When the Patriots were ruling the AFC East, they made a habit of coming up with big plays in big moments to swing games in their favor.
That wasn’t the way things went on Sunday, however. The Dolphins returned a fumble for a touchdown and scored on a fourth down pass to Jaylen Waddle late in the first half on their way to a 20-7 win over their divisional rivals.
In his postgame press conference, Belichick pointed to those two plays as ones that swung things in Miami’s favor.
“Well, it’s obviously a disappointing start here. It was really a pretty even game. Two big plays, 14 points, really skewed the game,” Belichick said.
Some will nitpick Belichick boiling the game down to two plays, but a team that prized itself on always making them should know better than any other that the line between winning and losing can be a very thin one. They’ll need to find a way to be on the other side of it to avoid more days like Sunday and finding a way to score more than seven points would be a good place to start.
