Despite leading by 30 points in the fourth quarter Sunday against the Jets, the Patriots never took their foot off the gas.
Even when Mac Jones was replaced by Brian Hoyer late in the final 15 minutes, the offense was still taking shots down the field.
So, why were the Patriots still being aggressive so late in the game?
“It’s kind one of those games where we’re up by a lot. I could easily just relax and chill, but we’re trying to be dominant, man," wide receiver Kendrick Bourne said afterwards. "We want to be that team that can do everything at any moment. Whether we’re down or up, we want to play how we want to play. And that play just shows that we were locked in.”
Bourne was involved with one of the deep passing plays early in the fourth quarter when while leading 41-13, Jones hit Bourne for a 46-yard gain that got the Patriots down to the 1-yard line.
“Just keeping the foot on the gas, man,” Bourne said. “When we’re up by that much, it’s easy to come out of halftime relaxing, thinking we’ve got it in the big. But we came out playing better. The last time we played them, we won by 19, but we didn’t feel like we played like us. We let them do certain things to us that we don’t tolerate.
“And today, we just came out really prepared. You could tell that we’ve faced them before, and we prepared really well through the week. So shoutout to the team, man, how we played today.”
The 54 points scored were the most by the Patriots since Nov. 3, 2013 when they scored 55 against the Steelers.
The Patriots will look to continue their momentum this week when they travel to Los Angeles to take on the Chargers.
