The Patriots took care of business.
It wasn’t pretty at times. But Thursday Night Football is not the time to be worried about style points. After dispatching the Jets at Gillette Stadium, the Patriots now own the best record in the NFL at 9-2. Just as we all predicted before the season began…
Here’s What We Learned from game No. 11 for Mike Vrabel and his club.
The ‘Vrabel Effect’ on full display
On a short week, in matchups of divisional opponents (regardless of each team’s record), Thursday Night Football games often come down to mindset, effort, buy-in and which team recovered best during the days leading up to the game.
Those things fall under the purview of the head coach, and therefore Mike Vrabel and his staff deserve plenty of credit for the team’s 27-14 victory. Vrabel deflected after the fact, thanking just about everyone else who works on the football operations side of things at One Patriot Place.
“Testament to our players, our staff,” Vrabel said. “I thanked them so many times just being able to roll in there on Monday, have stuff prepared.
“You know, it’s hard to go on the road to Tampa, you know, and get your mind ready for that, but also in the back of your mind you’ve got a whole other box about, ‘What are you going to do against the Jets?’ And being able to get on a plane, come home, get in late, but have that ready to go and have energy and a game plan ready for the players on Monday at 1 o’clock.
“Thank the trainers, thank the staff, the strength staff, everybody involved for getting our players ready to go for the game here in a short week.”
Henderson has a nose for the end zone
Five touchdowns in two games? The last rookie running back to do that was Sony Michel back in 2018, when he scored five times in two playoff games against the Chargers and Chiefs on the way to the Super Bowl (where he scored again).
The way in which TreVeyon Henderson scored his three touchdowns was as impressive as the sheer volume of scores.
On the first, he ran through arm tackles of multiple defenders on an outside pitch, contacting five Jets before being shoved over the goal line. On the second, he followed pulling guard Mike Onwenu on a “power” run and broke one tackle to cross the goal line. On the third, he ran a corner route as part of a “scissors” concept with Kyle Williams, who ran a post.
We know Henderson can fly. But he ran hard, he caught the ball, and he seems to be gaining confidence by the week.
Maye dialed in on short rest
With little time to game plan, Drake Maye still looked more than ready for the challenge presented by a Jets pass defense that has been better than you might think this season. They ranked eighth in the NFL in pass yardage allowed coming into the game, and fourth in limiting yardage on passes thrown 20 yards or more beyond the line of scrimmage.
Maye seemed unbothered, though. He completed 25 of 34 passes for 281 yards and a touchdown. He experienced solid pass protection throughout the game — he was sacked only once — and when he was pressured, he was extremely effective moving within the pocket, extending the play, and finding receivers down the field.
Maye threw strikes to convert key third downs to Stefon Diggs — as well as a fourth-down conversion to DeMario Douglas — on the game’s first scoring drive. He tossed dimes to Hunter Henry for two first downs and drilled Mack Hollins for another on an extended down during his team’s second scoring drive.
On the first touchdown drive of the second half, Maye was a magician.
He climbed up in the pocket to hit Mack Hollins for a first down. Soon thereafter, he stepped up to avoid pressure and put touch on a first down throw to Diggs. Then he scrambled right and just before hitting the sideline, he dumped one off to Diggs (who might not have been expecting the pass) for another first down. To finish? All he did was find Henderson for a touchdown grab in the back of the end zone.
On a night during which certain chants rained down on Maye throughout, that was certainly MVP-caliber stuff.
Two of Maye’s best throws of the day — one deep to Hollins and one over the middle to Diggs — were dropped. Didn’t matter much.
His completion percentage over expected was 13.5, according to ESPN, and his average depth of target was 11.8 yards, indicating that which your eyes told you: This was another extremely well-played game by the second-year signal-caller.
Stefon Diggs stays open
Diggs seemed to be right where Maye needed him, when Maye needed him to be there. He reeled in nine passes for 105 yards and had two more hit his hands that resulted in incompletions.
Despite a couple of drops, Diggs found open space and moved the chains on a regular basis, seemingly feeding off the buzz at Gillette Stadium during a primetime game.
“Definitely felt a lot of energy coming from the crowd and coming from my teammates,” Diggs said after the game. “Good atmosphere.”
Still far from perfect
Andy Borregales missed a field goal at the end of the first half. The Patriots struggled to run the ball when not handing to Henderson around the goal line (3.1 yards per carry). They had multiple drops. Kyle Williams and Maye once again had issues getting on the same page (zero catches on three targets).
And there were a couple of first-half situations that were, to some degree, puzzling…
Start-of-game issues continue
Eighty-two of the 206 points the Patriots have allowed this season have come on the first two drives, per our pal Tom E. Curran. They allowed another touchdown drive off the bat Thursday, as they gave up a 14-play, 72-yard series that resulted in a Justin Fields touchdown.
Fields ran five times for 28 yards on the opening drive, getting into the end zone on a zone-read run where he scooted around Harold Landry on the edge.
“The quarterback (was) faster than most of the guys we got,” Vrabel said of his team’s early-game struggles against Fields. “Didn’t do a good enough job. Recovered a little bit. We’ll have to continue to try to be better there.”
End-of-half questions arise
Maye went 14-for-16 in the first half and looked like he was ready to make another serious run at six points when the Patriots fielded a punt with 1:48 left in the second quarter.
A short run, a holding call, and a checkdown later — without any timeouts being burned — it seemed as though the Patriots may have been content to go into the locker room with a 14-7 lead.
However, a Jets sack was negated by a defensive holding call, which gave the Patriots a fresh set of downs with about 30 seconds remaining in the half. Then the Patriots turned it on.
A deep shot to Kyle Williams went incomplete. Passes to Henderson and Diggs went for 22 total yards, and the Patriots took their second timeout with nine seconds left. After a draw for minimal yardage, the Patriots took their final timeout to set up a 45-yard field goal. Borregales missed.
It ended up mattering little in the grand scheme of things, but the Patriots’ initial slow-play seemed uncharacteristic for a team that has been aggressive this season with the ball in its hands, often trusting its quarterback to push the envelope and, for example, go for it on fourth down.
Vrabel protects Milton Williams
Vrabel made it very clear after the game that he made the decision to end Milton Williams’ night. The defensive tackle suffered an ankle injury early in the game and worked to come back, but Vrabel ultimately kept Williams on the sideline.
“I made a decision,” Vrabel said, “that felt like we should start treating that thing and get ahead of it and see where he is (Monday) and in the next couple of days.”
Vrabel added: “He wanted to try to go. I made a decision I thought was best for the team for his instance.”
