Brady had thrown just four interceptions all season but Jenkins grabbed a deflection and gave the Eagles a 21-14 lead midway through the third quarter. Cincinnati holds the No. 1 spot by virtue of its AFC record, Denver owns the tiebreaker over New England thanks to a head-to-head overtime win last Sunday. Murray had just eight carries for 24 yards. They were without two of their top three receivers in Julian Edelman and monster tight end Rob Gronkowski.
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“We’d love to have everybody healthy”.
“It’s never easy coming in under these circumstances and watching film, but I think we learned a lot”, Slater said. “It’s just not the reality at this point”.
To say they accomplished the impossible might be an overstatement. The short kick completely changed the momentum of the game, as the Eagles rattled off 35 unanswered points before the Patriots staged a late comeback that fell short in a 35-28 loss.
The New England Patriots have lost two out of their last three games. “I’m not sure anybody outside that locker room gave us a chance to come in here and win (Sunday) but we believed in ourselves, we knew we had a great week of preparation”. Elias Sports Bureau research notes that that is the second-longest streak without losing three straight games in National Football League history behind the San Francisco 49ers, who went 291 games without three consecutive losses from 1980-99. “Regardless of what your record is, obviously, we would like for it to be much better, but if you are still in the hunt at this point in the season, then you’ve got a shot”.
Kelly had turned a Saturday night team meeting/video session into a group-therapy session, showing the players film of their positive plays to remind them of how good they were. Bradford completed 14 of 24 passes for 120 yards and two touchdowns.
-S Nate Ebner, who plays on special teams, added kicking to his resume on Sunday.
This is the seventh time the Patriots have lost two games in a row in a regular season since Brady’s first career start in Week 3 of the 2001 season. He’s seen Belichick make several decisions like this over his years during his time in the broadcast booth, and said it was the head coach trying to take advantage of an Eagles team that hadn’t been playing up to some lofty expectations throughout the season. “We’ve been waiting for this for the whole season since preseason”, said Vickie Abernathy of Feasterville. “They threw stuff at us that we didn’t”. Awful. Awful. Awful. The Patriots were expected to score a touchdown on the play, but instead they gave the ball to the opposition.
“Ultimate competitor, he’s one of the best to ever do it”, Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph said, per the team’s official website.
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The Eagles had a third and 3 near midfield, and quarterback Sam Bradford threw an incomplete pass in receiver Nelson Agholor’s direction. But on the next play, Brady lobbed the ball into the end zone and it was picked off by Byron Maxwell. The Patriots had just scored to go up 14-0 with 7:47 left in the second quarter. Tom Brady’s third TD pass cut the gap to 35-21 with 5:27 left and Zach Ertz fumbled the onside kick to the hosts at the 44-yard line. On third down, with a chance to run off all but 20 seconds, Kenjon Barner fumbled.
