Here’s what New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel had to say following the Patriots 23-20 win over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night.
*Beginning part of the audio was cut off in the broadcast…
Mid-answer to first question
“…we’re going to move the ball. Everybody helped us again tonight. I think just a really gutty performance from Drake. Really just continue to enjoy watching him grow and lead this football team. It was good for us to… Again, we’d love to have a win by two scores, but being able to come back and execute in a critical situation, take the clock down, and win it on our terms.”
On what it says about the mental resiliency for his team come back and win a game like this, primetime, on the road…
“That’s how we practice. We were talking about taking the next step, and we got off to a really good start defensively and just beat ourselves a little bit from the details in the first half. Offense came back when we needed them in the second half. And defensively, it’s a huge challenge to defend them. We got some stops. We didn’t get as many as we wanted to, but we got enough to give ourselves a chance in the end. So a lot of credit to everybody on defense and Zak [Kuhr] and his staff, and everybody over there.”
On what he saw in game planning that he tried to exploit going into the second half:
“We just try to prepare and try to focus on getting better each and every day. Felt like if we could protect them… We did a nice job. They started blitzing. They started blitzing in the fourth quarter. We hit a couple plays that I felt were the difference. When they started blitzing and started heating us up, that we were able to hit some plays and some X plays against it. That was probably the difference for us being able to not let the blitz affect us.”
On if he can explain Drake [Maye] simply settling down, specifically against the blitz when he was spooked early against pressure:
“The game’s not over in the first series. I’m sure we’ll want to start faster. But we finished really well and settled down. Again, just really proud of the whole team for being able to come into this road environment. We talk about a lot of other people that had cracks of beating them here for 14 games, they had their opportunity, and those players took advantage of that opportunity and beat a really good football team that hasn’t lost here much.”
On his thoughts on Andy [Borregales’] kick:
“You can see when he’s building some confidence in his swing, it looks good. I don’t know much about kicking other than it just looks like a good driver when those pros hit it right down the middle, and there’s some balance to it, and there’s some calmness. I think he’s been working really hard. To Tom and Jeremy, they’ve been working hard with him as well to maintain that consistency, that consistent swing.”
“I’m excited. I’m happy for him. Happy for all those guys, especially Andy and Julian [Ashby] and Bryce [Baringer] that worked so hard. It’s funny. We just talked about all these blocks around the league and trying to get these guys to practice field goal protection on a Wednesday in October, I thought would be a lot harder than what it was. They really just bought into it. The pad level, every single rep, when you think in the middle of practice, they could get lazy. So we asked them to focus on it. We asked them to treat each kick. It felt like it was a game-winner all week. The protection was sound. You see around the league that these kicks are getting blocked. So obviously, they practiced it. They recognized how important it was, and we were able to execute there at the end.”
On how they were able to keep James Cook in check:
“I mean, just a great performance by our defense, and we had a couple of leaky ones, and I thought that they tackled okay, and I thought we had a good scheme, and they executed it. But all the credit goes to the players. Would’ve liked to have been able to get Josh a couple of times, but that’s no easy task. In the end, we made a few more plays than they did.”
On what this win does for the confidence of this team:
“We’re confident coming in here, so I guess it’ll probably help, but we’ll have to start over and continue to improve. We talked about how we have to improve along the way, and this was the next step that we needed to take. We’ll pick up the pieces and get back to work as soon as we get on the plane. We have another team that is going to be waiting for us on the road in New Orleans.”
On if he can talk a little bit about his moment with Rhamondre’s fumble, and his touchdown:
“We got to get this corrected. We got to get it corrected, but we also need everybody’s skillset. We want to be aggressive, but we don’t want to be reckless. You can’t relax. You can’t be two, three, four inches from the ground and let them go in there. We’ll just keep practicing it. We’ll keep repping it. But to his credit, he was able to help us in the end, like a lot of other guys. We got to get it fixed because we need his ability and his skillset, but we can’t put the ball on the ground.”
On two of the biggest plays of the game, Diggs’ 32 yard catch, and the interception and how that sparked his football team:
“Well, it was good to get some turnovers. We had a couple… The penalties were… Again, I can tell you I disagree with some of the judgments and everything else. But just the resiliency of trying to get the drive stopped, was critical. Then Diggsy [Stefon Diggs] just came up big all night and was able to do some things after the catch, too, which was good.”
On why he was in the tunnel and he feels it’s so important to greet the players coming off the field:
“Well, this is their day. I’m happy for them. We challenge them all week. We push them. We coach them. I mean, either they think I’m an a*****e during the week or not, I don’t know. But I’m going to try to coach the heck out of them all week and try to get them ready in the things that I think that are important for us to do. Try to get to do them, and then they get to the game. It’s their day to go and put all that hard work out there. I’m happy for them. I want to thank and congratulate each and every one. Everybody has a role. Everybody has a job, and those jobs are critical, whether that’s the trainer, the equipment manager, the assistant coach, offensive coordinator, our starters, our special teams players, our backups, It takes everybody to come on a road. It takes everybody to win in this league, and I want to thank them for that. I like to see the look on their faces. I’m happy for them.”
On playing as much man-to-man as they did today, how proud he is of the DBs in terms of their determination and endurance:
“Yeah, they ran around, they chased them around. Again, Josh extends the play, and it’s hard. When the ball doesn’t come out in rhythm, it gets hard to chase them around and be able to defend them. But we did, and we were able to and again, we felt like we could cover them. Just wish we didn’t have to cover them as long as we did.”
(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.
