With dim playoff hopes, 2-6 Patriots trying to ‘figure it out’
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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Most of the New England Patriots’ locker room had cleared out and the team’s longest tenured player, Matthew Slater, remained at his locker following Sunday’s 31-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins.
Slater has played in five Super Bowls (winning three), been part of 12 teams that qualified for the playoffs, and has been front and center for some of the franchise’s most iconic moments.
Staring at a small gathering of reporters huddled around him, he spoke from the heart Sunday after the Patriots fell to 2-6.
“For someone like myself, and a lot of guys on this team, we’re in unchartered waters,” he said. “I think this is an opportunity to display what type of character we have, what resolve we have, what type of commitment to the game of football we have.
“If you’re going to play this game, you have to be committed to it, regardless of what your record is. We’re going to find out a lot of things about who we are.”
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After Tuesday’s 4 p.m. ET trade deadline — with the Patriots in the unfamiliar position to be considered more likely to trade players than to acquire them — they host the Washington Commanders (3-5) on Sunday, then travel to Frankfurt, Germany for a “home” game against the Indianapolis Colts (3-5).
Safety Jabrill Peppers said the plan is to “lock back in” because “stranger things have happened” — perhaps a reference to last season’s Jacksonville Jaguars, who started 2-6 and qualified for the playoffs.
In the Super Bowl era, there have been 191 teams that started 2-6, and only three qualified for the playoffs: the 2022 Jaguars, 2020 Commanders and 1970 Bengals.
The emotion was raw in all corners of the locker room on Sunday.
“It’s not the record we want,” said quarterback Mac Jones, who sailed a costly interception late in the second quarter after playing a turnover-free game in a Week 7 win over the Bills. “It’s hard, right? You don’t want to be here. But at the end of the day, we’re playing football and we got to go out there and figure it out.”
On Sunday, the Patriots’ offense couldn’t figure out how to sustain drives against a Dolphins defense that blitzed just 9.4% of the time, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
That was the lowest blitz percentage Jones has faced in his three-year career. Jones now has seven touchdowns and eight interceptions against four or fewer pass-rushers this season.
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Another captain, veteran center David Andrews, noted what he hopes will happen among his teammates.
“It starts with us in the locker room. I think any grown man has to look in the mirror and say, ‘What can I do better?’ If you start pointing fingers, that’s a coward way to do things,” he said.
Meanwhile, Slater said he expects coach Bill Belichick to set the tone for players, but acknowledged that only goes so far.
“Coach can do everything until he’s blue in the face, but if we don’t go out and execute, then it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“I think we’ve shown some commitment, especially with a tough set of circumstances, the way the season has started for us. Now we’ll really find out. You can’t hide when you’re 2-6. We’ll see.”