The Patriots very much remain a work in progress, but Sunday was a step in the right direction.
New England avoided getting swept in its season series against the Jets, earning a thrilling 25-22 win that was capped off by a game-winning drive orchestrated by Jacoby Brissett.
The Jets might be as woeful a team as the Patriots are, but after the last few weeks the Patriots have had, they badly needed a good result. And for the first time since Week 1, New England did enough in all three phases to earn a win.
Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo has invoked the age-old “winning fixes everything,” adage, but he knows it’ll take a bit more winning before they arrive at the “everything is fixed” point.
“Everything is not fixed,” Mayo said. “What I would say is a lot of the things that were happening the last few weeks have been symptoms of losing. You have to win one game before you can start to stack them together.”
For as bad as the Jets are, they have plenty of veteran talent, Aaron Rodgers chief among them. With the result in doubt until the very end, it would have been on brand for this year’s Patriots team to flame out – especially once they lost Drake Maye for the game.
They showed a resolve that has largely been lacking, which is curious timing since their coach just last week called them soft (before clarifying later on The Greg Hill Show that he meant they were playing soft).
“The guys went out there and played well. I tried to walk it back last week as far as calling them soft," Mayo said. "We played soft the last two games, and that’s what I meant, and I would say those guys answered the challenge.
“I don’t think we have soft guys in our locker room, that was just the way we had played the last two weeks. I thought they came out and played well yesterday.”
Still, the Patriots are a two-win team that has a lot of work to do between now and next September if they want to be remotely competitive in 2025. In the near term, that means putting together respectable performances the rest of the way, even if the record at the end is still unsightly.
Suffice it to say Mayo will get plenty of opinions on how exactly to do that and keep the ship steered in the right direction.
“Everyone has solutions," Mayo said. "It’s not just in the building, it’s outside – I can’t even go to the grocery store without ‘Well, maybe you should change the time of practice.’ My mom calls me with solutions, people in the building, like everyone has a solution.
“My mom recommends playing better. Just coach better and play better.”