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Let there be no confusion!! The Patriots did indeed get lucky Sunday. Lucky that Parker Romo missed a late extra-point. Lucky the Falcons snapped the ball too soon and peed away an opportunity. Lucky things happened that helped them win their sixth game in a row and improve to 7-2. But it’s hard to miss that the "They got lucky, though…" observations shared Monday were laced with a little foreboding. “Dude. Can’t have that. They aren’t gonna win in January like that…" Two responses: 1) No s---. And 2) Do you hear what you’re saying about this team that -- for three years running -- was a carnival without a tent? There are degrees of good fortune. This wasn’t a parade of ineptitude from the Patriots. It wasn't a day when they were just lucky to run into a team more inept. And we’ve seen ineptitude parades in the past few years, have we not? This was a casual Sunday drive interrupted by a galloping deer that sent the Patriots' little car onto the shoulder for a bit. But they survived! Coulda been worse! Head on a swivel! No daydreaming! It’s funny: Mike Vrabel foreshadowed all of this during his Friday press conference when asked about the difficulty of moving on from past Patriots culture and forging his own. “I don't know what the burden is,” he said. “They won eight games in two years.” (A brief aside … isn’t that kind of unvarnished, no-apologies, truth-telling so friggin’ good?) “None of that matters,” Vrabel continued. “Whether it was a Super Bowl or a not very good year, it doesn't matter. So, in this league, if you take a nap, you're going to get beat, and that's just how it is. "So, we're not trying to take a nap. We want to try to just play good football, be competitive, take advantage of our opportunities, take care of the football, play complimentary, play sound, create some more plays in the kicking game, all these things that we're talking about doing.” During his appearance Monday on WEEI’s Greg Hill Show, Vrabel said this: “We took that nap at the end of the first half. That nap I was talking about on Friday? We took that nap,” he said. “It was 21-7 and I was like, ‘OK, let’s just get into the half…’ then I was like, ‘Oop. We’re not getting into the half. We gotta do a little bit more work.’ "So I think those are the things you show ‘em how quickly it can change and turn. To put yourself in a game that was comfortable and you could do whatever, and now it goes to a one-score game and we gotta get into halftime and regroup.” The Patriots had a similar game earlier this year. They should have blown the Steelers out. They gave the ball up repeatedly and lost 21-14. This game represented improvement. Does a narrow win over a team that just got blasted 34-6 by Miami cast doubt on who the Patriots really are? Not if you have a realistic understanding of who they really are. They have a very good record, but aren’t yet proven as a very good team that’s seen everything as a collective group and knows better. You can say, "You can’t do that …" when Maye tries to scoot when he should turtle, as he did on the strip-sack that changed the game’s momentum. But he can. Because he is still -- despite his string of ridiculously good performances -- new. MORE PATRIOTS COVERAGE It’s not like the Falcons don’t belong on the field with the Patriots. They were 8-9 last year. They beat the Bills a few weeks ago. They’ve had their moments this season. Handing out “yeah, buts …” after a fortunate win or wondering if the Patriots are “legit” because of the struggling teams they’ve beaten is leaving out a whole lot of context. Asked on WEEI about the fleet of teams his Patriots have beaten (the seven vanquished foes have combined for 19 wins so far this season), Vrabel said this: “I don’t make the schedule … that’s mind-boggling to me in the National Football League that there be strength of schedule,” he lamented. “There’s a salary cap. Everybody spends the same amount of money. So you guys know in this league that doesn’t mean anything. We have to put everything we have into each week. "To see the talent that Atlanta had? That’s a talented football team. How many first-round picks? Ten or 12 on the roster? Good skill players? So I’m never gonna apologize for our guys winning.” It is true that if the Patriots play like that in January they will be done like dinner. But the fact that Sunday was an outlier performance from this team is more than anyone imagined.
