FOXBORO, Mass. — The New England Patriots don’t have time to lick their wounds after Monday night’s 41-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Defensive captain Devin McCourty said the Patriots put that game to rest as soon as they arrived home early Tuesday morning.
They had little other choice.
The Patriots typically review game film on Monday, have Tuesday off and then move on to their next opponent. Because the Patriots played Monday, the game film from their embarrassing loss was only reviewed by the coaching staff, and the team moved on to the Cincinnati Bengals on Wednesday.
“In a short week, we don’t really have time to sit there and try and break down everything that went wrong in Kansas City. We just gotta move on,” McCourty said Wednesday in the Patriots’ locker room. “Our coaches always can tell us what we need to do right away going into this week, but as players, I woke up Tuesday and started watching Cincinnati and getting on them and get ready to go on Sunday.”
One would think this is a bad game to forget so quickly. As McCourty put it, “everything” went wrong, so it would be easy to assume that film review would be necessary to fix those mistakes before Sunday night. The Patriots safety doesn’t see it that way, though.
“I think we all can watch that film alone or even going through the game, we know a lot of things we did wrong,” McCourty said. “It wasn’t a game where we had to figure out what was going — we know what we did wrong, and I like the feeling of just moving on and getting ready to go on to someone else and trying to get a win.”
McCourty compared Monday’s game to a loss to the Cleveland Browns in 2010 — his rookie year. The Browns beat the Patriots 34-14 in Cleveland, and New England rallied to win its final eight regular-season games.
“The next week, it was all about getting a win,” McCourty said about that Week 9 loss four years ago. “Here, we don’t like losing, so whether we lose by a couple touchdowns or by three points, it’s all about that next week and getting that taste of your mouth to get that win.”
Since the Bengals had a bye last week, the Patriots are way behind their upcoming opponents in preparation. A big win would go a long way toward rebuilding the Patriots’ confidence for the final 12 weeks of the regular season.
