FOXBOROUGH — Trust me, I’m from Grumpy Gus Mike Vrabelthat we’ve heard after the Patriots’ last two wins, especially Sunday’s 26-19 win over the pesky Jets.
It looks like we might be a few years away from him answering questions into the microphone.
“We’re lucky to win, that’s probably where I would start,” Vrabel said in his opening comments.
“It’s fortunate, whatever. We just didn’t play very well. We tried to fight, but we made enough plays in critical situations to help us get through here today.
“I just know you have to be able to continue to improve, and I don’t feel like we did that. We won, that’s the most important thing. We… I don’t think we improved on what we showed the previous two weeks, and I have to understand why. That’s my job. My job is also to make us win and also to make us improve.”
I mean, it’s gold, especially for a certain afternoon talk show I appear on every week. The Patriots won, and the coach preemptively validated talking points that the Patriots weren’t — or at least weren’t playing — that good.
I’m here for that, but not for the content. Because I love a coach who is never satisfied and who reinforces the reality that his team can always be better, no matter if they win by 28 points or by seven (and don’t cover, for that matter).
While I was on Team Vrabel after the Raiders blowout, I will be parting ways with him after this one. Yeah, it wasn’t a Picasso, but I liked that win and thought there were a lot of good things between the two. AJ Brown falls and trips to the blue tent of the injured. We learned a lot more about the Patriots in this game against a divisional opponent (who was definitely complicit in their own demise because the Jets are still the Jets) than we did in this no-contest against a West Coast team.
(Paul Johnson for BSJ)
Let’s start with Drake Maye, who Giardi covered well. You can organize the bombing against the Raiders. I’ll take what Maye did against the Jets. Even if his statistics were not excellent (56.3% success, -6.5 CPOE – thanks to AJ Brown), Maye played a very mature game at quarterback. Of his pass attempts, 75% were short. Unlike the Raiders, the Jets — who aren’t very talented but play solid team defense when not breaking coverages in the red zone — play a style of defense (two high safeties, lots of different zones, can change the picture after the snap) that has given Maye problems so far in his young career. This is the kind of defense that makes him lose his patience.
Not Sunday. Maye, who had periods of inaccuracy, looked comfortable throughout the game, even with Brown dropping passes, DeMario Douglas and TreVeyon Henderson fumbling, and the Patriots seemingly losing offensive linemen every other series. None of this bothered Maye. He was comfortable in the pocket. He rushed when he had to. He bought time to discover the receivers. He continued to throw the ball to key spots.
Maye, who was the NFL’s worst zone QB after three weeks, finished 12 of 20 for 152 yards and a touchdown against the Jets’ zone. His EPA per play against zone was third among quarterbacks in Week 6’s 4 p.m. games.
My favorite play was with 3:15 left in the third quarter. The Jets had scored 10 straight points to make it 17-13, and the Patriots faced 3rd-and-10 from their own 46. Maye bumped his back foot and fired a 12-yard field goal to Kyle Williams on time and with anticipation. It was
Gn sports
