As if the Nor’easter storm wasn’t enough, New England‘s football team also suffered a devastating loss, this time at the hands of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Patriots continued to make mistakes that either cost the team points or put the Jaguars in a better scoring position, as evidenced by their five touchdowns.
After the game, Coach Vrabel spoke to the media and relayed the same message.
“We can’t do things in all three phases that end up getting you beat. So, certainly we have to fix a lot of things,” said Vrabel.
New Week, Same Offensive Mistakes
While New England managed only two chip-shot field goals, the stats don’t tell the whole story. For much of the game, New England was able to get drives going to Jacksonville’s side of the field.
It was just another case of the team costing itself. While neither team scored in the first quarter, New England had the chance to tie up the game at seven early in the second quarter. A tipped pass from Trevor Lawrence wound up in the arms of Marcus Jones and had Drake Maye and the offense at the Jaguars’ 20-yard line.
On the following play, Maye took it himself into the end zone for a touchdown, but it was called back due to a Morgan Moses holding penalty that backed the offense up, forcing the team to settle for three points.
At the very end of the first half, New England had the ball inside the five-yard line after a 9-play, 70-yard drive, but Drake Maye threw another red zone interception.
Defense got Exposed on all Levels
Coming into the game, New England’s defense was No. 1 in the NFL by a few metrics which included points allowed and third-down conversion rate. Safe to say that after giving up five touchdowns and letting Jacksonville convert on 8-of-12 third downs, that is no longer the case.
Trevor Lawrence had the passing game buzzing with three touchdowns to three different receivers. While I had high hopes for the team’s defensive backs coming into Sunday and their ability to match up against Jacksonville’s receivers, it’s clear that Zak Kuhr’s defense was not up to the challenge.
Additionally, both of Jacksonville’s running backs added a touchdown, and ran for an efficient 110 yards on 23 carries. This defense needs to improve on all levels before it’s ready for Josh Allen, James Cook, and the Bills offense next week.
It was an all-around terrible game for New England as the offense once again could not get out of its own way, and the defense took a major step back after dominating the first two weeks. New England needs a new game plan on both sides of the football next week against Buffalo, or that game could get ugly and in short order.
