Patriots

Matthew Slater believes loss to Colts is a ‘good wake-up call’ for the Patriots

The Patriots played sloppy in all facets in their 27-17 loss to the Colts.

Jake Bailey had his punt blocked for a Colts touchdown by Matthew Adams (right), one of several costly errors for the Patriots on Saturday.

By Conor Roche

December 19, 2021

Patriots captain Matthew Slater believes his team was served a slice of humble pie on Saturday night.

New England fell to Indianapolis, 27-17, ending its seven-game winning streak and falling from the top spot in the AFC. The Patriots fell into a hole quickly, trailing 20-0 just minutes into the second half.

Sloppy play was a major reason for why the Patriots lost as they committed eight penalties for 50 yards. Mac Jones threw an interception that cost the Patriots a scoring chance and threw another that set the Colts up for a scoring chance. The biggest mistake of them all though was allowing Jake Bailey’s punt in the second quarter to get blocked and returned for a touchdown.

Slater believes the Patriots have “shown we can be much better than we were” Saturday night, but also thinks his team might have gotten a bit ahead of themselves amidst their win streak.

“I think, as you begin to have success there’s a tendency sometimes to start reading your own press clippings,” Slater told reporters. “Not to say we did that, but I think human nature — you can kind of say, ‘Hey, we got this thing figured out.’ I think this is a good wake-up call for us. Those guys — we gotta keep the main thing the main thing, and the main thing is us having success, and winning games, and playing well.

“It doesn’t matter what [reporters] write about us or what people say and think about us. It doesn’t matter what people say about individuals on our team, it’s about our team playing well when our best is needed. I certainly hope we respond the right way moving forward.”

Patriots tight end Hunter Henry, who had two touchdowns in the loss, couldn’t pinpoint an exact reason for why the Patriots played as poorly as they did for the first three quarters.

“I don’t know, I mean, I think it was all-around. I don’t know if it was one particular thing,” Henry said. “I think it was all groups didn’t show up early on. I mean, kind of clicking on the same path a little bit, but still, I mean, wasn’t good enough.”

With the Bills next up on the schedule in a game that could end up deciding the AFC East, safety Devin McCourty is ready to bounce back after Saturday’s showing.

“Yeah, I mean it is what it is. We didn’t play our best football today. We played against a good football team, a team that’s hungry, it’s that time of year, but our season is not over,” McCourty said. “We have to get ready to go with a division game, a team we just beat a couple weeks ago, that’ll be ready to go because they’re in a must-win situation.

“We got to control what we can control. We can’t do anything about this game. It’s in the past. We will watch the film. We got an extra day to learn from it fix some of the things, that across the board we are going to see things that happened today we are going to see it again. We are going to see punt rushes; we’re going to see what they did on defense. We are going to see what they did on offense. It’s a copycat league, so we got to be ready to stop the plays we didn’t play particularly well against.”