\u201cIt\u2019s a funny league.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bingo.<\/p>\n
The Patriots<\/a>\u2018 24-23 escape from the Falcons may have pushed their win streak to six and vaulted them into a tie for the best record in the NFL, but little about the second half of Sunday\u2019s win<\/a> felt like a team capable of such dominance.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that the Pats failed by not smashing Atlanta, like the Browns<\/a>, Titans and Saints before them. Or that we should expect them to reduce all their opponents to rubble. It\u2019s the fact the Patriots gift-wrapped a win, and the Falcons fumbled it away because they remain cursed beyond all comprehension.<\/p>\n Start with kicker and old pal Parker Romo, who sailed a game-tying extra point wide right after a Falcons touchdown with 4:40 left. The Patriots punted on their next series, and soon enough, Atlanta stood 20 yards away from teeing him up for a game-winning field goal inside the two-minute warning. A win was within reach.<\/p>\n Instead, the Falcons flew backwards because a premature snap allowed Pats defensive tackle Milton Williams to barrel into the backfield untouched and cause an intentional grounding penalty. Two plays later, staring at fourth-and-20 and the consequences of their own ineptitude, Atlanta punted and never saw the ball again.<\/p>\n The Patriots did nothing \u2014 zero \u2014 to warrant credit for either of those plays, which decided the game. Those were pure, uncut, unforced Atlanta errors.<\/p>\n Now, there\u2019s no shame in luck. The Patriots need luck like all teams do. And the football gods only know how many wins the Pats have fumbled away the last five years during their descent from the top of the NFL mountain to the bottom, hitting their head on every Mac Jones pick-six, Bailey Zappe fumble and brutal fourth-quarter mistake on the way down.<\/p>\n But to treat Sunday\u2019s win like all the rest would be to turn a blind eye to the cracks now surfacing as pressure mounts before a massive clash in Tampa Bay next weekend.<\/p>\n As the old saying goes, to be the best, you\u2019ve got to beat the best. And since the Patriots won\u2019t get a shot at the Chiefs, Colts, Lions or Eagles until the playoffs \u2014 if ever \u2014 this season, they\u2019ll have to settle for overcoming great teams to prove their own greatness.<\/p>\n Because this is already a good football team. Period.<\/p>\n But a great team? A Super Bowl contender? That\u2019s all pending.<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s pending the outcome of Sunday\u2019s battle with the Bucs, who will study Sunday\u2019s tape and see what we all saw: a Patriots team that can be handled if an opponent hits the right pressure points.<\/p>\n Start with the quarterback.<\/p>\n Drake Maye \u2013 who deserves to be an MVP front-runner and all the accompanying praise \u2014 fumbled twice Sunday. He\u2019s fumbled in three of his last four games, and taken 34 sacks on the season. Play like that, even for a 23-year-old burgeoning superstar, is begging for trouble and turnovers.<\/p>\n Maye\u2019s unwillingness to throw the ball away at the expense of a play he maybe, just maybe, but probably not, could extend via scramble or off-platform throw \u2014 even at the risk of a turnover \u2014 is a costly habit long-term.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t take my word for it. Take his.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201c(I\u2019m) getting into a bad habit of trying to break tackles on these guys that I don\u2019t have a great chance of breaking a tackle on,\u201d Maye said.<\/p>\n He absorbed six sacks for a second straight week. Fewer than half of his 34 sacks can be attributed to a Patriots offensive lineman losing a block, per the Herald\u2019s film study; meaning most of them are on scheme breakdowns or the quarterback. If Maye throws the ball away more, the offense gets better. It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n Defensively, pressure is also a problem.<\/p>\n Last week, the Pats hit Browns rookie Dillon Gabriel<\/a> \u2014 the worst starting quarterback in the league \u2014 only twice and sacked him once. Michael Penix Jr. got sacked once Sunday and hit just four times. But set the oft-overrated sack totals aside.<\/p>\n Entering Sunday, the Pats ranked bottom 10 in quarterback knockdowns <\/a>and below average by pressure rate. Neither should change once Week 9 concludes late Monday night. The Patriots are targeting edge defenders in the trade market, per sources<\/a>, because they know their depth there is perilously thin for a team with big postseason dreams.<\/p>\n Their secondary doesn\u2019t get off easy, either. Falcons wide receiver Drake London set the Patriots defense ablaze while pocketing nine catches for 119 yards and three touchdowns. Two scores came at the expense of the 5-foot-8 Marcus Jones, who fights like hell but gave up eight inches in their man-to-man matchups that could have been avoided. That\u2019s on coaching.<\/p>\n No surprise, the Patriots are among the worst defenses in the league versus No. 1 receivers. They ranked fifth-worst before kickoff by the opponent-and-situation-adjusted metric DVOA, and may fall even further after London\u2019s performance, which included, by the way, three catches against Christian Gonzalez for 67 yards.<\/p>\n Gonzalez, to his credit, broke up two passes intended for London and forced a turnover on downs. The young stars played to something close to a draw, just like their respective teams did. In his post-game press conference, Gonzalez did not apologize for the catches he allowed, nor should he have.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no shame in competition, nor winning, nor luck.<\/p>\n Only failing to prepare for the moment your luck inevitably runs out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOXBORO \u2013 Mike Vrabel walked into his press conference with a little grin that said everything. Then, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[10840,22133,10830,119,12004,22134,22135,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-30745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-drake-maye","tag-mike-vrabel","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-patriots","tag-patriots-news","tag-patriots-rumors","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Foxboro,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/tsnl03.jpg\")
Foxboro, MA -New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye scrambles during the first quarter of the game at Gillette Stadium. (Nancy Lane\/Boston Herald)<\/p>\n