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FOXBOROUGH – Mike Vrabel easily could have lost his mind on several occasions during Sunday’s win over the Saints.
Not because of anything his team did, but because the Patriots were seemingly playing against both New Orleans and an incompetent officiating crew.
The Patriots had 113 yards of offense and a touchdown taken off the board due to outrageous offensive pass interference calls. Multiple plays that really shouldn’t have needed review clogged up the flow of the game. Even the announcements on a few of the flags were borderline laughable.
An immature team would have let it rattle them and possibly cost them the game.
Things are different in Foxborough now though.
Vrabel took the high road postgame and again on Monday morning when he met with the media.
“Oh, no, those don’t drive me crazy. We just have to be able to deal with whatever situation is presented to us, whether we agree with it or disagree with it, learn that it’s not going to change,” he said when asked specifically which one of the Diggs calls drove him crazy.
“So, frustrated and disappointed for the players there that had some really explosive gains taken away by judgment – probably poor judgment, but it’s all part of it. So, I like the resolve for us, the ability for us to play through some of those, however difficult that it may be.”
Garrett Bradbury also touched on the mental toughness shown by the Pats to overcome the poorly officiated contest.
“Yeah, kind of next play mentality,” he said. “Coach always says, ‘whatever happened last play – good or bad – F it. Move on.’ Yeah, there were some things that happened yesterday…I mean, on the one touchdown, we were in the end zone celebrating. We ran to the sideline and it was like ‘you’re back out there.’ We were like, ‘what?!’
“But, yeah, it showed some resilience, showed some toughness that like…alright. Let’s go. We get to play some more football. Let’s go do it, execute at a high level. It’s good whenever there’s negative plays or penalties that happen, you want to see a team bounce back and I felt like we did a pretty good job of that yesterday.”