chiefs on Monday Night Football in December. You think guys on defense are going to enjoy being with the offense for those trips – especially Christmas Eve away from family – if this continues?
The ‘check out’ factor looms large and is something Bill Belichick needs to worry about. Some guys are committed – and most probably still are as professionals – but another two or three weeks of ineptitude on offense will have defensive guys wanting answers immediately or doing the bare minimum to play out the string.
“The biggest thing is, we can’t create separation,” Tavai said. “I know there’s a lot of frustration, or whatever it is, we’ve just got to stick together. We’ve got our leaders to make sure we do that. It’s still early. It’s still early.”
It may be early, but the sense of urgency needs to happen now. Frankly, it’s stunning it has happened already.
“I’m not thinking like that,” Tavai said when asked if the fact it’s only October is something guys can fall back on instead of lamenting. “I’m thinking about right now. I’m thinking about things to clean up for us, but we can’t look three months ahead. We’ve got to look at the Raiders right now. Today, we’re going to take it on the chin and tomorrow we’re going to look at Vegas.”
One of the leaders Tavai spoke of is David Andrews. While dejected both at the podium and in the locker room, the Pats will need guys like him to keep everyone pulling in the same direction and avoid turning into the teams fans around here mocked for two decades. Hell, even the mid-to-late 90’s (Bledsoe/Parcells & Carroll eras) never felt like this at any point.
“Look, I think the biggest thing is, let’s just start over. Come back to work. Like I said, I don’t know anything else to do but come back to work, work hard, push, pry and do everything I can to try to put our best performance out there Sunday,” Andrews said. “That’s what I’m going to try to do this week, and I think we’ve got a lot of people in the locker room that are going to try to do that.”
He and Belichick better hope he’s right about that last part, especially if that side the ball continues to fall flat on its face. If not, this is going to get much, much uglier.