No one is going to feel bad for the Patriots.
No matter how bad the non-call was on the final play against the Panthers on Monday night, the Patriots have had plenty of calls go their way over the years — and it’s up to New England not to get itself into a position where one missed penalty unravels a whole game.
Bill Belichick knows that, and Tom Brady knows it, too.
“We get our fair share of calls, and we don’t [get others],” Brady said on WEEI on Wednesday morning, reiterating his stance from when he had cooled off after the game Monday. “Referees never want to be in that position, either, where they have to make a judgment call like that. They wish it would not come down to that, either, I’m sure, because they don’t want to play that kind of role in the game. They did, that was that situation. They made a call, and then they overturned the call.
“I guess being in the NFL for as long as I’ve been in, you see kind of everything. It so happened, and we’re going to have to move on. You don’t have long to grieve in the NFL. You feel crappy for the flight home, and then you start evaluating what we need to do better. And certainly we’re on to Denver at this point.”
Brady said again that the “most frustrating part” for him was that the Patriots failed to execute at other points in the game, making the drive in the final 59 seconds necessary.
“As athletes, we have the biggest influence on the game,” Brady said. “You hate for it to come down to a decision that’s out of your hands. It was really one play in the game. And we shouldn’t have really even been in that situation.”
He said Belichick didn’t even mention the call after the game, saying instead to look ahead to the rest of the season.
Brady took that same approach Wednesday morning when asked about how the offense has come along this year. The Patriots’ last two games have been their best offensively after the season began with shaky performances by the young receivers and then Brady.
“We’ve been up and down this year,” Brady said. “We’ve been inconsistent. The thing that I look at is, everything that’s happened the past 10 weeks, none of it matters at this point. Our whole season’s ahead of us. What we do these next six weeks, that will determine what happens going forward.”
That part starts Sunday night against Denver, when the 7-3 Patriots face the 9-1 Broncos and Peyton Manning in by far their biggest test of the season.
