FOXBOROUGH - That was a little harder than the Patriots would have hoped, but this team continues to write its wonderful, unlikely tale, eventually putting the finishing touches on a remarkable season-long turnaround by beating the Dolphins, 38-10. It was the Pats’ 14th win of the year. Next up, the Chargers (UPDATE: Sunday night at 8 PM) in round one of the playoffs.
“I think we’ve come a long way,” Drake Maye reflected. “It takes everybody. It took everybody in that locker room. This was one of the goals: to host a home playoff game. This is what we wanted. Win or go home... stay playing like us. We built this identity and played to it, and I think good things have happened.”
“I’m just proud of this team,” Rhamondre Stevenson (131 yards, 3 TDs) said. “I'm proud of how we fight, proud of how relentless we are ... I'm excited for the postseason.”
“I’m just happy the way we handled business this season,” Jaylinn Hawkins said. “The way we came together, the way we grew together. Obviously, that’s a big accomplishment, and now we’re on to the postseason. ... Grateful for it.”
If you are a believer in momentum and want your team to be playing its best football, this was not it, at least not in the first half. There was slop in all three phases for the Pats, including a blocked field goal that made jailbreaks look organized. But true to form, this team responded - it's been rare when they haven’t - and the final quarter turned into a party. There were MVP chants for Maye, even when the scoreboard asked fans for quiet because the offense was operating, a full-throated singalong to 'Your Love’ by the Outfield, and some other stuff over the PA that, quite frankly, was unrecognizable to my old ears.
The game sure didn’t start out that way, at least offensively. The Patriots ripped the sharply dressed but ill-performing Fins defense, amassing 154 yards on their first two drives, both resulting in touchdowns. They averaged 10.8 yards per rush, getting explosives from Stevenson (56 yarder) and TreVeyon Henderson (13).
But Josh McDaniels called three straight pass plays on their next possession - all incomplete - and the offense never quite found its rhythm until the opening series of the second half.
“I got to find a way to get the ball in people's hands to make some plays and not have three incompletions,” Maye said.
He would do that to begin the third quarter, wisely finding a trailing Hunter Henry for 29 yards on first down, settling the offense in. The series was efficient and explosive (again, Stevenson with a 20-yarder). The drive was capped by a 15-yard TD toss to Stevenson, who over the last month has been the offense’s 2nd most valuable player because, well, Drake (duh) is first (and should win the league MVP, but we’ll see)
“When it wasn't really going my way, just day by day, just putting my best foot forward, not really trying to get discouraged,” Stevenson said of his early-season struggles to the transformation we see now. “My teammates and coaches made it a little easier on me. They have my back, things like that. So I would say, I try, just try to stay relentless, try to keep the same headspace, no matter if it's going good or going bad.”
That score made it 24-10, and the Pats' defense then held up their end of the bargain. They better have. Dolphins 7th rounder rookie QB Quinn Ewers did his best Tua impression (the good kind) early in the game, but he fell apart in the second, taking sacks, throwing an end zone interception, and generally looking like there were many places he wanted to be and Foxborough wasn’t one of them.
“We hit a little wall there in the second quarter, but I really appreciate the way that the defense responded...” Mike Vrabel said, then revealed some of what he told the team at the half. “I tried to ask them to replicate those last two series, that intensity and that execution, as we went into the second half, and I think that's what we saw.”
“Man, we just want to polish up a couple of things, especially going into the postseason,” K’Lavon Chaisson said. “Vrabel’s been emphasizing it a lot, man. The naps that we kind of took throughout the season, we can't afford those during the postseason. Those teams know how to capitalize in those moments, and one loss sends you home.”
Meanwhile, Stevenson, who was an honorary captain on Sunday, went over 100 yards for the 6th time in his career, doing so on just his 7th carry of the game. It was a 35-yard TD jaunt off power, but showed the veteran back’s straight line speed as he ran away from a couple of defenders at the second level. At that point (then 31-10), I’m pretty sure I saw the Fins break a huddle with a 1-2-3, Cancun. Credit the Pats for exerting their will and ensuring the Dolphins didn’t dampen the end of this regular-season journey or mar the start of the second season. And make no mistake, these guys will enjoy this win tonight, but they’ve got bigger fish to fry.
“We've got to flush it within the next 10 to 12 hours, and then you know, it's on to the next,” Hawkins said.
“We'll get ready and get rolling and try to do what we do every week, which is prepare and figure out who we have available and what we feel like the keys are going to be and try to practice and be ready to go,” Vrabel added. “That's all we've done all year, and that's all we'll be able to do this week in the playoffs.
ODDS AND ENDS
Morgan Moses made an extra $1.5 million for reaching play-time incentives, while Stefon Diggs earned another half-mil for hitting 1,000 yards receiving, the first Pats wideout to do so since Julian Edelman in 2019. And finally, the Pats made sure Hunter Henry got an extra 250K, having Joshua Dobbs hit him on a short throw to the flat for his 60th catch of the season.