Pats Pulpit
The New England Patriots dominated the Carolina Panthers on a gorgeous day in Foxborough on Sunday. While they did fall behind 6-0 to start the game, they rebounded with a bang and ended up winning with a final score of 42-13 — a convincing way for the Patriots to improve to 2-2 on the year and for head coach Mike Vrabel to earn his first W at Gillette Stadium.
Here are some lessons learned from the blowout.
Mike Vrabel has been under fire from some people in the media recently, but I like what he’s been doing, and I think what he values, and what he wants his guys to do, is starting to come through. What does Vrabel value? Mental toughness and committing to the team.
That was evident in Week 2, when he gave a game ball to Andy Borregales after he hit a big field goal to extend the Patriots’ lead over Miami after previously missing two extra points earlier in the game. Then, after last week, Rhamondre Stevenson and DeMario Douglas could have been guys to quit on, but instead, Stevenson got the most touches among the team’s running backs on Sunday. Douglas didn’t have a target, but Vrabel went out of his way to praise him for his blocking on the touchdown to Hunter Henry.
Mistakes are going to be made, that is the nature of the game. Vrabel, a former player as you might have heard, is well aware of the toll those mistakes can take, so he is starting to build a support structure and culture that is quite simple to understand: as long as you don’t quit on the team, the team isn’t going to quit on you.
New England could be 4-0 or 3-1 if not for their miscues, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Still, the Patriots and their head coach look like they might be building something for the future.
The Patriots played a terrible game last week, and they started out Sunday playing terrible as well. However, they were able to force a punt on the second Panthers drive, and that’s when the entire contest changed thanks to one man: Marcus Jones.
Jones fielded the Panthers’ punt at the 13-yard line, broke a tackle, and then took the ball to the house to give his team a 7-6 lead. The most notable part of the play might not have been his moves — we know what he can do with the ball in his hands — but the fact that he did not call a fair catch even with multiple Panthers surrounding him. As he said after the game, he’s “ruthless.”
He also runbacks of 61 and 19 yards later in the game, and in doing so broke the team’s single-game punt return record with 167, eclipsing Mike Haynes’ 156 from 1976. It remains to be seen whether or not that first...
