FOXBORO – Mike Vrabel walked into his press conference with a little grin that said everything.
Then, he spoke the words anyway.
“It’s a funny league.”
Bingo.
The Patriots‘ 24-23 escape from the Falcons may have pushed their win streak to six and vaulted them into a tie for the best record in the NFL, but little about the second half of Sunday’s win felt like a team capable of such dominance.
It’s not that the Pats failed by not smashing Atlanta, like the Browns, Titans and Saints before them. Or that we should expect them to reduce all their opponents to rubble. It’s the fact the Patriots gift-wrapped a win, and the Falcons fumbled it away because they remain cursed beyond all comprehension.
Start with kicker and old pal Parker Romo, who sailed a game-tying extra point wide right after a Falcons touchdown with 4:40 left. The Patriots punted on their next series, and soon enough, Atlanta stood 20 yards away from teeing him up for a game-winning field goal inside the two-minute warning. A win was within reach.
Instead, the Falcons flew backwards because a premature snap allowed Pats defensive tackle Milton Williams to barrel into the backfield untouched and cause an intentional grounding penalty. Two plays later, staring at fourth-and-20 and the consequences of their own ineptitude, Atlanta punted and never saw the ball again.
The Patriots did nothing — zero — to warrant credit for either of those plays, which decided the game. Those were pure, uncut, unforced Atlanta errors.
Now, there’s no shame in luck. The Patriots need luck like all teams do. And the football gods only know how many wins the Pats have fumbled away the last five years during their descent from the top of the NFL mountain to the bottom, hitting their head on every Mac Jones pick-six, Bailey Zappe fumble and brutal fourth-quarter mistake on the way down.
But to treat Sunday’s win like all the rest would be to turn a blind eye to the cracks now surfacing as pressure mounts before a massive clash in Tampa Bay next weekend.
As the old saying goes, to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. And since the Patriots won’t get a shot at the Chiefs, Colts, Lions or Eagles until the playoffs — if ever — this season, they’ll have to settle for overcoming great teams to prove their own greatness.
Because this is already a good football team. Period.
But a great team? A Super Bowl contender? That’s all pending.
It’s pending the outcome of Sunday’s battle with the Bucs, who will study Sunday’s tape and see what we all saw: a Patriots team that can be handled if an opponent hits the right pressure points.
Start with the quarterback.
Foxboro, MA -New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye scrambles during the first quarter of the game at Gillette Stadium. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)
Foxboro, MA -New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye scrambles during the first quarter of the game at Gillette Stadium. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)
Drake Maye – who deserves to be an MVP front-runner and all the accompanying praise — fumbled twice Sunday. He’s fumbled in three of his last four games, and taken 34 sacks on the season. Play like that, even for a 23-year-old burgeoning superstar, is begging for trouble and turnovers.
Maye’s unwillingness to throw the ball away at the expense of a play he maybe, just maybe, but probably not, could extend via scramble or off-platform throw — even at the risk of a turnover — is a costly habit long-term.
Don’t take my word for it. Take his.
“(I’m) getting into a bad habit of trying to break tackles on these guys that I don’t have a great chance of breaking a tackle on,” Maye said.
He absorbed six sacks for a second straight week. Fewer than half of his 34 sacks can be attributed to a Patriots offensive lineman losing a block, per the Herald’s film study; meaning most of them are on scheme breakdowns or the quarterback. If Maye throws the ball away more, the offense gets better. It’s that simple.
Defensively, pressure is also a problem.
Last week, the Pats hit Browns rookie Dillon Gabriel — the worst starting quarterback in the league — only twice and sacked him once. Michael Penix Jr. got sacked once Sunday and hit just four times. But set the oft-overrated sack totals aside.
Entering Sunday, the Pats ranked bottom 10 in quarterback knockdowns and below average by pressure rate. Neither should change once Week 9 concludes late Monday night. The Patriots are targeting edge defenders in the trade market, per sources, because they know their depth there is perilously thin for a team with big postseason dreams.
Their secondary doesn’t get off easy, either. Falcons wide receiver Drake London set the Patriots defense ablaze while pocketing nine catches for 119 yards and three touchdowns. Two scores came at the expense of the 5-foot-8 Marcus Jones, who fights like hell but gave up eight inches in their man-to-man matchups that could have been avoided. That’s on coaching.
No surprise, the Patriots are among the worst defenses in the league versus No. 1 receivers. They ranked fifth-worst before kickoff by the opponent-and-situation-adjusted metric DVOA, and may fall even further after London’s performance, which included, by the way, three catches against Christian Gonzalez for 67 yards.
Gonzalez, to his credit, broke up two passes intended for London and forced a turnover on downs. The young stars played to something close to a draw, just like their respective teams did. In his post-game press conference, Gonzalez did not apologize for the catches he allowed, nor should he have.
There’s no shame in competition, nor winning, nor luck.
Only failing to prepare for the moment your luck inevitably runs out.