OPENING STATEMENT:
All right, well, really proud of our team again today. You know, it definitely wasn’t our best performance. There were a lot of things that we left out on the field, just didn’t do well enough. But in the end we were able to make the plays that we needed to make when we needed to make them and that was critical in all three phases of the game. Some of the good things, not turning the ball over, that was certainly positive. We were able to make some stops defensively at the right time and that was good and we had the good field position in the kicking game, setup a couple good opportunities for us. But, you know, a typical hard fought game against New York and it’s always good to come out on top. We’ve got a long way to go here, short turnaround, have to get ready in a hurry now for Miami. But it’s good to be able to win here today. Players did a good job fighting through this week after a couple tough road games. They laid it out there today when they had to and proud of the way they played.
Coach not much of an effort to rush the ball today. Was that by design coming in or something that you saw once the game got started?
Yeah, I mean, they’re a pretty good run defense. We felt like we had good match-ups throwing the ball. So, tried to take advantage of those matchups. the runs that we ran, we didn’t get a lot out of. So…
Bill, the way you guys respond week after week when things get tight and you continue to make plays, does that ever get old with you? I mean, other teams don’t just do that week week after week but you guys have…
Well, I mean, you’ve got to be ready to play situational football. We did some, you know, good things situationally at the end of the game and some things that weren’t so good, things could have been better. So that’s always important. There’s so many games in this league just come down to the last few plays or the last possession or the last two possessions, whatever it is. And so, you know, being able to make those plays at the right time determines the outcome of a lot of games. So we work on that every week. we never know what the situations are going to be but, hopefully we’re prepared and we can execute them when we need to.
Coach, you had a bunch of drops on the afternoon but were you pleased with the way Danny Amendola was able to step up and …
You know, Danny made some great plays like he always does for us. Big catches over the middle, big catch on the sideline. He did a good job inside there like he always does. Gave us some field position in the return game as well. I thought we competed hard. Like I said, it wasn’t perfect. We missed plays out there and things we can, you know, coach better and perform better but the guys played hard, they played with a lot of toughness, a lot of effort and fortunately we were able to make enough plays to win.
Bill, Brandon LaFell just said that he would give himself an “F” but he thought it was a matter of timing today. What did you see from Brandon out there that may or may not have made it difficult for him?
Well, like I said, I think you know, I don’t think any of us really felt great about the way we performed today. We can all do a better job. So, I’m sure that everybody feels that way. I do, I’m sure everybody else does. We just left too many plays on the field. Too often.
Bill, you probably don’t have too many plays drawn up for 3rd and 17. Could you talk about the anticipation that Brady threw the ball with there, the route that Edelman …
You know, we got split safety coverage on that. It looked like they were in kind of a quarters look and Julian made a good … you know, got up on top of the safety and broke to the inside, Tom hit him there, it was a well executed play. So you know, when you get split safety coverage, I mean, generally speaking, somewhere in the inside part of the field is where you want to go and that’s where that one ended up going so it was a good read. I thought overall our line gave us, you know, pretty good protection today. I mean, obviously not perfect, they have a good front and, you know, we took some hits. We also held the ball, we also didn’t execute the passing game as well as we need to. But, you know, they hung in there and that was a big play for us. I thought they handled some of those blitzes on the last drive well. But, yeah 3rd and 17, 3rd and 18, although we were giving up on defense right and left, so it was one of those kind of games with third and 17 sometimes is easier to pick up than third and one.
Coach, how impressed were you with the defense in the second half, particularly keeping Fitzpatrick from running around because he kind of hurt you guys in the first half with scrambling?
I mean, again, we had our moments. Never good to see them drive the ball 80 yards or whatever they did, but … I thought we had them in 3rd down a number of times, we just couldn’t make enough third down conversions. I thought overall our first and second down defense was competitive and, you know, for the most part we were able to, you know, give ourselves a chance there but we just didn’t convert on enough third downs. We had the big one at the end where, you know, Coleman broke up the pass down the sideline. But overall, we’ve got to do a better job, we’ve got to do a better at everything. Coaching, playing, all the situations, I mean, you name it. There’s plenty of things we can improve on from tonight.
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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.
