Patriots win short-handed, Cardinals lament slow start

MAKING A POINT (OR TWO): If the opening Sunday of the National Football League season is a day for making statements, then consider the Oakland Raiders and their coach, Jack Del Rio, to have spoken the loudest. With Rob Gronkowski not making the trip to Arizona, New England would need help in the blocking aspect of the offense.

Even head coach Bill Belichick who throws around compliments like man-hole covers was impressed with his team’s effort. As poorly as we played, we still should have won.

Catanzaro took responsibility for the miss. “This is the year and I want to make sure it’s a great one”.

“It was a low snap, Drew got it down and [Catanzaro] pulled it”. In the 1993 opener, he went 14-for-30 for 148 yards, with two touchdown passes and one interceptions. he finished with a passer rating of 69.9 – but the Patriots ended up losing to the host Bills, 38-14. He never seemed rattled.

Promoted from No. 3 quarterback to starter just eight days ago, the No. 2 overall pick from North Dakota State looked like a franchise player. But going out on a limb and saying a team will go undefeated requires a lot of confidence in said team. Obviously, if the kick was no good, we’re kneeling anyway.

If the Patriots want to keep Garoppolo, the 2017 season could be Brady’s last in New England. Most of us figure if Jimmy and the Patriots can go two for two in the first four games, they’d be doing great.

The Miami Dolphins take on the New England Patriots in one of the NFL Games on Sunday, September 18 start time at 1:00 PM ET, at Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Mass.

“I think all good quarterbacks are good at that”, Belichick said.

“No matter what happens, we believe in each other”, McCourty said.

“All the adversity we had in the first game, it’s good”, Bennett said. But a big holding penalty on the Cardinals and interesting clock movement by Belichick set the Cardinals up for a 47 yard field goal to win the game.

But Keim was far from done laying into a Cardinals team that made it to the NFC title game last season.

Much of that preseason hype centered around the Cardinals’ offense, and how they returned pretty much every player who contributed a yard or point to the cause in 2015.

Individually, rookie cornerback Brandon Williams was under the microscope, and stood out as a weakness on a couple of key plays.

The first two Arizona touchdowns followed New England turnovers.

He jump cut into the line, spun away from a would-be tackler, put his hand on the ground to steady his balance and stiff-armed another defender before racing down the sidelines.

Larry Fitgzerald caught his 100th touchdown of his career. “I’m proud of the way they handled it”. I’m not going to tell him anything on game day. Hopefully it was a defensive lineman and not a linebacker.

Belichick explained Monday on sports radio WEEI’s “Dale and Holley Show with Thornton” that he was gauging how the Cardinals were approaching the situation on fourth-and-5 from the New England 29 after a completed pass with about one minute remaining in regulation.

It was a pivotal play early and following a field goal late in the quarter; the Pats went into the second quarter up 10-0.