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FOXBOROUGH – The Patriots are no longer a team that can beat itself and still win games.
On Sunday in another ugly display of football, they did and Miami squeaked out a 15-10 game that fans of football in the 40’s and 50’s would have loved.
The Pats committed 12 penalties for 105 yards while Jacoby Brissett had just 160 yards on an 18-34 clip. As a team, New England had just 299 yards of total offense and were 4-13 on third down.Rhamondre Stevenson had 89 yards rushing on 12 carries, with 33 of those yards coming on a first half TD.
Defensively, the Pats did their job again, holding Miami to three field goals, held the Dolphins to 2-11 on third down and had an interception, but a 15-play, 80 yard drive that took 7:36 was the dagger. Miami scored on an Alec Ingold one yard TD run to cap the march and go up by five.
Brissett led what seemed to be a game-winning drive when he hit Jay’Lynn Polk for a 10 yard touchdown in the back of the end zone with 1:02 left, but after review it was determined Polk had a foot out of bounds. Two ugly plays later and New England turned it over on downs. The defense got the team the ball back one more time, but passes to Kayshon Boutte and Hunter Henry only got the Pats down to the Dolphins’ 11 before time expired.
“Look, you guys can ask the referees about that. It was close. It was close. But it was the correct call in my opinion, but I’ll have to go back and watch the film. I saw the replay live. Just a tough call,” Mayo said of the Polk play.
“Obviously a very disappointing game. I think there’s no question we’re tough, but we just have to be better from an execution standpoint,” he added. “We’ve got to be able to execute in situations. We’ve got to be able to execute on a play-by-play basis, and we didn’t do that. I would also say as the game wore on, our fundamentals began to slip, and that can be a combination of things. We’ll watch the film with a critical guy, and we’ve just got to put a better team out there.”
To say that the first 30 minutes set the game back 25 or 30 years is being kind.
New England had 98 yards of total offense on just 22 plays, with 33 of those yards coming in the form of the Stevenson touchdown run that somehow gave New England a 7-3 lead at half. Brissett had 44 yards passing on a 7-12 clip while Tyler Huntley was 12-22 for 126 yards and the interception in the first 30 minutes. Miami ran 42 plays and mustered 185 total yards, but showed much of the same ineptitude that the Patriots did.
To make matters even worse, New England had six penalties for 44 yards and only managed to get three first downs to the Dolphins’ 11.
Here’s the sequence of events fans were subjected to in the first half:
Field goal (3-0 Miami), punt, interception (Christian Gonzalez), touchdown (Stevenson run), missed field goal (Miami off the left upright), punt, blocked punt (Brendan Schooler), missed field goal (Ryland), punt, punt, missed field goal (botched snap by Miami), punt, half.
Yes. It was really as bad as it sounds, perhaps even worse.
“We’ve got to play better, man. There’s no magic thing that we need to do. We’ve just got to play better,” Brissett said regarding the offensive struggles. “We’ve got to execute better. We’ve got to play with good fundamentals better. We’ve got to do all the little things better. When we go back and watch this film, it’s not about this person, that person, this play, that play.
“We’ve just got to play better as a unit.”
So, now, after the offensive line wasn’t totally terrible (they still weren’t great), the questions regarding Drake Maye playing will continue. The questions about Alex Van Pelt’s offense will continue. The questions about Mayo’s coaching and the lack of discipline will continue.
And it’s only October.
The team is preaching unity for now, but it’ll only take them so far if results don’t start following the work guys are putting in sooner than later.
“It’s frustrating,” said Christian Gonzalez. “We put in the work, but we’ve got to work harder. Nobody (outside) cares. We’ve got to come in and work harder and just get better on Sundays…you learn from wins and you learn from losses.
“Nothing is going to make us not stick together.”