Pats Pulpit
The New England Patriots played one of the worst games you’ll see a team play on Sunday. They out-gained the Steelers, had more first downs, had a significantly higher time of possession, but turned the ball over give times and ended up losing 21-14 to the visiting Pittsburgh Steelers.
Let’s get into the lessons learned from Sunday.
Mike Vrabel had said from the very beginning of his tenure as Patriots head coach that he wanted his team to take advantage of bad football. Well, it’s tough to do that when you’re playing bad football yourself.
The Patriots turned the ball over five times, including twice from the Steelers’ 2-yard line. You just simply cannot do that and expect to win in the NFL, as Vrabel himself said after the game.
“We don’t need to learn a lesson. We don’t need to lose a football game to know that turnovers are very hard to overcome,” he said. “They erase all the good things that you do. They take away momentum. They take away points, give them field position. We didn’t need to turn it over as many times as we did to learn a lesson. I think we knew that before. It was very unfortunate.”
The Patriots have to clean that up quickly, because this was a game that they very well could have won. They didn’t because they repeatedly kept shooting themselves in the foot, and as a consequence failed to meet Vrabel’s goal of taking advantage of the opponents’ miscues (and there were plenty of those, too).
While we are on the subject of turnovers…
Obviously, Rhamondre Stevenson had an abysmal game on Sunday, but he wasn’t the only back to have a bad day. Antonio Gibson did not fare much better, with a fumble of his own, and only 28 yards on seven carries. TreVeyon Henderson, meanwhile, does not look at all like the dynamic playmaker he was in preseason; in fact, he looks lost on more plays than not (the one that sticks out to me the most is a run to the left where he had a blocker in front of him and one defender. Instead of waiting for the block to set up, or cutting inside, he just ran right into the defender for a 2-yard gain).
Henderson has real speed, but we haven’t seen it in a regular season game yet, because he hasn’t been able to get into the open field. When he has, he hasn’t been able to shake any defenders coming to tackle him. If the Patriots, who are trying to be a running team, can’t get better play out of their backs, it’s going to be an awfully long season.
Third-year wide receiver DeMario Douglas was targeted five times on Sunday, and finished with two receptions for 7 yards to bring his season total to five catches, 13 yards,...
