This week for the Patriots (8-2), Tuesday worked like a Friday, as the team prepares on short rest for their Week 11 matchup with the Jets (2-7) on Thursday Night Football.
A Friday schedule for the team meant head coach Mike Vrabel met with the media for a second consecutive day. And with his team just pulling off their most impressive win of the season in Week 10 down in Tampa Bay, the hype around the Patriots is the highest it’s been since Tom Brady called it his football home.
As of publishing:
- Quarterback Drake Maye is the MVP favorite at multiple sportsbooks
- Vrabel is the betting favorite to win Coach of the Year
- Patriots have the sixth-best odds to win the AFC and 10th-best odds to win the Super Bowl
- They’re 12.5-point favorites against New York on Thursday, sitting on the moneyline at -800
- They’re favored in each of their next four games before hitting their Week 14 bye
- The next time the Patriots are listed as an underdog isn’t until Week 15 against the Bills, and you have to imagine those odds will shift as New England continues stacking wins
The vibes are high. But sometimes that can be dangerous for teams.
I think the phrase is “smelling your own farts,” but let’s go with the phraseology a reporter quoted from Nick Saban in his question to Vrabel on Tuesday.
Here’s the full exchange on how Vrabel keeps his team from being impacted by all the positive attention it’s getting in the midst of their seven-game winning streak:
Question: “Nick Saban used to, on his team, talk about not wanting them to drink the rat poison when they were getting hyped for being good. You guys have kind of avoided that, flown under the radar, but I think now there’s probably kegs of rat poison from the national media. As a player and/or coach, have you been able to sense when a team might be in for maybe a letdown, and then what can you do to avoid that?”
Vrabel: “I think those are always hard. That's human nature. We just have to stay consistent through our actions. Quick turnaround, these guys were locked in, prepared. There's times where I want to pull the head coaching card out, stray away and run around here slamming everything, yelling. I really haven't had to, where you try to make up, fabricate some conflict.
“Yesterday they responded. They did everything we asked them to do. Recovery, preparation, the walkthrough practices, being able to run and get some of the soreness out of them. They bought into that. Those are all really positive things. We never want to take the cheese and get into all that. Certainly, there's a human element to it, but when things are going good, you have to be able to prepare for things when they're not. I think that we try to do that, and we try to stay focused so that we're not in any sort of panic mode.”
The Jets might be coming to town with just two wins, but both of those wins have come over the last two weeks - a miraculous comeback against the Bengals in Week 9 and a 27-20 over the Browns in Week 10 after trading away their two best players on defense at the deadline.
In addition to both Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams being shipped off for draft picks, they’re also without former Offensive Rookie of the Year Garrett Wilson for the next month while he nurses a knee sprain.
It’s a team that’s lacking talent with a first-year head coach still in the process of establishing a new culture after the mess Aaron Rodgers and his buddies left behind. And yet, New York might just have a shot on Thursday.
Playing on short rest after 10 straight weeks of football, the Patriots came out of their game at Raymond James Stadium banged up. In addition to tight end Austin Hooper being out with a concussion, 14 different Patriots were listed as limited participants on Monday’s practice report. That number dropped to just five on Tuesday, but the point still stands. This is a team that cannot wait for their mini bye to arrive when the clock goes 00:00 late Thursday night. And I can’t blame them.
I’m not predicting an upset. But I’m also not predicting a two-touchdown win, either.
Week 11 might be a “gimme” on paper, but it’s far from it when you consider the Patriots’ wear and tear.
I predict Thursday at Gillette brings us the eighth Thursday Night contest of the year decided by 10 points or less.
Tune in each and every Monday throughout the football season to Patriots Monday on WEEI. Head coach Mike Vrabel joins The Greg Hill Show at 6:30 a.m. ET, and quarterback Drake Maye joins WEEI Afternoons.