Pats Pulpit
The New England Patriots won a thriller in Baltimore on Sunday. Despite falling behind 11 points in the early fourth quarter, they managed to fight back and ended up beating the Ravens 28-24 on prime time to improve to 12-3 on the season.
Let’s get into the lessons learned from the game.
After the Patriots lost to the Buffalo Bills last week, there was a lot of pointing at Drake Maye never having led his team to a come-from-behind victory in the fourth quarter. Those narratives ended on Sunday night.
Maye turned in a phenomenal performance with the game on the line. In doing so kept the dream of the AFC East championship and the No.1 seed in the conference alive.
(This also was, of course, the second time in two attempts that he has led a fourth-quarter scoring drive to win a game this season; the first came in a tie situation against the Bills in Week 5.)
Maye certainly wasn’t perfect, and he made some huge mistakes that he’s going to have to clean up moving forward, but it’s hard not to walk away impressed with his performance on Sunday night, especially when the Patriots needed him the most. His 37-yard touchdown throw to Kyle Williams was absolute perfection, and the one to Stefon Diggs on fourth down later in the game was just great offense beating great defense; it is almost impossible to play the out better than Baltimore did on that play, but Maye just made a perfect throw for the first down.
Finishing the night with his first career 300-yard passing game, and his first career fourth-quarter comeback made for a pretty good night.
The Patriots started off the season as one of the best run defenses in the league; they didn’t allow a 50-yard rusher in a game until Week 10 against Tampa Bay. Unfortunately, the next game against the Jets, Milton Williams went down with an injury and was put on IR. Since then, New England has allowed a 100-yard rusher in three out of four games, and, outside of the Giants game, have allowed at least 4.5 yards per carry to their opponents.
Sunday was more of the same. But even though they were porous against the run most of the night, the Patriots defense got a stop, and forced a turnover, to let the offense complete the comeback in the fourth quarter.
They did get some help with the Ravens inexplicably not playing Derrick Henry at all in the final two offensive drives, but they pride themselves on taking advantage of bad football, and that’s what they did. Like it’s quarterback, the defense certainly was not perfect either, and might not have even been good, but they made the stops when needed, and helped the Patriots get the win.
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