Ugly Day = Ugly Win

When games are publicized so much throughout the week, the real thing never will live up to all the hype.

It is exactly what happened during Sunday’s 20-10 win against the J-E-T-S Jets, Jets, Jets. Fans and media expecting the Patriots to slaughter New York by at least 21 had to settle for a 10-point margin of victory. But a win is a win. There are no pictures in the standings, just another number added to the left hand column of the standings for the Pats.

Tom Brady was a non-factor in Sunday’s game, only completing 14 of 27 passes for 140 yards, one pick and zero touchdowns. It was Laurence Maroney’s time to shine but he did not shine so brightly. In the first quarter of the game, Maroney had two key mistakes that led to the Patriots have to punt in the first drive of the game.

(AP Photo)

Chris Hanson nicely punted the ball deep in Jets territory and downing it at the three yard line. On third down with pressure from Richard Seymour, Kellen Clemens threw the ball in the direction of safety Eugene Wilson who ran into the endzone for the first points of the game. After the hit by Seymour, Clemens was shaken up and taken out of the game and replaced by Chad Pennington.

(AP Photo)

After picking off Kellen Clemens, Eugene Wilson runs into the end zone for the first score of the game. The pick was Wilson's first pick of the season. (AP Photo)

There were two rare events that happened in Sunday’s game, one of which probably will not happen again for a long time. The first was the Patriots going with the running, but this is not the even that will not happen again. (They will be running the ball more in the playoffs.) But the second strange event was witnessing TWO blocked punts in the same game. It is pretty odd to see even ONE blocked punt but two in the same game is just uncanny.

The first blocked punt was a punt attempt by Hanson which was run back 26-yards by David Bowens for the six point score, plus Mike Nugent’s PAT. But on the next Jets possession, after going three-and-out, Ben Graham was back to attempt a punt only to have it blocked by Kelley Washington. Maroney went on to give the Pats a 17-7 lead with his second touchdown run of the season. The Pats never turned back and went on to score three more points on a 34-yard field goal by Gostkowski.

Next week the Patriots welcome the 1-13 Dolphins to Foxboro. The Dolphins have finally got the monkey of their back and recorded their first victory of the season after beating the Ravens 22-16.