Patriots Notes: Jacoby Brissett Earns Cam Newton Comparison After Big Game

FOXBORO, Mass. — Some notes and nuggets from Thursday’s New England Patriots game, which they lost to the New York Giants 40-38 to close out their preseason schedule:

— Quarterback Jacoby Brissett was the star of the game for the Patriots, throwing for four touchdown passes and running for another in his best performance as a pro.

His third-quarter touchdown pass to Devin Lucien was his most impressive, as he was forced throw off his back foot and still found Lucien on a fade in the corner of the end zone.

Lucien, who caught five passes for a game-high 95 yards in the loss, compared the pass to ones he’s seen Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton throw.

“You know, in practice this week, it was funny,” the wide receiver said. “I told him he looked like Cam Newton for a second, because he just stayed in the pocket. And you know how Cam just throws off his back foot sometimes. (Brissett) just launched a ball with the whole defensive line right in his face. And I’m like, ‘That’s not you. What are you doing?’ And he just laughed a little bit.”

— Brissett, whom we speculated before the game might be on the roster bubble, was in a great mood during his postgame news conference. He used the word “fun” a total of 11 times and responded to question about his touchdown pass by saying, “There were four of them, so…”

— Brissett also had a great explanation for the juke he pulled on Giants safety Ryan Murphy during his 5-yard touchdown run.

“I probably didn’t need that, honestly,” he said with a smile. “You know, I just saw him coming in so hard and I was just like, ‘This would be cool if I juked him.’ So I just tried it out. I was going to dive if he did anything else to me, but it was just a good job of the offensive line clearing them out and giving me some room to step up.”

His Patriots teammates, many of whom didn’t play in the game, seemed to enjoy the move.

“You can hear them,” Brissett said. “Even when we were on the sideline before we went out, they’re just going crazy. You know, that’s so fun to see. You get kind of caught up in — it’s the NFL so you’ve got to kind of, not not have fun, but it’s just so serious. And then you see a lot of the guys that you look up to in the locker room, you see the Toms (Brady) and you see the (Devin) McCourtys and you see Duron (Harmon) and things like that and you’re just like, ‘Man, this is fun.’ Like, you know, you’re going out there and just playing football.”

Brady, McCourty and Harmon were among the dozens of Patriots veterans who watched from the sideline as the Patriots erased a 20-point third-quarter deficit only to lose on a last-second field goal.

The majority of the players who did see the field for New England were rookies, prompting Brissett, a second-year pro, to remark he “felt old being in that group.”

— The biggest negative for the Patriots on Thursday was the loss of cornerback/return man Cyrus Jones, who left the game with what the team reportedly fears is a torn ACL.

With Julian Edelman suffering the same season-ending injury last Friday, New England now has just one experienced punt returner on its roster: 31-year-old Danny Amendola, who’s been injured on punt returns in each of the past two seasons.

The Patriots’ best internal option outside Amendola is rookie cornerback Will Likely, who entered Thursday as the longest of long shots to make the 53-man roster. He still probably won’t.

Rookie receiver Austin Carr said after the game he was Northwestern’s No. 2 punt returner last season, though he never actually returned a punt in his collegiate career. Carr has a better chance of sticking around following Edelman’s injury, but he faces competition from Lucien, running back D.J. Foster and others for a roster spot.

The Patriots also could choose to add an additional return man either through a trade or via the waiver wire, which seems like the most likely option at this point.

— As we bid adieu to the NFL preseason, we leave you with this:

Next Thursday night can’t come soon enough.

Thumbnail photo via Greg M. Cooper/USA TODAY Sports Images