Here’s what New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel had to say following the Patriots loss to the Raiders on Sunday:
On the fact he spoke about winning the second half and that didn’t happen today:
“No, it sure didn’t. Again, it’s frustrating. We have to understand how sometimes these games are going to go. We just didn’t do enough in the second half. Give them credit. We certainly didn’t do enough. We had too many missed opportunities, too many penalties, things, the turnover and things that … just didn’t take advantage of bad football, and then were able to have bad football ourselves. We’re never going to accept losing. We have to embrace moving on, and we have to do that quickly and get these things fixed and go on the road in a division opponent.
On how surprised he is by that second half and what does he learn from it that he can take it to next week:
“I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised by anything. I’m surprised that… I just want to see… Now we’ll see where we’re at. We’ll see what kind of football team we have, what kind of leaders we have, to be able to come back in here and get to work. I think that that’ll be the true test. We always talk about culture and everything else. We’ll see where we’re at as a culture and as a team. And if we have guys that want to work and stick together, it’ll be a big challenge to do that.”
On how he would assess Will Campbell’s performance in his NFL debut:
“I think that that’s tough right now, Nicole [Yang]. I apologize. I got to look at the tape. I just, again, I’m sure there’s going to be some good plays, some plays we’d like to have back, that he would like to have back. I think that would go for pretty much everybody. I think that there was some good football, just certainly not consistent enough in all three phases. That’s kind of what it looked like for me. I’ll try to give you a little better answer after looking at the tape.”
On the fact it’s hard to match with them, given Jeanty and Bowers, but they seem to be running pretty well when his guys went three corner and then obviously threw on them a little bit late when his team went base and if he can just talk about the thought process:
“Well, just trying to mix it up. We didn’t think that the run game had hurt us. Then they picked us a couple of times, and they hit a couple of long ones when they hit some X plays, which we talked about that being a key. We’ll get back together. I thought we settled down really well defensively. I thought the first drive was not our best. Then I thought we settled down. I thought they played well. I thought they played hard. We just weren’t able to make enough there in the end.”
“Again, I made a decision on fourth and 10 with close to five minutes to punt, would like a better punt. We had them stopped, and that was the plan, and that didn’t work. Then they hit one, and we just didn’t have enough time there at the end to do anything. That was the decision that I thought was best for us at the time, and that didn’t work out. But situationally, we’ll have to continue to improve. We moved the ball, we made the kick, we tried the onside. So again, it’s just you can’t get down two scores late in the game.”
On Andy [Borregales]’s kick in the first half, the team went nearly two quarters without getting on the scoreboard again, and if the Raiders did anything different on defense:
“They mixed in some pressure and a little bit of mixed coverage. But again, give them credit. We’ll have to come back, and we’ll have to be better and more balanced and be able to run the football without making it first-and-20. We overcame some of those, but just too difficult.”
“But again, it’s a start, not the one that we wanted. We got a long way to go, and we’re going to be resolved to get it fixed. The people that are here are going to be committed to getting it fixed together.”
On the fact he mentioned the X-plays by Raiders offense, and from his perspective, what led to some of those plays and things they can improve moving forward:
“Well, I mean, just understanding the coverage, understanding, you know, eyes. I think it all goes into sometimes the call, and they had a good call for what we had on, or a guy made a play. When you look at X plays in general, it’s, offensively, you scheme them up about 35% of the time, and about 65% of the time somebody makes a play. I would say that the same would go defensively. Sometimes we’re not in the best call, and they scheme us up, and then other times somebody makes a play. Just like we were able to get our hand on a football, they go 13 personnel. We were pretty adamant that they were going to throw, and they tried to hit 89. We tipped it, and we made a play. But we just have to have more of those, and we have to create some more turnovers.”
On how he would assess Drake’s performance? It looked like there were some struggles under pressure in this game.
“Again, without looking at the tape, I thought there were some good, positive plays and really good command of what we were doing. Then there were times where maybe he missed somebody, and we’ll have to see. It’s a challenge playing quarterback in this league, and we got to help him out. We have to be more balanced. We have to use our run actions and be able to run the football. It’s hard to turn it into a drop-back passing game in this league. I mean, that’s just the facts. They’re up two scores, and they’re in their third-down package. We just don’t want to ever live in that world.”
“We all can be better, whether that’s me, the coaching staff, and Drake, and Will, and everybody that you asked about. That’s the attitude that we’re going to take. That’s the belief that we’re going to take. We’re disappointed, but we can’t sit there and hold on to it too long. We got to go on the road, and we got to play a division opponent, and we got to embrace moving on. I think that’s what we’re going to try to do.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This transcript was done based on the available footage and is subject to typographical errors. If you spot anything, please let me know in the comments below.)
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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.
