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Patriots show signs of life at the expense of dysfunctional Jets originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Slide on over, Iron Bowl. Jets-Patriots II in 2024 will be remembered as The Irony Bowl.
In a game between one team at the bottom of the Pit of Despair and another sliding fast down the misery-soaked sides of it, the weirdness was stacked deep.
On the Patriots side, you had Jacoby Brissett — benched three weeks ago in large part for non-aggression (which was what the team kind of asked him to do) — delivering big-time throws in crunch time.
He hit on enough of them to set up a dramatic, in-by-inches, buzzer-beating touchdown for Rhamondre Stevenson. That result was the opposite of the play that essentially sealed Brissett’s fate: Ja’Lynn Polk’s failed, end-of-game toe-tap at the back of the end zone against the Dolphins.
Polk, self-proclaimed owner of the “best hands in the league” despite a cartoonish propensity for drops, did not play Sunday because of injury. But the cavalcade of drops from the rest of the receivers continued in the same “are you s——- me?!?!” fashion.
Chief offender Kayshon Boutte, who bragged last week he hadn’t had a drop all year and shouldn’t have to go to the coaching staff requesting the ball, made up for two stunning drops with the catch of the day to set up the game-winning touchdown.
Most glaringly, the Patriots — who’d been the “get right” team for the Dolphins, 49ers and Jaguars in recent weeks — finally bowed up against a Jets team that needed to get right more than any of the others.
Imagine being the Jets. Trying to light a fire in recent weeks by canning the head coach, trading for one of the league’s best receivers and ponying up to end the holdout of pass-rusher Haason Reddick, then seeing their hope-filled season basically ended at the hands of a team that’s in an acknowledged rebuild that was going so poorly the head coach called them soft a week earlier.
The Patriots responded, probably as…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/patriots-show-signs-life-expense-185547994.html
Author : NBC Sports Boston
Publish date : 2024-10-28 18:55:47
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