FOXBORO, Mass. — Tom Brady was noncommittal Wednesday about his expectations for the 2014 New England Patriots.
Coming off Monday night’s 41-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, Brady was asked if he has enough talent around him for the Patriots to succeed this season.
“We’ll see,” Brady said during his weekly news conference at Gillette Stadium. “We’ll see here in a couple months where we’re at, but we’ve got a lot of football to play. We’re trying to find the things that we do well, and we’re trying to find the things that we don’t do well.
“Like I said, we’re 2-2. It’s not a great record. It could be worse, could be better. We could all probably play better. We probably could’ve played worse, too. We’ve just got to try to find ways to do a better job.”
Brady won’t say it, but it’s been a frustrating five months for the Patriots’ starting quarterback. Head coach Bill Belichick took Brady’s eventual successor, Jimmy Garoppolo, in the second round of the 2014 NFL draft rather than adding another weapon on offense, only signed Brandon LaFell to boost the receiver corps, waited until the fourth round to find offensive line help, and then traded his best and most consistent offensive lineman days before the season began when Logan Mankins was shipped to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a fourth-round pick and tight end Tim Wright, who has played 21 total snaps over the last two weeks.
Brady has struggled, too, but it’s unclear how much of his issues are self-inflicted and how many are caused by the lack of talent on the Patriots as a whole. Brady was the consummate team player Wednesday, however, continuing to talk up his fellow Patriots.
“I trust all the guys in the locker room,” Brady said. “Our guys on our team work really hard. We try to do things the right way. We try to work hard to earn each other’s trust, and that’s why we go out and practice. It’s not always perfect, and when it’s not, we communicate through it and we try to understand the things that we need to do better so that we can all help each other.”
The Patriots showed impressive toughness last season, coming back from halftime deficits to the New Orleans Saints, Denver Broncos and Cleveland Browns. Brady said he didn’t know if the team has as much “intestinal fortitude” this year.
“Well, we’ll see. I think that’s what we’re going to see,” Brady said. “It’s been 36 hours since we lost the game. It’s a tough loss, but we’ve had tough losses before, and we’ve tried to find ways to rebound, and we’ve tried to find ways to correct our errors, and we’ve just got to go out there and try to play better than we’ve been playing.”
