Julian Edelman isn’t surprised the Patriots endured a subpar week of practice prior to their game against the Colts Saturday. In a new interview with “Pardon My Take,” Edelman says he remembers going through a similar stretch in 2013 coming off the bye week.
“I remember we won a game, it was the week we came back and we played Carolina — remember they beat us on that no-call on Gronk? When [Luke] Kuechly was there? They were a really good football team — Monday night football, Cam was playing good,” Edelman said. “We were a young team and we didn’t take that week of practice — you kind of take it for granted. The teams that were always really good, like the veteran teams, they took advantage of those weeks to self-scout, work on fundamentals, work on things, not go through the motions. You have to have a real good set of leaders at all those spots to get that going.”
Mac Jones admitted on “Merloni and Fauria” the Patriots didn’t have a good week of practice prior to their game against Indy. Edelman said some mental slip-ups are to be expected of a young team with a rookie QB.
“A majority of that team is young,” Edelman said. “When your quarterback’s a rookie, that’s crazy. And they could’ve hit a wall. This is, like, Week 14. These guys are used to playing 10 weeks, 12 weeks and they get a month off, go home for Christmas, go to the bowl game … it’s a completely different thing. Competitive stamina starts to come now.”
The Buccaneers are one of those veterans teams to whom Edelman is referring, but they were shutout last week. Does that mean they need JE11?
I mean, [Brady] likes to win,” Edelman said.
Hmm. ….
