FOXBOROUGH - With sweat still beading up on his forehead and trickling down his nose, Rhamondre Stevenson responded very matter-of-factly to a question about how this Patriots’ team needs to respond in the week ahead.
“When you lose, you’ve got to learn from it,” he said on Monday. “I think that's what we need to do. See what we did well, because we did a lot of things well yesterday, but see where we hurt ourselves, and ultimately work on that in practice and just put a focal point on that.”
Stevenson’s approach echoed what was said in the locker room following that disappointing 35-31 loss, where the Pats blew a 21-0 lead. Their confidence was not shaken - K’Lavon Chaisson said it remained a 10 out of 10. But after 10 straight wins, this little engine that could was reminded just how cruel this league can be.
“Coach summed it up, well, entering the locker room,” Garrett Bradbury recalled. “I heard him say, ‘Welcome the NFL, boys.’ This is the NFL. It's December football. It was two good teams going at it, and they made more plays than we did.”
The Patriots certainly didn’t need a wake-up call. They weren’t out there peacocking during their bye week, telling the world they were some undeniable force or immovable object. Vrabel wouldn’t allow that, nor would so many of the players he and his people hand-picked.
This team is built in a certain way - a come-to-work-to-put-in-the-work kind of way that, perhaps with the exception of the Bengals week, has been met. But what yesterday’s postponement of the hat-and-t-shirt celebration (one that can’t be achieved even next week) can do is hammer home that message, and perhaps even amplify the need to do even more as they hit the home stretch.
“I don’t want to say you get comfortable, but winning 10 straight...not a lot of teams do that,” noted Bradbury. “I never like to say it's like a wake-up call, because you don't want to lose. But I think this week, in practice and meetings, I think everyone will be a little more attentive and understand where we're at in the season and what we're fighting for. Coach Vrabel said after the game, ‘If we don't learn anything from it, then it is a loss.’ But I think there are some things we can learn from it. If we can be a little bit better in practice and a little bit better next Sunday, I think we will learn from it. “
There’s also this fact, one that can’t be denied. If this roster is going to succeed and make a deep run into the postseason, they’ll need more from