Patriots 54, Jets 13
BB: I thought our guys did a real good job today. Players were ready to go. Had a good week and came out and started, got off to a good start, played from ahead. Had a lot of production offensively and made some big plays on defense, a couple turnovers, stops, and the kicking game was solid, too.
I thought we covered well and returned well on the opportunities that we had.
The punt return and kickoff return, both of those got us started, and had good balance offensively, and made big plays in the passing game. It was just some good, solid plays, and then had 150 yards rushing, so that's always a good thing.
You know, proud of the way the team has bounced back here. Hopefully we can string another good set of days together and head out to LA.
Q. David Andrews was in here earlier talking about wanting to get a fast start and having you guys build fast starts. I'm curious, four plays into the game you had that pass from Kendrick Bourne to Nelson Agholor for the touchdown. Was that play in there that just happened to present itself at the time within the first series or was it in there maybe to try to ignite a fast start?
BB: Yeah, no, I think it was just kind of the right situation. I mean, Josh does a great job of mixing plays in to take advantage of the defense's overaggressiveness, whether it's pursuit or run force or whatever it happens to be. It was a great call by Josh, and honestly very well executed by everybody.
You know, Nelly, it was just kind of the right timing of getting the defender to come up and then get behind him. Obviously KB made a great throw. That was like a quarterback pass. It was a very well-executed play.
That's always the key. Timing and play calling are great, but it always comes down to execution, and those guys really executed it well.
Q. How much of a confidence builder can a game like this be for you guys when you post that many points, going forward now and heading out to the West Coast?
BB: I don't think we lacked confidence.
Q. What have you seen from Brandon Bolden that's allowed him to carve out this type of role, especially since James White went down?
BB: Well, Brandon is somebody that's always been ready, always done well for us. He's been an outstanding special teams player, just hasn't really had a lot of opportunity. James has been one of our most dependable and durable players. Of course Brandon didn't play last year when James missed a little bit of time.
We're very fortunate that we had Brandon be able to step in and do the things that he does, maintain his role in the kicking game and give us some quality plays offensively, especially on 3rd down.
He's good with the ball in his hands, and he's very smart, handles a lot of assignments, 3rd down, blitz pickup and those type of things are -- they're not easy. He does a good job of that, and as I say, gives us a lot of solid plays in the kicking game.
Q. The first week you allowed 187 yards to the Jets. Today was 62 yards. Was that a big emphasis prior to facing the Jets this week?
BB: The run game? Yeah, absolutely. I thought the Jets really did a good job in the first game. They had some schemes that were tough, put us in some tough spots. It was well designed. They've blocked us well.
They have good backs. Carter and Ty and those guys, they're hard to tackle. They get some yards on their own. They read the plays well and have good patience there.
But I thought up front we tried to not let them be able to get those six-, seven-yard gains and just hand the ball off kind of when they wanted to like they did in the first game. We got them in some longer yardage situations. Bentley and our defensive line had some stops for little or no gain that created some 2nd and longs, or when they ran on 2nd down it created some 3rd downs and we were able to convert on some of those.
But yeah, I thought our run defense has improved here in the last three, four weeks. But that's always a challenge anytime you see a great back like these guys or Ekeler, whoever, it's always -- Elliott, whoever it happens to be, they're one play away from a 70-yard touchdown.
Let's keep working on it, but it was good to be competitive, and then of course the score kind of took them out of the running game most of the second half.
I don't know if we really got the full test of what -- I'm sure they would have wanted to run it more than they had the opportunity to, but at least we were ready for it early, and that helped us get ahead.
Q. How did you see Kyle Dugger and Adrian Phillips take over when Devin goes down and making those checks pre-snap and also one of them being back there alone when you're in single high how they did throughout the rest of the game?
BB: Yeah, I mean, we're fortunate we have three really good safeties. Devin has certainly quarterbacked the secondary for a long time back there. But those guys practice and they rotate through there, so Kyle and AP are both very good players in their own right and both smart players, so they handled things. Myles also stepped back in there and played some safety, as well, in a couple of our different defensive groups.
Yeah, I thought defensively it was not a perfect effort but a solid effort, and once we kind of say in the fourth quarter got the pass rush going a little bit, that helped us. We tackled well, turned the ball over, had some turnover opportunities, took advantage of them. JC made a great catch on the sideline. Kyle made a great catch on a low ball there. Both of those are big-time plays, and then we punched the ball out there at the end.
Just the secondary working together, we played Justin, played Ja'Whaun, had some different combinations in there, but those guys really worked well together and held up well.
Q. Taking you back to Kendrick's pass again, when a guy is trying something in a game for the first time like that, what's it like for you on the sideline? Is that kind of a hold-your-breath type of moment?
BB: Well, it is if it hasn't gone well in practice, but usually when it goes well in practice, you gain confidence in it, they gain confidence in it and you call it. When you don't do it well in practice, then honestly it usually doesn't get called.
Now, sometimes it's a little different in the game because the aggressiveness of the defense might be different than what the aggressiveness is of the scout team, and so sometimes some of those plays are designed to really get everybody up and then get behind them. You don't always get that reaction in practice.
Again, generally speaking, some of our kind of one-time plays, misdirection or double passes, things like that, those guys are executing pretty well in practice, so I have confidence in them.
And you want the guy that has the ball to have -- you want to have confidence in the guy who has the ball that if something goes wrong you're not going to turn the ball over. If it's not there, then you just throw it away and go back and line up again, run another play.
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