QUARTERBACK SACK: With the Pats anxious to protect Brady’s health, he threw a season-low 21 passes, and even so he was lucky to make it through the game in one piece.
Advertisement
Brady walked gingerly after the play.
They are a much better team with Brady than they would be without him.
The Patriots have a first-round playoff bye before hosting a divisional-round game. Coach Bill Belichick, having by then removed his headset, opted to send backups in with the Pats trailing by two scores with less than two minutes to play. Coming into Sunday the loss of LeGarrette Blount continued to loom large and they haven’t had much of a ground game this season, so it was obvious that New England planned on trying to address that by giving Jackson a bigger workload.
– What has been most disappointing about the last six weeks has been the failure of anyone other than James White to step up. We didn’t execute right there when we got to the red area.
The Dolphins (6-10) wrapped up a disappointing season and are expected to embark on a search for their ninth coach since 2004.
McCourty doesn’t believe there will be a carryover from the sluggish end of the regular season, and he doesn’t believe the team’s attitude has changed over the last month or so. The Patriots reached the Super Bowl each season, winning twice, so none of this is new territory. “300 pounds, he just collapses the back of your leg, there’s going to be some residual damage from that”, said the reigning Superbowl MVP, who has also missed play time due to an injury only once during his illustrious career – the season-ending knee injury in Week 1 of 2008. But over the course of a 20-10 defeat, it was never clear that the Patriots went to Miami with that a legitimate objective. The second half has been one fumble after another.
What was a penalty-filled first half for the Dolphins, they pulled it together and held the New England Patriots to only three points, which is impressive given all the weapons that they have on offense. “That was across the board”.
Headed into the playoffs, it is absolutely certain that if the New England Patriots are going anywhere this season, they will need to play better football than they have as of late. The run-first approach led to just five attempts in the first half, with four completions totaling just 20 yards.
“When people come and ask to interview them, I think it’s a compliment to the organization, not that we want to lose anybody”. There are some players we haven’t seen in a while.
Advertisement
“Suh’s a big guy and he came down on the back of my, on the back of me”. Schefter reports he should be good to go after the first-round bye. This was the 64th consecutive start for Dolphins QB Ryan Tannehill….
