FOXBORO, Mass. — The New England Patriots’ offense is dealing with a cornucopia of injuries this Thanksgiving season, but the defense has one thing on its mind: stopping Brock Osweiler.
Free safety Devin McCourty said that might be hard for the Patriots come Sunday night, as the Denver Broncos backup quarterback has limited NFL snaps.
“It’s tough,” McCourty said Wednesday. “He played Chicago the whole game and then playing late versus Kansas City. He’s running their offense, though. You can tell he has a good grasp of what they want to do offensively as far as getting the ball out, getting the ball to the right guy, so you can definitely see that.
“He just looks like he has complete control of the offense. … You can tell he’s a smart quarterback, and it probably definitely helped him playing under Peyton (Manning).”
But if you think the Patriots were caught completely off-guard by Manning’s benching — he’s been battling rib issues and a partially torn plantar fascia in his foot since last week — then you’d be wrong. In fact, McCourty said the team isn’t necessarily fazed by the lack of a Tom Brady-Peyton Manning matchup this season.
“It’s different,” McCourty said. “For us, you circle the game, we don’t think about the game until it comes up that week. So we’ve got to be ready. You never know.”
As for the other side of the ball, McCourty said there isn’t any extra pressure for the defense to perform now that the offense is depleted. They’re just going to do the same thing they do every week.
“We’ve got to win as a team,” McCourty said. “That doesn’t change any week. All of us have our role and our job and we’ve got to go out there and execute if we have any chance of winning.”
Thumbnail photo via Stew Milne/USA TODAY Sports Images
