DENVER — The scoreboard, because it usually does, stated all of it.
Patriots 23, Payments 20.
However what Eliot Wolf noticed that evening in Buffalo, what he heard, informed him much more.
In contrast to years previous, the Patriots have been not shrinking from the second. Anxious uncertainty had been changed with agency perception. Instantly after the Payments had tied this primetime battle within the fourth quarter, Drake Maye led the primary game-winning drive of his profession.
Later, a newfound confidence and pleasure permeated the guests’ locker room, the place gamers started to assume they may be on to one thing larger than a middling season. A shock playoff run, maybe. Perhaps a dash to the Tremendous Bowl.
Wolf agreed.
“It was seeing a few of the guys which have been right here and been by a few of the tough instances the final couple of years swap from ‘Oh no, one thing dangerous’s gonna occur,’ to ‘I’m gonna go make a play,’” Wolf informed the Herald.
That evening, the Patriots gained a giant recreation, sure. However what beating the Payments gave them was greater than victory. It was proof of idea for an ongoing tradition shift beneath Mike Vrabel.
“I’ve been actually impressed with how shortly Mike’s been in a position to get the blokes to purchase into that (perception),” Wolf stated.
Simply as Maye had out-dueled Josh Allen, the league’s reigning MVP, Vrabel and his employees out-coached a Payments staff that had lorded over the Pats within the post-Brady period. They’d additionally given gamers the instruments essential to beat any staff on their schedule, confidence included. It was now time to lift the bar, preseason projections be damned.
“We’re all victims of our personal expectations. And actually, as soon as the sport begins, it’s all about what these guys do in between the white strains. So it doesn’t actually matter what the expectation is. It issues what you really do,” Wolf stated. “And I’m simply so happy with this group for what they’ve been in a position to accomplish, significantly as we speak. Clearly the protection, however the offense made sufficient performs to shut it out for us on the finish.”
Particular to the protection, Wolf recommended that unit greatest exhibited one of many qualities Vrabel requested his entrance workplace to prioritize when rebuilding the roster: play demeanor. A mix of toughness, ferocity and relentlessness. Similar to in October, when the Pats first flexed by pinning Allen and the Payments, they out-muscled the Broncos within the largest recreation of their season Sunday, the final checkpoint on their Tremendous Bowl journey that started all these months in the past.
“Our protection was taking part in their ass off. And it’s not simply the playoffs,” Wolf stated. “They’ve been for quite a few weeks. And because the opponents are getting higher, I really feel like that’s ramped up a bit bit. So it’s been fairly cool to see.”
