The Patriots At The Bye Week

By Steve Atkinson 

The Patriots have entered the bye week with the best record, the number one seed, and Drake Maye leading the MVP race at 11-2. They’ve turned a three-year drought into a comeback, beating the Bills and Bucs on the road. You can mention their easy schedule, but they still don’t beat Buffalo on the road with Belichick still here, or Tampa. Belichick would have neutralized Drake Maye, while Vrabel is tough on Maye but recognizes his potential. The Maye, McDaniels, Vrabel combination is working wonders for this Patriots team.

The Patriots Are In Control At The Bye

The coach and quarterback are the most important elements in the NFL. Vrabel came to New England because of Drake Maye. The win against the Giants was a blowout in the first half; however, the Giants tried to make it competitive in the second half.

The red zone offense improved, but the Patriots could have scored more touchdowns in the second half. Scoring touchdowns instead of kicking field goals in the red zone will be crucial against better teams down the line. Marcus Jones’s kick return for a touchdown was huge, and who said the offensive line was banged up? You could hardly tell. Here was Mike Vrabel after the game about the Patriots being aggressive.

I think our guys certainly did. I think our fans did. I think our team did. It’s a weekly reminder to the quarterback, our quarterback — we show them every week, I wouldn’t get too cute over there by the sidelines. It happens every week. So Christian’s playing through the whistle, and as long as the player’s inbounds he’s going to try to hit him legally. And on the kickoff, we take a lot of pride in covering kicks. It was a match-up. They were top five — they were No. 5, and we were No. 6 in kickoff and we expect us to be in top five. And that’s what I tell our coverage team. It was good to see the impact it can make and turning the ball over as well.

Here was Drake Maye after the Giants game

 I think it was perfect with Coach saying, “no naps.” You want to come in here and start fast. This team has been up in a lot of games and they got good players over there and some good talent. We wanted to try to get on them fast, and Marcus helped us with that. What a return for him. And the kickoff return — I mean kickoff coverage. And I think all phases of the game showed up at different points of the game. And I still think, offensively, the second half, we have to put more drives together to put the game out of reach.

Now they are off until Monday of next week as they have two tough games between the Bills and Ravens then finishing the season against the Jets and Dolphins.