Maybe Bill Belichick will send Jason Garrett a gift basket after the New England Patriots’ 33-0 win over the New York Jets on Monday night at MetLife Stadium.
It would be an appropriate gesture if we’re to subscribe to Skip Bayless’ logic that the Patriots should thank the Cowboys on the heels of the Week 7 beatdown.
The Cowboys lost to the Jets in Week 6, with second-year quarterback Sam Darnold leading New York to a 24-22 victory in his first game back from a bout with mononucleosis. Bayless believes that result forced the Patriots to realize their looming matchup with the Jets wouldn’t be a cakewalk.
“You are welcome, New England. You’re welcome. Because we deserve — my Dallas Cowboys — a big thank you. Because what we let the Jets do to us two weeks ago forced the New England Patriots to take this game dead seriously. It really got the Patriots’ attention,” Bayless said on Tuesday’s episode of “Undisputed” on FS1. “If that hadn’t happened, who knows? Maybe the Patriots would have taken sort of a night off on Monday night against a division rival that they had already wiped out once in New England (in Week 3). Am I right about that?
“Would you believe that I did not see the Dallas Cowboys blitz Sam Darnold one time, going back two Sundays ago? Not one time did they blitz. They blitzed Carson Wentz right off the field (in Week 7), but they didn’t blitz Sam Darnold at all because they thought Sam Darnold was Luke Falk. … Bill Belichick came out and blitzed Sam Darnold nutty, where he was seeing ghosts, he was seeing goblins, he was seeing demons, he was seeing banshees, he was seeing vampires, he was seeing everything. He blitzed him almost every down from everywhere. They were coming from all sides, from all different creative ways. He threw the kitchen sink at Sam Darnold, and he would not back off because he saw what Darnold had done (against Dallas).”
Darnold completed 23 of 32 passes for 338 yards with two touchdowns and one interception in the Jets’ win over the Cowboys, which is New York’s only victory of the 2019 campaign to this point. It was much tougher sledding against the Patriots, as Darnold completed just 11 of 32 passes for 86 yards with no touchdowns, four interceptions and a lost fumble — a performance that had the 22-year-old signal-caller seeing “ghosts” in the Meadowlands.
To say the Patriots should thank the Cowboys seems like a stretch, though. New England’s hiccups against inferior opponents have been few and far between over the years, so it’s hard to imagine the Patriots would’ve taken the Jets lightly even if the Cowboys had rolled in Week 6.
