In addition to his three field goals, Patriots place-kicker Stephen Gostkowski played a major role in his team’s 23-21 season-opening win at Arizona by pinning the Cardinals deep in their own territory with his kickoffs.
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Despite Jimmy Garoppolo playing well in his first career start, Keim still referred to the third-year player a “backup quarterback” when asked if there’s such thing as a “good loss”.
It’s not the ideal way to start the season but it could just be the Draymond Green-ing the doctor order. He was 24-fo-33 for 264 yards and a nice touchdown pass to Chris Hogan on the first drive. I liked their chances against Houston, who has a young quarterback, and two lousy divisional opponents, but I thought the Cardinals were too good.
After the game, Garoppolo’s teammates were all praises for his performance. Now, I’m not going to come out and say the Patriots are going to go 16-0 again. He allowed a quarterback hit, and there were two times where he was beaten while pass blocking, but a pressure wasn’t recorded; he was also beaten twice for tackles in the run game. “It’s a great way to just kind of watch how a lot of the flows of games are going”. Certainly, I put him and Coach (Nick) Saban (Belichick’s defensive coordinator in Cleveland from 1991-1994) up there pretty high, along with a lot of other great coaches and Scott O’Brien (Belichick’s special teams coach with the Browns from 1991-1995, then later with the Patriots from 2009-2014) in the kicking game. Looks the Patriots will be just fine without Brady for a few more games.
What do they Patriots do when most of the country thinks they are going to lose?
Seahawks 12, Dolphins 10: In Seattle, hobbled by an ankle injury, Russell Wilson pulled off another fourth-quarter comeback, throwing a 2-yard touchdown pass to Doug Baldwin with 31 seconds left.
“I am really proud of our team tonight”, Belichick said.
Believe me, the irony of Carrie Underwood using a song that has a refrain that includes the line “Got a real good feelin’ something bad about to happen” for the Sunday Night Football theme song wasn’t lost on me. You get to watch so many different angles and replays and you don’t get those things when you’re playing.
“Watched a lot of football”, Brady told Westwood One Radio’s Jim Gray, according to The Boston Globe. “The guy didn’t beat him for a touchdown; he beat himself because he missed the check”, Arians said. The defense held for a field goal, and gave Arizona plenty of time, but it was probably the height of their embarrassment on third down.
“I mean, I’m really, really concerned about the story line”. That’s work out 4-5 times a week, stay sharp throwing the ball.
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“It’s one game. We’ve got to bounce back and get ready for the next one”. But his ability to successfully run a balanced attack in a hard environment and his poise – especially late – indicated that he was more than ready to handle his four-game stretch as Tom Brady’s fill-in.
