FOXBORO — Before taking questions Sunday night, Patriots linebacker Matthew Judon had something to get off his chest.
Judon kicked off his news conference after the Patriots’ 24-17 Week 2 loss to the Dolphins with a statement.
The message: The Patriots know what they need to do to start winning games.
“Before we get into the questions, man, bro we’re going to talk, we’re going to confuse everybody, we’re going to talk from a place of praise,” Judon said. “We’re going to talk from a place of gratitude. We get to play this game. I know we lost. I know it looks bad. You’re (0-2), you start (0-2). But this is not a bad team. So don’t get to asking those types of questions. We’re going to be matter of fact. We’re going to speak matter of fact. But I don’t think we’re about to hang our head up here or in the locker room. So, when we come back on Monday, tomorrow, and we watch this film, we’re going to get our corrections corrected. Then we come back on Wednesday, it’s not going to be, ‘How are y’all going to pull it together?’ We already know how.
“We gotta just play how we play in the second half from the first play. We gotta get the crowd involved from the get-go. When we come out there on the field, when we take the field, we gotta have some type of energy. We gotta have some type of juice. We can’t wait until we’re down 7-10, we can’t wait until we’re down 13 to try to make a comeback. It’s too hard in this league. It’s too hard in this league. People are too good. Schemes are too good. We don’t have enough time. So you can’t play from behind. You can’t come out here and have slow starts, and I think that’s what we’re doing, and we have to get it correct to have a faster start.”
The Patriots, of course, should have figured this out last week. They play the Aaron Rodgers-less Jets in Week 3. If they can’t get out to a fast start against Zach Wilson, then this team is in serious trouble.