FOXBORO, Mass. -- Patriots quarterback Jacoby Brissett isn't holding back.
New England lost a heartbreaker to the Miami Dolphins on Sunday at Gillette Stadium, and the 31-year-old gave a pretty blunt explanation for the reason why his club wasn't able to secure a victory.
"It was frustrating, and honestly, nothing was good," Brissett said. "... We’ve just got to play better. It’s getting to that point where you've just got to play better -- penalties in the wrong situations, in bad situations -- we’re not good enough to do that, to go backwards to try to score points. We need to continue to go forward. We’ve got to change that, fix that."
Brissett's point mostly had to do with taking offensive penalties, which was a major issue Sunday. New England was called for 12 total penalties for 105 yards, its most in a single game since 2022.
Alex Van Pelt didn't do much to put the offense in advantageous situations, either. The Patriots averaged 7.1 yards per carry through the first three quarters, but only ran the ball a total of 15 times in that stretch. Van Pelt was adamant about throwing it, which allowed the Dolphins to climb their way back into the game.
Brissett obviously wasn't going to throw his coordinator under the bus, so the next best thing was putting the hones on the unit's overall execution.
"We're just shooting ourselves in the foot," Brissett continued. "We're going one step forward to go 20 steps back. We can't do that and until we get to that point, we're going to continue to be frustrated about the small things... This league is so hard already. The margin of error is so slim, and to not be able to do that because of lack of focus and a lack of things that we all have control over, we're not good enough for that yet."
The Patriots, indeed, are not good enough. It's up to Brissett and Van Pelt, first and foremost, to change that.
