The Patriots beat the Jets 26-19 at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, but the win came wrapped in the kind of sloppiness Mike Vrabel does not want to ignore. After the game, he said New England was lucky to win, and the result was hard to argue with given two lost fumbles, a rusty offense and a game that turned on which team made fewer damaging mistakes.
That is why Robert Spillane is part of the story now: the Patriots’ defense helped turn a messy afternoon into a victory while the offense kept giving possessions away. Drake Maye was the clearest bright spot, posting an 89.2 out of 100 total QBR with +0.39 EPA per drop-back, while New England moved into a short-week trip to Chicago knowing the scoreline said one thing and the tape said another.
The film review explains why. The Jets sent more than four rushers at Maye on 26.5% of his drop-backs, but they also leaned on split-safety looks on 44.1% of his passes and showed man coverage only 11 times. That mattered because it forced New England to win in smaller chunks rather than off the sort of explosive, downfield rhythm the Patriots want. Maye still finished with 12 plus plays and six minuses in the charting, and he has now put together back-to-back games without a turnover-worthy play. On the season, he has climbed to eighth in EPA per drop-back at +0.229.
The offense around him was far less stable. The Maye-to-Brown connection was rusty after a four-week layoff, and A.J. Brown was officially charged with two drops, including a slant he failed to secure. He also had a go-ball target, an end-zone target and a fourth-down curl breakup by Stephens, a sequence that showed how often the Patriots were just a step off from a cleaner night. The ball security problems did not stop there, either, because three offensive line starters and Romeo Doubs left early with injuries, including a shoulder injury for Doubs, leaving the Patriots to patch together a win while the margin was still there.
Vrabel’s point was not that the Patriots lacked answers entirely. It was that they did not look like a team that should be comfortable with a 26-19 win. Robert Spillane and the defense helped make that possible, but the next test comes fast, and New England is already turning its attention to Thursday night in Chicago with little time to clean up the turnovers that nearly cost it the game.
