OPENING STATEMENT:
It’s a good feeling to come down here and win. really proud of our team today, I thought we got great complimentary from all three phases, our offense, defense, special teams, the way we started the game, with a quick series on defense, good punt return, put our offense in good field position, we had several of those during the day, a couple turnovers in the second half but, you know, real good field position in the kicking game. Steven kicked the ball well. We had a big, you know, big punt, punt coverage by Slate [Matthew Slater] and, you know, great kick by Ryan [Allen], changed field position, so, converted our scoring opportunities there, so I thought that was really big for us. And then defensively, didn’t give up many big plays, played ok on 3rd down, got off the field quite a bit in the first half, gave our offense some field position and you know they took advantage of it. the Cowboys are really good football team. Defensively they gave us, you know, a look that we really hadn’t seen them do before. They played a lot of the game in a dime defense, a kind of 3-2 look with McClain and Lee in the middle, a lot of 6 DBs and they got on us and it was a little bit of a different look, we made some adjustments to that. I thought that Josh and our offensive staff did a good job of, you know… and the players making some in-game adjustments to deal with the new look that they gave us there. So overall, good to come down here and win. I thought we got, you know, real good contributions from everybody, we had a good week of work, practice. These guys are ready to go players play a solid game. Give them all the credit in the world. They did a good job.
On his front seven compared to Dallas’ offensive line:
Yeah, it was a big challenge. They’ve got an excellent running game, good backs, great offensive line, obviously a good tight end with Witten, fullback, so it was just team defense and running game. Guys on the edge did a good job, we didn’t give them a lot of easy yards outside I thought that we, you know, did a decent job on the line of scrimmage. They hit us on some cutback runs, for some four and five yarders that we could have played better but overall not bad. I thought we tackled pretty well today. This is a good team with a lot of good runners. You know, Beasley, Whitehead obviously the backs, McFadden, Randall, so getting those guys on the ground isn’t that easy but I thought overall we did a decent job of that. So that was good. But our front played well. We really worked hard on the run defense going all the way back to the bye week last Wednesday and I think we had some signs of improvement today. We’ll look at the film, but it seemed like it was better.
On the game Jamie Collins had and then Mayo and Freeney Stepping up after Hightower went out with an injury:\
Yeah, I mean, again, i thought we had good team defense. Our secondary played well, our linebackers, were in on a lot of plays, our front was competitive with their good offensive line and Jamie, he seemed like he had 20 tackles, I don’t know what he had out there but he was is in on a lot of them. Had a couple good pressures, so, you know, [Jabaal] Sheard gave us some pressure as well so we had, you know, a good good mix of run defense, pass rush and we had a lot of different guys step up and make plays but I thought Jamie seemed to be all over the field. It was a great play we had on the fumble where Sheard jammed Witten, kind of kept him from getting into his route. Weeden came to him late on the checkdown, Jamie knocked it out, Freeney made a clean recovery, so good team defense.
On the fact Dion Lewis had a good game and changed the energy late in the first half:
Dion’s been giving us a lot of productive plays, both running and passing, some inside plays, some outside plays, some run after catch plays. so, you know, he’s been doing it for us all year. He’s a hard guy to tackle, he’s tough when he gets a little bit of space. But, you know, he made some good plays for us in the passing game and had a couple, I mean they weren’t explosive runs, but you know, they were good 4 or 5 yard runs that I don’t know if there were 4 or 5 yards there. You know, he got 3 or 4 of those on his own.
On After all the hits Brady took in the first half what it says about his resiliency, things that might get overlooked:
I don’t think it’s over looked. I don’t think anybody would question Tom’s toughness. Who’s ever done that?
I was saying it could be overlooked:
By Who?
On what this type of game says about his toughness:
Tom’s one of the toughest players in the league.
On if it was concerning, the number of hits he was taking in the first half:
I think it’s a combination of things. You know, we just have to do better job overall of our offensive execution, getting rid of the ball, getting open, and blocking. So a little bit of everything.
On the fact Hardy was a big question mark and if he’s surprised he had such a good game:
He’s a good player. I mean, I said that all week. McClain too.
On the fact they played three down lineman early on and if he anticipated that coming in since they normally play a four-man front:
No, I just answered that question. It was a new look that they hadn’t shown before. It was that 3-2 dime defense with Lee and McClain inside. It was a new look. You know, I think we moved the ball okay, but you know, it took a little while for us to adjust to it to get a handle on what they were doing and I thought that our players and coaches did a good job of making those adjustments during the game and throughout the game. But that was definitely a different look and they obviously wanted to come up and get on us and match it up and that caused us some problems. But I mean, we scored 30 points, I think we caused them some problems too. So it was a competitive game.
On the fact they scored consecutive touchdowns in the second half and what adjustments they made to combat what Dallas was doing:
Like I just said, we made those adjustments from the first series. I mean, we don’t wait until halftime. There’s nothing magic about halftime, as soon as we see what they’re doing,then we need to be ready to address it.
On if it was just better execution in the second half:
Well, no. We changed some plays, we changed some protections. I mean, you know, there was odd spacing, it was a dime look, against, really, a lot of our different personnel groups not just against our sub-passing groups. So we just had to identify it and handle it. But no, that started from the first series. We’re not going to sit there and wait until halftime to figure out what’s going on.
On the fact they had calls against them for offensive pass interference:
Offensive interference, defensive interference, defensive holding, offensive holding. I don’t know how many flags there were, there were a lot today. So, you know, our goal is always to play penalty free, we’re a long way from that. We’ve got to try and do a better job of coaching and eliminate those penalties. I mean, they had a lot of them too, I don’t know how many there were in the game but it seemed like there was a lot.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
