FOXBORO — The Patriots are tired.
Frustrated. Hoping for better. Eager for more.
The Pats have the look and sound of an 0-2 team, which they became after Sunday’s loss to Miami. They’re 0-2 for the first time since 2001. Several players gave voice to their frustration and disappointment after the game.
Below is a sampling of player reaction from the locker room and post-game press conferences:
QB Mac Jones
“I think, obviously, it sucks. But, really, when you’re close, you just have to do more, I think. Weight room, film, practice. Like, everyone just has to do more. And hopefully if you do that, I mean, you know you did everything you could do, right? So at that point, some of it’s out of your control. Some of it is luck, some of it’s other things. But for us, just got to do more.”
WR JuJu Smith-Schuster
“We’re all very, very upset and very down about it, but there’s a lot of things to learn and a lot of things to grow and to improve.”
TE Hunter Henry
“It’s very frustrating because you put a lot of work into this. This is the NFL, man. You play a lot of close games, you work and all that. There’s so many plays. Obviously, you look at the plays at the end of the game. Everybody likes to highlight those, and we need to be better at the end of the game for sure. But there’s so many other plays that we need to be better within the game to not put ourselves into that position. So I think that’s something we’ve got to focus on, is a fast start. I mean, we’re moving the ball, but we’re killing ourselves with the turnovers, penalties, stalling on drives and just certain situations where we could get points.”
LB Matt Judon
“I think we just have more things. We have more games. We have more life in us, and we don’t know what can happen from here, but something’s got to happen. Something’s got to give. We’re not just going to be a pedestrian team that lets people score on us and we don’t score. We’re going to bow up. We’re going to have a backbone.”
CB Christian Gonzalez
“No one wants to start 0-2, but it’s a new week. Come in tomorrow and just learn from our mistakes, and keep pushing. It’s a long season, and we’ve just got to get to work.”
S Jabrill Peppers
“Every team every game is important. You know, we’ve got another divisional game next week on a roll. Now, but we got to get this tape corrected. We can’t make the same mistakes again.”
“I’m tired of us digging ourselves in a hole and playing back. And coming up short like this. … So we just got to make it happen. It is what it is you know. We didn’t come out on our game, (got) down big again. It’s hard to win in this league when you’re constantly fighting from behind, especially against an offense like that. So across the board, we’ve got to do a better job.”