FOXBOROUGH - "I need a drink."
Those words were shouted by an unnamed Dolphins player leaving the field Sunday night. Never a more accurate phrase has been spoken - and he was on the winning side.
Once again, the Patriots had opportunities. They just couldn't take advantage of them. But it's bound to happen when you go to a gunfight with a knife. And it has. Over and over and over again, not just this year, but in the last year and change.
The Patriots' offense, which had had its moments in the first two weeks, too often has to scheme it perfectly. The quarterback has to execute it perfectly. The line has to block it perfectly, and even when they do, even when it's married up as drawn up on the whiteboard or in the recesses of Bill O'Brien's brain, their overall lack of explosiveness makes everything so damn hard. They struggle to turn 5 yards into 10, 10 into 15, and 15 into 30 is a pipe dream at this juncture of the season. The Patriots had one play that went for more than 10 yards, and one was a Mac Jones scramble.
"It just wasn't our day," said Jones. "Hasn't been our day for the last two weeks."
When we entered the locker room some 15 minutes after the game, Jones was still in full uniform, and only one of the two I saw was still padded up (Matthew Slater was the other). He had a towel draped over the back of his head and was staring aimlessly into his locker. This continued for some time, long after many players had already undressed, showered, gotten in their street clothes, and left the locker room. Frustration. Disappointment. The pain of another close defeat.
"I think in the long run, it's going to help us at some point during the season when we all play together," said Jones when he finally stepped to the podium. "Obviously, it sucks, but really, when you're close, you have to do more. Weight room. Film Practice. Everyone just has to do more, and hopefully, if you do that, you know you did everything you could do, right? At that point, it's out of your control. Some of it's luck. Some of it's other things, but for us, we've gotta do more."
The Pats know plenty of time is left in this season, where 0-2 is a hole, but not one that can't be dug out of. The Bengals were one of those teams in this spot a year ago. They ended up within a whisker of reaching a second straight Super Bowl. So it's been done. Then again, they had (have? They're 0-2 again) players who can make something out of nothing, or better yet, make the kind of play (singular) that leaves everyone on the opposite sideline saying, "How the hell did (insert player's name here) do that?"
That happened once for the Patriots on Sunday night — an incredible cutback by pint-sized rookie Demario Douglas. But 10 yards into his journey, the 6th rounder out of Liberty got the ball ripped out of his arms from Bradley Chubb, the number five pick in the 2018 draft. He's a defensive end who runs like a linebacker or safety. He forced the fumble and, except for being asked to field punts, Douglas' night was over. But should it have been? With DeVante Parker playing on a bad knee, and JuJu Smith-Schuster playing on a bad knee, and Kendrick Bourne struggling to find space, Douglas was the one player on offense capable of doing that thing that could make life easier for his offense, and, in turn, his team. But not here. Not on this night. Not on Bill Belichick's watch, who was typically defiant when asked about it.
"Yeah, we played all our skills players," he said. "They all played. We had a lot of production on offense. Parker had a good day. (Mike) Gesicki had a good day. Hunter (Henry) had a good day. Juju. KB. Lot of good players. Can't play everybody."
Pressed further, Belichick continued on that train.
"Look, we can talk about this every week. Somebody will play less than somebody else. We got a lot of skill players."
But Bill, he didn't play after the fumble? "Yeah. Ok."
This was one of those times when "I did what I thought was best for the team" would have sufficed. So why not cut it off at the pass? Instead, Belichick is praising an offense that scored 17 points and averaged just 5.5 yards per pass and, with two games remaining on the week's slate, have the lowest yards per play of any team here in week two. But that's where this team is at right now, indeed handcuffed by an offensive line that hasn't found continuity because they haven't had their guys together for the entirety of this summer and now into the regular season, and because of injuries to some of their skill players, including Tyquan Thornton, who's speed is sorely missed even if we aren't sure he knows how to use it yet. That's forcing this group and this quarterback to be so fine that it's too fine if you catch my drift (it's 2 in the morning).
"We all gotta strive for perfection," said David Andrews. "It's an endless chase, and you'll never catch it, but you gotta strive for it every week. We're not doing that right now, not doing it consistently enough. We gotta be better. It starts with us. The things we can control, we gotta control those and stop beating ourselves."
"It's very frustrating because we put a lot of work into this, you know what I mean?" asked Hunter Henry. "This is the NFL, man; you play a lot of close games, you work on that (end game situations) and all but… There's so many other plays that we need to be better within the game to not put ourselves in that position. I think that's something we gotta focus on, which is a fast start. We're moving the ball but killing ourselves with turnovers and penalties and stalling on drives in certain situations where we could get points."
And when your margin for error is so slim, and the talent on the other sideline is better than what you have on your sideline, the Douglas fumble, or the Jones interception (man, did Parker get worked over by Xavien Howard on that one), and a couple of penalties in terrible spots - the Cole Strange holding late in the first half cold-cocked the Pats momentum and led to only three points not seven - are the things that we'll talk about if this season continues on this track, or if the Pats end up right around .500 and a tick short of the playoffs. Because in this league, close isn't good enough, and the Pats are learning that the hard way.