Jimmy Garoppolo made his first National Football League start in place of Brady, who sat out Game 1 of his four-game Deflategate ban Sunday night – and the third-year QB led the Patriots to a 23-21 victory over the Arizona Cardinals.
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Jimmy Garoppolo is better than Tom Brady.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Aaron Rodgers threw two touchdown passes and ran for another score, leading the Packers to a victory against the Jaguars.
But the Patriots needed a little help. Gostkowski kicked three field goals, and I felt on two of those drives they should of capitalized and scored touchdowns then the game wouldn’t have came down to a last minute field goal try. And I’m telling you we won the game in the meeting room, on the practice field, in the walkthroughs, all through the week. As poorly as we played, we still should have won.
Keim said Arizona felt “pretty strongly” about the defensive plan Arizona had in place, but the Cardinals “just didn’t execute”.
“There’s no question if I didn’t have the tape on there, I don’t know if I could be playing this week”, he said.
“He had a severely sprained ankle”, Arians said. “Drew got it down and he (Catanzaro) pulled it”. On third-and-15 at his own 20, and the Patriots down 21-20, Garoppolo scrambled and found Danny Amendola for 32 yards. Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels called a great game for Garoppolo, who handled his assignment well, completing 24-of-33 passes for 264 yards and a touchdown. “We just go out and keep competing”. “We’re going to come into each game expecting to play well”.
When you consider downing the ball for a touchback would have let the offense begin at the 25, the failure to generate much of anything in such situations was a rather unsightly blemish in a night with a few of them.
The bookmakers in Las Vegas made them 9.5-point underdogs, the largest point spread against the Patriots since the Super Bowl in 2002, thanks to the absence of Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski.
“He’s incredible”, Patriots safety Devin McCourty said of Garoppolo.
“Give us another week”, he said. I wish we could have put it through for our teammates.
Brady was 13-for-23 with 168 passing yards and a 79.6 passer rating and no touchdown passes.
“I think all of the good quarterbacks are good at that”, Belichick said. “Any time you lose the opener at home it hurts, but there’s too much football ahead of us, too many guys that love the game, have passion for the game, want to get it right and want to bounce back with a big win at home next week and we’ll continue to work to be able to do that”. “Got ourselves behind the chains there but yeah I thought we hit a couple really good spurts”. The snap was low and Catanzaro booted the ball to the left of the uprights. Matt Cassel played the rest of that season, going 10-5. LaGarrette Blount bulled it in from there and the Patriots led 17-7 with 10 minutes left in the first quarter.
New York’s Eli Manning threw for three touchdowns, including the go-ahead score to Victor Cruz in his first game in almost two years, as the Giants edged Dallas 20-19. David Johnson broke off a 45 yard run to improve those stats.
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He jump cut into the line, spun away from a would-be tackler, put his hand on the ground to steady his balance and stiff-armed another defender before racing down the sidelines. I think they can and there’s never a reason to doubt the Patriots, but this was an emotionally powerful game. The next time the pressure is on will he choke again? He’ll get more looks as he gets more comfortable in the offense. Jones, acquired in an offseason trade with New England, recovered for Arizona at the New England 40.
