During the first quarter against the NY Giants, Edelman suffered a left foot injury and never returned to the field. The Patriots remain undefeated with a 9-0 record, one-half game ahead of the 8-0 Cincinnati Bengals, who host the Houston Texans Monday night.
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The New England offense finished with respectable final statistics thanks to a solid start and a spectacular finish, but the Patriots struggled to move the ball for much of the game. The man he covered all evening in NY on Sunday, wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., made the most notable highlight catch previous year with his now-famous one-handed grab that put him on the map. You just don’t leave Brady that kind of time, though. Brady later engineered a game-winning drive that included a completion to wide receiver Danny Amendola that converted a 4th-and-10.
However, this seems to contradict this passage from the National Football League rule book: “In the field of play, if a catch of a forward pass has been completed, after which contact by a defender causes the ball to become loose before the runner is down by contact, it is a fumble, and the ball remains alive”.
– Odell Beckham didn’t secure a touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone with 2:06 to go which would have given them a 29-23 lead. It looks like there’s one holdout from watching the game. As he was coming down, Malcolm Butler, the super bowl hero, punches it out of his hands to force an incomplete pass. This play eventually led to a Giants field goal, putting them up 26-24 with under two minutes to go. Butler also picked up a pass interference penalty later in the game, but he otherwise covered Beckham extremely well after that touchdown.
“I mean, I caught it”, Beckham said afterwards. During the same amount of games, Amendola only had 40 catches on 48 targets. He now holds the Patriots’ franchise record for field goals with 264, knocking Adam Vinatieri from the record books.
The receiver’s injury is another addition to the team’s long list of players who are unable to participate in the games due to injuries. “It was one of our better performances, but for me all that matters are the wins and losses”. If the Giants had run the ball thrice, gotten stopped on each, and settled for a field goal, the Patriots would have gotten the ball back with about a minute remaining.
The Giants on the other hand will head into their bye with a bit of a sour taste in their mouth because of the loss, but with a few positives to take away from the game.
When it came time for Belichick to address the team, he lauded them for making the most of their preparation – even during the game’s last helter-skelter lateral play by the Giants kick return unit.
But the Pats got a new lease on life.
NOTES: New England is home next weekend to face the Bills…. But this is not the same Patriots team; these Patriots are older and more fragile, just as Tom Brady is older and more fragile, and on a day when Brady’s longtime adversary Peyton Manning sunk to rock bottom, it wasn’t unfathomable to imagine that Brady would also fail to lead a comeback. He was injured during the team’s win over the Washington Redskins.
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1 airline of Patriots fans.
