The Patriots spent much of the first two months of the 2021 season fighting an uphill battle.
Much of the work and chatter was about New England being better than its record and trying to get to the .500 mark of respectability.
Now, after a blowout of the Jets at Gillette Stadium and an impressive win over the Chargers in Los Angeles the Patriots are 4-4, feeling good and looking very much forward to the opportunities that lie ahead for a team that’s realistically in the mix in the wide-open AFC.
“We gotta keep it going. Because at this point this is for playoffs,” N’Keal Harry said in a Wednesday morning press conference with reporters in Foxborough. “We have to make it in the playoffs. So we have to continue to keep winning games. We gotta continue doing that.”
“We have hope,” wide receiver Jakobi Meyers said. “We just kind want to keep winning, keep pushing forward. We’ve seen what it feels like to win and now we want to keep pushing at it.”
At this point New England plans on maintaining the same attitude and work ethic that got it back to hope and playoff contender as the postseason push begins. Through eight weeks of action, the Patriots are not in fact among the top seven teams in the conference.
“We definitely knew what kind of talent we had in the locker room,” Meyers said the jump from 2-4 to playoff hopes. “We just had to go out there and execute better. It’s slowly been getting better every week. We still don’t feel like we’re our best version yet so we’re still working.”
“We’ve been slowly building, day in and day out. We’ve had a chip on our shoulder going out to practice,” Harry explained. “We know the type of team that we can be. And it’s about making strides every day and improving every day. So that’s what we’ve been doing and we’re going to continue to do that moving forward.”
Where did that collective chip come from?
“Just from being 2-4,” Harry said. “We felt like we were a better team than that. We kind of wanted to prove it to ourselves. So we’re going to continue to have that chip and continue to go out there and work and do everything we can to become a better team.”
And, as Harry accurately pointed out, the playoffs are now a very much realistic goal and possibility. That pursuit continues on Sunday with a trip to Carolina to take on the similarly 4-4 Panthers.
