New England Patriots
“We’re going to play to the whistle. We’re going to play to two feet in the white.”
The Patriots are on the rise this season.
But even with the emergence of Drake Maye and tangible results put forward after an upset win over Buffalo on Sunday, New England still has plenty of work to do when it comes to establishing itself as a legitimate contender in a wide-open AFC.
One thing that New England has to clean up is the number of flags directed toward them, as the Patriots have been knocked for 43 penalties through five games — the second-highest mark in the NFL.
But speaking on Wednesday at Gillette Stadium, Vrabel dismissed some of the concerns regarding his team’s habit of drawing plenty of flags.
While Vrabel noted that pre-snap penalties are lapses that do need to be corrected, he said that he has no qualms with his players also being aggressive out on the field — even if that might lead to some infractions doled out by the officials.
“It’s not that we don’t care about penalties,” Vrabel said. “We want to make great decisions. I also understand that team fouls are ones that happen before the snap that we have to be better on. … We don’t want to line up offsides, we don’t want to extend drives. Competition fouls, and we ask them to play full tilt to the tackle, but then there’s a line there.
“We have to play by two things: the whistle, I just don’t understand how a professional athlete could assume that anybody in his league was down, and we’re going to play to the whistle. We’re going to play to two feet in the white.”
The Patriots have several penalties against the Bills on Sunday that were a result of actions after the whistle.
Special-teams ace Brendan Schooler was whistled for unnecessary roughness after Bills’ receiver Khalil Shakir was brought down out of bounds by Marcus Jones, while an ill-advised move by rookie Joshua Farmer loomed large over a fourth-quarter drive that ended with a Buffalo touchdown.
On that fourth-quarter drive, Buffalo gained 30 yards in short order — starting when defensive tackle Cory Durden was whistled for roughing the passer after he made contact with Josh Allen’s face mask.
On the very next play, Bills running back James Cook was brought down for a 4-yard loss. It looked as though Cook attempted to flick the football back over to Allen as he was brought down, with Farmer then delivering a hit that came after the whistle that led to another 15-yard penalty.
But Vrabel opted to absolve Farmer on Wednesday, given the circumstances of the play.
“It’s hard for me to sit here and fault Josh from last week,” Vrabel said. “There’s no whistle, and running backs acting like he’s going to flip the ball back to the quarterback, and I mean certainly would have liked him not had a penalty called, but I can see it both ways. Just ask that they, you know, blow the whistle, and it’s the easy way for us to say that the play is over and our efforts need to stop.”
Even though New England can’t continue to rack up 50-plus yards in penalties every game, Vrabel stressed that context must be added when it comes to just how his players are racking up those penalties.
“I don’t know how else to coach professional players on defense in this league with the type of athletes that you’re going against,” Vrabel said. “It’s hard to bring them down. One guy, they keep running, they bounce in. So again, we’ll keep coaching it. It’s not that it’s not important. It’s important, but there’s something behind it.”
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