Sunday’s 19-17 loss to the Buccaneers was as close to a moral victory as the Patriots could get.
Not allowing a touchdown pass to Tom Brady and the powerful Buccaneers offense, and coming up a few inches to the left on a potential game-winning field goal against the defending Super Bowl champions showed the Patriots are better than their 1-3 record would indicate.
But, this was the second of four games this year that a theme afterwards was learning from a loss and it benefitting them down the road.
“I think we are resilient, we are going to keep fighting,” Devin McCourty said when asked what he learned about the team Sunday. “I think week-in and week-out we are going to put whatever happened behind us and prepare and be ready to go. And I think we showed that after not playing the way we wanted to play at all last week to come out here in a big game, ignore everything else that was going on and prepare and be ready to go.”
At 1-3, the Patriots aren’t really in a position to say they’ll learn from losses anymore. They need to start winning games, as they don’t have much room to play with if they want to be in the playoff conversation come late November and December.
According to Pro Football Reference, since 1978 of the 305 teams to start a year 1-3, the average finish of those teams was 6-10 and only 36 (11.8%) made the playoffs.
The percentages might get a little better with this being the first 17-game season, but the point remains the same — the Patriots need to stop thinking about moral victories and start winning games.
“It’s finding a way to win these games and that is going to be our next step,” McCourty said. “Obviously it is great to come out here and do a decent job but we want to win. You know, I think we look up and we are 1-3 now. We need to find a way to win these games going forward and that will be the difference in the season.”
Usually momentum is viewed as coming from a win, but in some instances it can come from a loss. That is what the Patriots are looking at this week.
New England played its best game of the season against the defending Super Bowl champs where the defense finally seemed to click for the first time all year, and Mac Jones continues to show he’s capable of having a solid NFL career.
Sunday could be the game that turns the season around as it showed the players they have the ability to beat any team in the league.
"I feel like the sky is the limit for this team,” wide receiver N’Keal Harry said Monday. “For us to go toe to toe with them [Sunday] night, I feel like we can go toe to toe with anybody in this league."
This week against Houston is a good get-right game, but then the Patriots need to really start taking care of business with home games against the Cowboys and Jets followed by a road game in Los Angeles against the Chargers.
Going into the year the Dallas and Los Angeles games could have gone either way, but after losing to Miami and New Orleans at home to open the year, these have now turned into games the team needs to win if it has any shot of making the postseason.
Taking care of business the next month would have the team 5-3 at the midway point of the year and everyone would forget this 1-3 start. Even being 4-4 wouldn't be all that bad.
Moral victories can no longer be a thing for the Patriots, they need to be real victories.
