Julian Edelman has screw inserted into foot, will miss 6-8 weeks

Despite the thrilling victory, the locker room acknowledged the difficulty of replacing one of Brady’s favorite targets.

“He’ll be fine”, Eli said.

As they regrouped to try and recover from Sunday’s gut-wrenching 27-26 last-second loss to the unbeaten Patriots, came the text from teammate Victor Cruz, the team’s second best receiver, that he would need surgery to correct his damaged calf and would not play this year. “And on offense I thought we just did enough”. “I think, more than anything, it’s opportunity meeting execution”. “If they had tackled us where he caught the ball, it would have been an even tougher kick”. “It was good to be able to hit a few of those”. They were torched for 505 passing yards and seven touchdowns at New Orleans on November 1, had allowed six 100-yard receivers (now seven), and now have given up seven pass plays on the season of at least 40 yards. But the big one still eludes these maddening Giants, who keep saying they’re better than their 5-5 record, even though they keep failing to prove it. They have thrown away four games in the fourth quarter now, all in agonizing fashion. He had full confidence in his teammates’ ability to hustle back to the line of scrimmage and get set for the next play, without needing to spike the ball and huddle up.

The Patriots are probably not going to go undefeated this year.

New England will also have WR Brandon LaFell, who did not play in the first meeting with the Bills in Week 2 because he was on Reserve/PUP. Gronkowski came in motion from right to left, and Brady, under center instead of in the shotgun, took the snap and faked a handoff to LeGarrette Blount.

“Incomplete passes. Throwing the ball away”.

“I don’t think it will change at all”, said Bacarri Rambo, who is coming off a career game with three takeaways last week. The Pats players don’t treat him as the kicker, they treat him as just another member of the 53 and that’s saying something. They discuss the different types of situations they would go over in practice, the pop quizzes from Belichick as you pass him in the hallway, the attention to detail he requires. As soon as he caught it – at the Giants’ 20 – he was thinking touchdown. “You just got to make the play itself”. “I don’t know what a partial tear feels like”. When the three were on the field at the same time and Rob Gronkowski was threatening the seam and dragging coverage with him, it was easy pitch-and-catch football. Is anybody really sure what a catch is, especially in the end zone?

The defending Super Bowl champions can blow teams out with their well-oiled offense, beat them with a surprisingly good defense or make plays on special teams.

The Carolina Panthers also improved to 9-0, with a 27-10 victory over the Tennessee Titans in Nashville where Carolina quarterback Cam Newton completed his first 11 passes, eventually completing 21 of 26 for 217 yards and one touchdown despite being sacked five times.