Three thoughts:
1) The sky isn't falling, as the Patriots played pretty well for most of last night on both sides of the ball. If we're looking for a competitive team that will be in the hunt for the Division Title until late December, we have it in what we saw last night against a team we knew was good and, indeed, last week against an opponent that was much better than heralded.
2) But executing on "every drive but the last two" (on both sides of the ball) isn't going to win the Conference, let alone the Super Bowl. They have to start winning close games again to do that.
On their last two drives last night, the Pats moved the ball a total of 51 yards (20 on Baltimore Penalties!) and took just 4:32 off the clock; on their last drive, TB was one for four for 11 yards plus a sack.
On their last two drives, the Ravens moved the ball 126 yards (including a net 17 yards from penalties, 27 on McCourty, which was clearly a penalty, net of 10 for Offensive Holding).
3) If we're going to blame the Replacement officiating, it's going to be a long, long season. Every team is dealing with it and last night's officiating was far from yesterday's worst from that perspective.
Or, as Tom Brady put it after the game: "We just don't play well when we need to...Certainly, we've got to play our best when it means the most, and we need to start winning close games."