Patriots HC Mike Vrabel Postgame Transcript 9/9

HEAD COACH MIKE VRABEL

Just what do you think of the performance in the second half and three interceptions?

MIKE VRABEL: Yeah, we didn’t win the football game in the second half. That’s really when you have to win these games in this league, is finding a way to make some plays in the second half in critical situations. We didn’t do that. We can’t turn the ball over and we have to create more turnovers. Again, it’s a broken record. We got to have a chance. We have to be great in that situation and the field goal, offense did a great job of battling back in fourth down conversion and putting ourselves in a position. And, again, we want to be aggressive and just not reckless. They did a nice job and made a play. There’s a lot of fight in there and a lot of good things and there’s going to be a few things that we have to eliminate that get you beat in this league. So, great test. Great challenge. I thought we did some things really well. We got off to a great start. We got some stops defensively. We handled the environment enough. It was unfortunate back there on the punt team and we had maybe one other false start but all in all for the first week on the road here at this place, I thought we handled the environment pretty well.

(On his message to Drake Maye after the game)

MIKE VRABEL: It’s such a long season. We’re going to hold our head up high and we have nothing but the utmost confidence in him and everybody on this football team and he’s going to make a lot of plays for us.

That final drive, he had late in the drive, a couple of fourth down conversions. Is that a case there of just Drake maybe trying to do too much or not throw away hard enough in situations and get the field goal?

MIKE VRABEL: We’re trying to be aggressive and obviously win the football game but not reckless. Again, you don’t get any do-overs, but we’ll have to learn from it and stick together. It’s never just about one guy. I think everybody knows that by now.

How’s A.J. (Brown) doing?

MIKE VRABEL: I don’t have any update yet. Wasn’t able to return, obviously.

Mike, up 10-0 with the ball with nine minutes left in the third, do you think if you would have ended up in possession with a kick, you guys were in a good spot at that time?

MIKE VRABEL: I think you’re just trying to, if we could kick it we would have gotten in position. Just I think that that’s probably fair to say. I just don’t know if you’re going to be able to end every possession in a kick. If you did that in ten possessions, you have 30 points. I don’t know how realistic that is for the entire game. You mean like being able to punt the football? I don’t know, we’re going to have to score, but I felt like our defense responded. You can’t throw three interceptions. Drake (Maye) knows that. We put ourselves in some long yardage situations on the one (yard-line). That was probably forced and I think the guy made a great play on the last one.

Did you look at why at why Smith-Njigba was left so open on so many plays there?

MIKE VRABEL: On the fourth down? We’re just sailing out on the run and missed a tackle and, again, if they gain six yards, it’s a first down. Just can’t gain 50, so. You got to be able to stop him like we did on third down and then be able to get him on the ground if they throw that on fourth down.

What did Seattle do to make it so hard to establish the run?

MIKE VRABEL: They’re number two in the league in run defense last year so I’m sure they probably picked up where they left off. I thought we had some decent runs. Again, not necessarily good enough, but I thought we had some positive runs. Had a few negative ones. Thought we protected well enough. I thought we stayed balanced enough to be able to do that and move the pocket a little bit. So, great challenge out here, disappointed but like I said, we never accept losing but we have to embrace being able to move on and improve and we know how long the season is.

We saw one of those Devon Witherspoon blitzes similar to what we saw in the Super Bowl. How did you guys feel like you were able to respond to that throughout the game?

MIKE VRABEL: I thought we picked up the pressure. Got us on a couple of blitz zeros, double-corner cats, probably blitzed more. I don’t think we were caught off guard, but, when they bring blitz zero and we’re not ready for it, somebody’s going to be free. I thought that all in all that we held up okay. We hit one later in the game. We moved the pocket and I think big Mike (Onwenu) got a piece of him blitzing coming through the B-gap and I think we were able to hit one down the field.

Do you think you guys aggressive enough on offense?

MIKE VRABEL: Yeah, we just turned the ball over. We were trying to get the ball down there and make sure we were able to get the field goal off. When we converted the third down, then we wanted to try to score if we could, score a touchdown and that didn’t happen.

Didn’t have many (explosive) plays tonight and they’re built to stop those, but do you feel like Drake was at all trying to force the issue to generate a couple more?

MIKE VRABEL: Third and 16 or 17 or 20 is hard to go into, pretty much a lot of coverage, too much coverage. Probably got to reserve the right to punt in some of those situations.