New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick led his press conference with a tough evaluation of his team’s play during its 27-24 loss to the Miami Dolphins (5-11) on Sunday.
New England (12-4) arguably won its most impressive game this season in Week 16 against the Buffalo Bills. But the Patriots followed that win with their most embarrassing loss to a Dolphins team, playing for nothing but pride.
“Obviously, we didn’t do anything well enough today to deserve to win, so we’ll be playing next week and we’ll see who that is,” Belichick said. “We still have an opportunity in front of us here, so we’ll need our best football. We didn’t have it today. Hopefully, it’ll be there next week.”
New England lost their No. 2 seed and fell to third in the AFC standings. They will play in the wild card weekend against either the Tennessee Titans, the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Oakland Raiders.
Patriots players like Rex Burkhead emphasized that this game came down to poor execution, a vague but true explanation of New England’s loss. Quarterback Tom Brady got a little more specific.
“We didn’t play the way we were capable of playing, and it cost us,” Brady said. “Just too many bad mistakes. … I didn’t do a good enough job.”
The mistakes did, indeed, pile up.
Brady threw a pick-six in the first half amid a sequence of head-scratching passes in those first 30-minutes. On the interception, Brady had receiver Mohamed Sanu open in the middle of the field on the play, but instead attempted to dump the ball off to Sony Michel. But Brady must not have seen cornerback Eric Rowe, who streaked in the way of the target for the interception and touchdown. Brady couldn’t seem to get his eyes to the right play at the right time — an oddity for the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. He doesn’t seem to trust all of his receivers — with Sanu and rookie receiver N’Keal Harry still getting comfortable — which has made Brady’s progressions unnatural and has stunted the offensive production.
The offense just hasn’t been consistent in 2019.
“It’s tough, but you just have to keep fighting, keep battling,” Burkhead said. “We just have to execute better. A lot of little detail things we have to improve upon.”
There were more major mistakes: a J.C. Jackson pass-interference penalty, a Ben Watson illegal motion penalty, Brady’s overthrow of Sanu in the end zone and safety Patrick Chung’s inability to cover tight end Mike Gesicki on the Dolphins’ game-winning touchdown. There was no single player to blame. It went around, even to cornerback Stephon Gilmore who allowed Devante Parker to amass eight catches for 137 yards.
The only unit that didn’t struggle was special teams, which did a nice job in returns and coverage.
The upset was particularly shocking, considering the Patriots blew out Miami, 43-0, in Week 2. Where the Dolphins a drastically better team in Week 17?
“I don’t know. They played well today,” Belichick said.
And to put it simply, the Patriots did not.
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