Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer

The Patriots missed a golden opportunity on Sunday to beat the Philadelphia Eagles and set the tone for their season.

After falling behind 16-0 nothing early on, it seemed as if the Patriots were going to get blown out. However, later in the second quarter they mounted a comeback and got within 16-14. After trailing 22-14 in the fourth quarter, they mounted a second comeback but  failed to capitalize on two late game opportunities in the red zone.  The Patriots fell short losing 25-20.

After the game, Bill Belichick was short with the media in his responses but you can sense the frustration. The Patriots gave away a game that could have won.

Patriots center David Andrews summed it up best after the game.

“Yeah, look, there’s no moral victories. There’s really no moral victories in life or anything like that. Really, you’ve got to execute at your best against a good football team when it counts the most, and that’s what it comes down to. That’s how you win close football games against good teams; it means you’ve got to do that, and we’ve just got to do better at that. Like I said, we had penalties the first few drives. I don’t know when it was, but we were going toward the Optum Club, and we had two penalties on that drive getting into the red zone, Rhamondre’s [Stevenson] big run, different things like that and then some crucial ones late. So, clean those up, and the game looks a lot different. But that’s part of it.”

Tight end Mike Gesicki echoed a similar sentiment but he also looked at the positives. He felt the team did some good things in the loss.

“I think the cliché thing that everybody is going to say is we’re not here for moral victories, but at the end of the day, when we were on, it felt good and guys were clicking and offense looked good, defense played lights out. They were unbelievable so we have to tip our hat to them and have to help them out.”

The Patriots had their chances but a lack of execution in certain situations, the pick six and committing penalties at inopportune times ultimately proved to be costly.

Losses like this do have a tendency to linger so you hope that the Patriots move on from this game quickly. Woulda, coulda, shoulda’s do not matter in life. What matters is the final result.

The Patriots lost. They lost a game they could have won. It was a missed opportunity.