4 leftover thoughts from Sunday’s win over the Jets: On Sony Michel, Todd Bowles, Shawn Hochuli, and Joe Thuney

The day after Sunday's 27-13 win over the Jets, Bill Belichick's conference call touched on a bunch of topics, including what he might have done if Todd Bowles accepted the early OPI, the work of Sony Michel, and Shawn Hochuli's job.

1. File this one under what might have been.


On the Patriots’ first offensive drive of the afternoon on Sunday, Bowles decided to decline an offensive pass interference call on a third-down pass play by New England. If he had accepted the penalty, it would have put the Patriots in a fourth-and-2 situation at the Jets’ 24-yard line. Instead, it was third-and-12 from the Jets’ 34, and Tom Brady found Rob Gronkowski for the tying 34-yard touchdown.

On Sunday, Bowles defended his call, saying “third-and-12 are better odds than fourth-and-2.” On his conference call with the media on Monday, Belichick said he would have likely had his team attempt a field goal if they were in fourth-and-2 in that instance. But he also said he understood why Bowles accepted the penalty, because it would have created a 50--plus-yard field-goal attempt if New York had stopped New England on third-and-12.

“Fourth-and-short, that's always a consideration, to go for it there. I don't know. It happened pretty quickly,” Belichick said of the situation. “As soon as the flag was thrown, I saw Todd pointing and signaling that they were going to accept the penalty. He wanted to take us back. It would've put us to about a 53-yard field goal, something like that. I could see why he did that. As soon as he did it that just put us into third-and-long mode, so I wasn't really thinking about what fourth-and-short would've been.”

2. The Patriots had 11 penalties for 105 yards in the win. It was a high for the year — New England came into the game as the least-penalized team in the league. It’s the most penalties (not including flags that were declined or offset) for New England in a game since the Pats took 12 penalties for 108 yards in a win over the Bucs in Tampa Bay last October. (Given the fact Shawn Hochuli’s crew was working the game, in hindsight, it probably wasn’t a big surprise.)

After the game, left tackle Trent Brown said things were “called kind of tight,” and added that the whistles were “iffy” for a couple of reasons. “That’s stuff I’ve been doing all season,” said Brown, who had one of the best snap-to-penalty ratios on the team coming into the game. “I was like, ‘Whoa.’”

On Monday, Belichick sounded like someone who didn’t have much of a beef with the way things were called.

“Looking at the game, I’d say that most all of the calls I would agree with,” Belichick said Monday afternoon. “I saw what they saw, and probably would have called some of the same things that they called.

“I think on most of those penalties both on them and us — well, on our side of it. I’m not worried about the Jets. But on our side of it, we’ve just got to do a better job with our fundamentals and techniques and continue to emphasize as coaching points of being in good football position, doing things the right way so that we don’t — we’re not susceptible to being called on those penalties.

“I’d say with very few exceptions in the game, I didn’t really have any issue with any of the calls. I thought they were good calls, and we have to do a better job of coaching and executing on our techniques so that we’re not creating an infraction.”

3. Sony Michel is now ninth in the league in rushing yardage with 586 yards on 127 carries, and needs 414 yards in his last five games to crack the 1,000-yard barrier. He’d need to average 82.8 yards per game the rest of the way, an eminently reasonable goal for the first-year back who has averaged 73 yards per contest to this point on the season. Here’s a look at the run defenses the Patriots’ face the rest of the way:

Minnesota: 93.6 rushing yards allowed per game, tied for fourth. The Vikings have allowed four teams to hit the century mark on the ground — the Bears gashed them for 148 rushing yards in a win over Minnesota earlier this month.

Miami: 139.8 per game, 29th. The Dolphins have had a hard time holding teams under 100 yards all year — Michel had 25 carries for 112 yards and a touchdown in the first Miami-New England game this year.

Pittsburgh: 101.8 per game, 10th in the league. The Steelers have either been really good against the run (they’ve held seven opponents to under 100 yards on the ground) or really bad (two teams have topped 175 yards against them). A toss-up in terms of what to expect.

Buffalo: 111.3 per game, 16th in the league. Like the Steelers, all over the place. The Jaguars rushed for 226 yards against the Bills last week, one of two teams to top 200 yards on the ground against Buffalo. But the Bills yielded just 76 yards when they met the Pats back in October. Michel didn’t play in that one.

New York: 128.2 per game, 27th in the league. As we saw Sunday, the Jets can be dominated on the ground. The loss to New England marked the seventh time this year New York has allowed 100 or more yards on the ground.

On Monday, Belichick praised Michel’s ability to run with power.

“He’s a strong runner. He’s got really good lower body strength, and he does a job as you said of pushing the pile, of grinding out another yard or two after contact. He has good balance,” Belichick said. “Sony’s got very good balance, good lower body leg strength and he’s a strong, strong guy that can make yards against, I would say, bigger tacklers. You even see some of the defensive linemen and linebackers that tackle him and he’s a lot of times able to push forward for an extra yard or two.”

(One weird note -- if he does hit 1,000 yards, Michel's future certainly bears watching for a few reasons, including the fact that dating back to his days with the Browns, Belichick has never had a back rush for 1,000-plus yards in back-to-back seasons.)

4. Left guard Joe Thuney went wire-to-wire again on Sunday — he’s now the only guy on the roster to have played 100 percent of the snaps on either offense, defense or special teams this year. Thuney has played every possible offensive snap dating back to the Dec. 3 win over Buffalo. Including last year’s playoffs, that’s 17 straight games and 1,256 consecutive snaps.

On Monday, Belichick talked about the athleticism of Thuney and right guard Shaq Mason.

“They both run well, and have good balance and make good decisions,” said Belichick of the duo. “There’s a lot of tough decisions that those guys have to make — whether to go in front of or behind a guy or how early or soon to leave on a screen. Or on pulls whether to turn up or read around or sometimes there’s nobody in the hole and you have to make a decision as to whether to block somebody and keep going, or just pry it open and try to block somebody. Or sometimes there’s two guys there and you have to decide which one. They do a good job of just making those good decisions on the run.”