Less than 24 hours after New England’s season ended prematurely with a heartbreaking 20-18 loss to the Denver Broncos, Patriots coach Bill Belichick said his team were ready to turn the page and move on.
Although Belichick felt it was his fault that the defending champion Patriots were ousted in the AFC title game and denied a return trip to the Super Bowl, he also referred to a combination of things that led to their defeat.
“After going through the game this morning, I feel pretty much the same as I did last night. Lot of respect for the way our team competed, proud of it,” Belichick said on Monday.
“We had some opportunities, but in the end came up just a little bit short. It’s bittersweet. We’ll turn the page here and move on. And start the process all over again. That’s where we are at,” he said of New England’s season.
Denver’s defense stole the show on Sunday, intercepting Tom Brady twice in the opening half and making two crucial fourth down stops late in the game.
“I’d say it was a combination of things,” Belichick said when asked about the repeated pressure and hits applied by the Broncos on his star quarterback. “Denver did a good job defensively.”
“It’s all interconnected between the receivers, the quarterback, the offensive line, the timing, the execution, the balance in the running game, longer yardage situations,” Belichick said.
“In the end, it just wasn’t as good as it needed to be yesterday. Period. In any area. I wouldn’t put it on any one guy or any one situation or one position or anything like that. Just in the end we came up short,” he added.
For many New England fans, the game hinged on a pivotal moment in the opening half when the Patriots took advantage of a Denver turnover to score a touchdown and were an extra point away from tying the game at 7-7.
However, Stephen Gostkowski did something he had not done since 2006, missing an extra point attempt that allowed the Broncos to maintain a lead they would never relinquish.
“Steve is a great kicker. He had a great year for us,” Belichick said of Gostkowski, who had made 523 consecutive extra points until that moment and was just one of five kickers who did not have a miss the entire season.
“Every player, coach and participant in the game wishes there was a couple things they could have done differently,” Belichick said.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later