Week 3 Patriots postgame reflections
The New England Patriots are now 3-0 this season with Sunday's Week 3 game against the New York Jets.
In a 30-14 victory, New England quarterback Tom Brady’s 3-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Julian Edelman set an NFL record as he passed George Blanda for the most single season touchdowns thrown by a quarterback over the age of 42. This week is as good a time as ever for an extra victory, amid the controversy surrounding Antonio Brown and his release from the Patriots.
One of the first questions asked during the postgame conference with Bill Belichick regarding the decision to cut Brown this past Friday, Belichick replied with a terse, “yeah, we’ll just focus on today’s game.” The same brevity came in handy when asked if he had an update on Edelman’s chest injury sustained during today’s game: “no.”
Humility was a common thread during todays discussion, quarterback Tom Brady spoke from the podium about losing Edelman to an injury, saying, “Yeah, I mean, when you have good players out there, it helps. So your best players playing is a good thing. When you’re missing your best players, it gets more challenging and your margin for error goes down. But, every team deals with it.”
Clad in a Peppa Pig t-shirt and a smile, safety Devin McCourty addressed his first question, which was, “Another game, another interception. Is this becoming a habit for you?” with, “I'll take it. Just trying to be in the right place. I think we do a lot of talking, especially in the back end, about where we want to be in certain situations, the formations. So it's a big trust thing.
"I'm trying to be where the corners expect me to be at all times, and it just happened to work out that the ball's found me for three games in a row. So we've just got to continue to let the ball find somebody on defense, and if we continue to do that we'll have a good defense.”
Trust carried over into the locker room, where rookie quarterback Jarrett Stidham reflected on playing in his first NFL game. Though he threw an interception, Stidham’s excitement about his NFL debut is real. When asked if his debut was memorable, he simply said, “I think anytime you get to step foot on an NFL field, it’s pretty memorable.”
Pretty memorable indeed.
