Pats Pulpit
I’m very fortunate in that, at absolutely no point in my life, did I ever think I had the slightest clue what I was doing or what was going on. If I were living in London AF 632, I’d proudly be a Delta or an Epsilon and not think twice about it.
So, I’m able to roll into this huge Patriots win in Miami with the same kind of good-natured idiocy that has served me so well over these past four decades. This was as close to a must-win Week 2 game as it got, for both sides, and here the Patriots sit at 2nd place in the AFC East with the ship as righted as can be expected for this early in the year. I’ll take it.
1. This is the kind of early-season game that Bill Belichick used to dream of: a divisional road win where a lot went wrong, there are plenty of areas for improvement, and whoever puts together the bad play game tape is going to be living off of takeout from one of the many fine establishments along Route 1 in Foxboro for the next few days. But enough also went right and the team showed enough grit to get it done and build some momentum.
2. I said last week that how the Patriots responded to a very lackluster Raiders game was going to say a lot about them and where their head is at, and it’s tough not to be happy overall with what we saw yesterday. The Patriots haven’t won in Miami since 2019 and the Dolphins needed this one way more than New England did. But they made plays when they needed to make them and more importantly, closed the game out rather than pissing it away.
3. I’ll get the bad stuff out of the way first so we can all maximize our time basking in the Victory Monday creaminess.
4. This was a wildly sloppy game from both teams in terms of penalties. Veterans and rookies alike drawing flags and short-circuiting drives. Offsides negating turnovers. False starts setting the offense back before a drive even starts. Unnecessary holding calls. It’s the main thing that made the 2024 Patriots so difficult to watch and there are still remnants of that here for sure.
5. I don’t know what to make of this defense, which looks solid at times and completely lost at times. They have nine sacks through two games, which should make me happy — but if you had to ask me right now what my confidence level is for this unit to get off the field on third and 45, I’d say 53 percent. Maybe the return of Christian Gonzalez will allow for some shuffling around and they’ll start to gel more. But a lot of the defensive positives from yesterday’s game was more bad plays by Miami.
6. Credit where credit is due, Andy Borregales absolutely nailed a 53-yarder that the Patriots absolutely had to have....
