The New England Patriots took a long look at themselves in the mirror after Sunday’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The defeat was the Patriots’ second in a row and their fifth in eight road games this season, ensuring their first sub-.500 away record and five-plus-loss campaign since 2009. They sit at 9-5 entering Sunday’s Week 16 matchup with the Buffalo Bills after losing four or fewer games in each of the previous eight seasons.
Quarterback Tom Brady, who threw a costly red-zone interception and misfired on multiple late-game throws against the Steelers, said Monday the Patriots faced “tough conversations and tough coaching” in the 24 hours following their 17-10 loss at Heinz Field.
“Learning from your mistakes is extremely important,” Brady said told Jim Gray during Westwood One Radio’s “Monday Night Football” pregame show. “I’d say we learned from (Sunday). Hopefully guys took it to heart. There was some pretty tough conversations and tough coaching, which is deserved by us players. Ultimately, we didn’t execute enough to get the job done. When you don’t do your job the way you’re capable, this is when you’ve got to dig deep and rely on other players to pick you up when you’re down or when your confidence is down a little bit.
“We have a lot of mentally tough guys. We have a strong character in our locker room. Ultimately, we’re just going to have to play better. You can talk about it until your blue in your face, but we have to go do it. … We have yet to put together a 60-minute game, and that’s still out there for us. We still have goals to reach.”
Asked later to elaborate on what “tough coaching” entailed, Brady added:
“Football means a lot to myself. It means a lot to my teammates. We put a lot into it. We care deeply about winning and losing. That’s what we’re here for, we’re here to win. When you lose and don’t get the job done, it’s tough. You’ve gotta look at the other leaders, the other guys who have been around a while and it refocuses you in ways that winning can’t. If we learn from it, it becomes a great positive.
“Our team has always done it. We’ll take these losses, we take them hard, but at the same time, it doesn’t keep us from wanting to get back out there and improve the things we haven’t been great at. … Nothing we’ve done in the past is gonna matter this year. Nothing we’ve done in 2003 or 2015 matters. It’s this year, this team. We’ve been in some pretty close games, (and) we haven’t performed at the end the way we’re capable of performing. If we’ve learned from those and come out and do a little bit better, I think the outcome will be different.
The Patriots, who committed a season-high 14 accepted penalties against Pittsburgh, no longer control their own destiny in the battle for the AFC’s two first-round playoff byes. They currently sit in third place in the conference standings, one game behind the 10-4 Houston Texans, whom they defeated 27-20 in Week 1.
New England still can secure free passage to the divisional round with wins over the Bills and the New York Jets and a Houston loss to either the Philadelphia Eagles or Jacksonville Jaguars.
But if the Texans win out, the Patriots (assuming they win at least one of their final two games to clinch the AFC East title and a playoff spot) will be playing on wild-card weekend for the first time since 2009, when they were blown out at home by the Baltimore Ravens in what’s widely considered the worst postseason performance of the Brady/Bill Belichick era.
