Bill Belichick liked what he saw from the Patriots in Las Vegas — on the practice field, that is. In Friday night’s preseason finale, not so much.
New England capped its week in the desert with an all-around unimpressive showing against Josh McDaniels’ Raiders, prompting Belichick to criticize his team’s performance on offense, defense and special teams.
“We didn’t have a real good night tonight in any phase of the game,” Belichick told reporters after the Patriots’ 23-6 loss at Allegiant Stadium. “That’s obvious. We might have left it on the practice field on Tuesday and Wednesday. We certainly practiced a lot better than we played out there tonight. Obviously, we’re going to need to clean up a lot of things here.
“We didn’t play well in any phase of the game, didn’t play with any kind of consistency. We had a couple touchdowns called back, turned the ball over, didn’t play well on defense, didn’t play well in the kicking game. I’ve obviously got to do a better job. It starts with me. We’ll get back to work this week and work on the things we need to work on.
“Like I said, it’s disappointing because we did things a lot better in practice against the Raiders than we did tonight.”
The Patriots’ Mac Jones-led starting offense opened the game with a three-and-out, an interception and another three-and-out, then had a touchdown called back on its fourth and final drive after DeVante Parker was flagged for offensive pass interference. It was another rough night for a group that’s looked inconsistent at best and downright dysfunctional at worst throughout the summer.
On defense, New England’s starters allowed the Raiders to drive inside their 10-yard line on their first two drives, surrendering three big-play completions to ex-Pats backup Jarrett Stidham and failing to set the edge on a 4-yard Zamir White touchdown run.
Both of those units were facing Las Vegas reserves, as McDaniels chose to rest his regulars after two days of joint practices.
The Patriots’ backups weren’t immune to miscues, either, as Bailey Zappe threw an interception, Kevin Harris lost a fumble, Jalen Wydermyer wiped out a Pierre Strong touchdown with a holding penalty and Terrance Mitchell allowed a 45-yard completion.
Belichick believed the Patriots were “competitive” in both of their practices against the Raiders — the second of which featured an encouraging effort from Jones and the offense — but didn’t carry the same “level of execution and performance” over to the game.
“I’ve just got to get our team to a more consistent, higher competitive level than we were tonight,” the coach said.
The Patriots have just over two weeks to make the necessary corrections before the real games begin. Their regular season kicks off Sunday, Sept. 11 at the Miami Dolphins, who beat them twice last season. New England is just 3-6 in its last nine games against Miami.
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