Here’s what New England Patriots tight end Hunter Henry had to say following the Patriots 16-3 win over the Chargers Sunday night:
On if he can take us through the emotions of a full house, crowd rocking, and the fact it was a dogfight for a while there:
“Shoot, 60 minutes of a dogfight. Juices were flowing early. Obviously, we didn’t execute to the best of our ability early, but just kept fighting, just kept sticking to it. Credit to our defense for just hanging us in there and just playing unreal all day long. Just really cool to watch just a lot of guys competing at a high level and just continuing to strain and find different ways to make a play. Yeah, man, pretty cool night. The atmosphere was awesome. It was fun.”
On the fact they had 35 guys making their playoff debut tonight and if there’s something to be said for playing a game like this, winning, and now having the idea of what playoff football is all about going forward to next week and possibly beyond:
“Yeah, definitely. It’s definitely different than the regular season. It’s cool to get everybody out there and come out with a big-time win and feel the environment, feel just everything that it takes to win a big-time game. Takes everybody, offense, defense, special teams. That was on full display today.”
On if he can take us through what he saw on the touchdown catch:
“Yeah. I mean, it was honestly just great scheme, great design by Josh [McDaniels]. Good timing. Something we work on. Obviously, they’re a very predominantly zone team. They played zone, just caught them. Drake obviously threw a great ball. It took all guys. They blitzed a guy, I just saw up the middle. And TreVeyon [Henderson] made a big-time block to make sure. I’m pretty sure that was TreVeyon, up the middle right there to give Drake a little extra time. It takes all 11 guys. Kyle [Williams] ran … his speed out there is a threat, and guys have to really respect it. He ran a great route, and they have to respect him. It takes all 11 guys, and we were just able to execute in a big moment.”
On the fact they a 9-3 lead, and the touochdown drive was a ‘close things out’ drive, and how much does that mean as an offense to have a drive that pretty much puts the game away and is there an attitude behind that, knowing that if they get seven, that the game is pretty much over the way their defense was playing:
“Yeah, I mean, shoot, I feel like we should have scored more, honestly, just feeling that way as an offense. Left some points out there. Obviously, turnover in the red zone, you miss three points, and then just the turnovers in general. Just some miscues early, not being able to sustain some drives. Just the juices were flowing, and we just needed to settle down. Obviously, once we settled down and got things going, playing our style of ball, it was a lot of fun to be a part of. Yeah, the drive was big for us.”
On what was the crowd, the atmosphere like for them:
“Man, that was special. That was really special and elite. Really cool to be a part of, man. It really was. We all felt it. We felt the energy. Man, just thankful for Pats Nation for coming out and supporting. That was really, really a special night.”
On the fact they were in 22 a whole lot there in the second half. They weren’t on the one he scored the touchdown on, but they were in heavy and what was the advantage they were trying to exploit there with those personnel groups:
“Not to get into too many details, but Josh is putting guys in positions to be successful and trying to create mismatches in different ways and do different things. We mix-match a lot of different personnel, and that was just the flavor that we started running with down the stretch there. I feel like it just kind of settled some things down. We were able to stay ahead of the chains, how we want to play. We were executing, and guys got to play different positions and move all over the place. That’s the beauty of this offense, and it’s a lot of fun.”
(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.
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