Projo Pats Blog

It was a great example of 60 minutes. I thought our team really did a good job of hanging in there today. We didn't get off to a real good start, but they hung in there, they kept fighting. Just plugged away for 60 minutes and came out of there with a win. It's a real credit to the players, the way they fought in the fourth quarter on the road. We got behind a couple of times. We closed the gap, then they stretched it out again. So it was really a heck of an effort by our football team. We had a few guys banged up in the game, but people stepped in and they stepped up and make plays we had to make to win. Third down, fourth down, offense, defense, special teams. It was a good win for us. Now it's like it's a three-game season. We've just got to pick up the pieces here today and have a good week and get ready for Oakland. But it's really good to win here. It was a good effort here today. I thought the players really played hard, showed a lot of toughness, both mental and physical toughness.

On playing shorthanded, if he wonders when it will it stop
Well, not during a game. We'll take stock of where we are heading into next week. Now, I'm not sure exactly what all that's going to be. But during a game, you've just got to go with what we have. And those guys stepped in: Stan, Mike Wright, Le Kevin, Junior, Rosy - a lot of guys ended up playing probably more than they thought would have. And they came through for us. You hate for that situation to come up, but it's good that they answered the bell.

On Junior Seau and Rosevelt Colvin
Well, they're professionals. They both prepared hard all week. Of course Junior didn't get in here until until early Friday morning and only had one day of practice and a little walk-through yesterday. He's a pro, and so is Rosy. Rosy worked hard all week and did a lot of things extra to be ready for the game, and we sure needed him.

On New England's third-down offense
They gave us a lot of pressure today, and we just had to hang in there and deal with it. We finally made some plays in the fourth quarter that really helped us. That was critical. Third down is a big down in the red area. Those are two areas where we still could have done better at today. We didn't stop them on defense, and we got held to a couple of field goals offensively, so we've still got to work and try and do better on that. Of course, the fourth-and-long was a huge play. That's where we really had to have it, and we got it. It's good to make them when we had to.

On Wes Welker
Wes is always impressive. He's a good receiver. He's really a competitive guy, a smart guy, quick, good hands, good concentration, tough. He does a lot of things well, and today was a big day for him.

On New England's defensive game plan
We had to cut it back a little bit. We had a little trouble, obviously, the first couple of drives. Seattle had a lot of quick, uptempo plays and we were scrambling a little bit to get where we needed to be. We tried to settle down a little bit. That, combined with some of the people who weren't able to finish the game, just all kind of added up to, let's just kind of get back to basics. Probably in the end that served us well.

On the impact on injuries
I think we have a lot of really tough people in that locker room, both physically and mentally. This time of year everybody is banged up, and they played through it. Mentally we've had our ups and downs, and now on the road. There's a lot of crowd noise out here, a lot of energy from the fans and from the Seahawks. I thought that team played hard. Their competitiveness and the level of play on their team is certainly a lot better than what their record is. That's a good football team, and they play hard. They can move the ball, and they can play defense, and they're good in the kicking game. So that's a good football team. I can't imagine that they're not going to win some games that are left. They just do too many things well. But I really take my hat off to my players. They played hard on the road after a tough loss to Pittsburgh. They came back and battled for 60 minutes.

On playing basic defense
I thought we got good pressure on the quarterback on a lot of plays. We just couldn't tackle him. He was elusive out there. He scrambled out and got a couple of throws on us, and then he scrambled around and ran a couple of times. So at the end we just brought everybody and hoped he wouldn't be able to get away from us, because that was a big concern, the amount of time, especially at the end of a game, we were a little bit winded. With the quarterback running around, look what happened on the first-down play where it seemed like we had two or three guys in the backfield and he ends up scrambling for whatever it was, 25 yards. So we wanted to make sure that didn't happen again.

On applying defensive pressure
We tried to get pressure all the way around, outside and inside, to try and keep the quarterback in there. But we weren't really successful doing it. We had pressure, but he's just elusive back there and we couldn't get him. You've got to try and keep him in the pocket and hem him in, but Wallace is a hard guy to do that against. We knew how athletic he was and, as I said, at the end we just ended up bringing enough guys so there weren't any extra gaps in there.

On the division race
It's a three-game season. We're 13 games into the year and it's still a real close race. We've just got to suck it up here and get ready and try to go down there and have a good effort against Oakland. We know they are a very physical team, and they beat the Jets earlier this year. We've seen them play good, hardnosed, tough football, and they're very physical, so we're going to have to do a lot of things well. Hopefully we'll have a good week of preparation out here and get as many guys as we can back out there and compete on Sunday.

On Terrence Wheatley's first start
I think (Terrence Wheatley) has been working hard. He's made some plays in practice. I think he's earned the opportunity to play a little bit - that his practice effort and his play-making in practice when he's had the chance to play, since he's been on the roster for a few weeks, so we thought we might be able to get a chance tgo see if he could make some plays for us today . . . We're going to need everybody. I wouldn't read too much into who playing ahead of who."

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