Season Review Week 1-7: New England Patriots – Part II
Down 1-1 after a disappointing week two performance against the Arizona Cardinals, the New England Patriots had some tough games coming up starting with a meeting with the Baltimore Ravens in week three.
Week 3: At Baltimore Ravens
The New England Patriots faced their opponents from the 2011/12 AFC Championship game right after the defeat to the Cardinals.
It was a tough fixture between two sides who both had a very haphazard start to the season with the Ravens also losing in week 2 to the Philadelphia Eagles.
What followed was one of the most exciting displays this year that totally lived up to the hype of the game.
The Patriots started off brightly building up a 13-0 lead at the end of the first quarter but the Ravens struck back in the second with two touchdown passes from quarterback Joe Flacco to make 14-13.
New England’s own quarterback Tom Brady sent his first touchdown pass right in the dying seconds of the first half with a seven yarder to Julian Edelman restoring the Patriots lead.
Down 20-14, Ravens running back Ray Rice scored a touchdown early in the third quarter to put the Ravens once again in the lead by a single point.
However, the back and forth scoring continued as the Patriots restored their advantage with six minutes left in the third through Danny Woodhead.
The Patriots extended their lead to 30-21 when kicker Stephen Gostkowski scored a field goal early in the fourth quarter from 20 yards.
It was now time for New England’s defence to maintain their team’s advantage but they failed as Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco completed a big drive in the fourth minute with a five-yard touchdown pass to receiver Torrey Smith.
The Patriots lost the ball again in the final two minutes and Flacco led the Ravens forward.
He put them within field goal range and the Ravens rookie kicker Justin Tucker made no mistake from 27 yards as the Ravens won this exciting matchup 31-30.
This was a rare second straight defeat for New England who went down to 1-2.
Week 4: At Buffalo Bills
Two straight losses were bad enough but if New England went down for three straight games there would have been calls to brand them a team in crisis.
With AFC East rivals Buffalo Bills next on the cards, New England were in no mood to go down three straight games without a win and came into the game pumped up building up a 7-0 lead in the first quarter.
However, they faced a torrid second quarter with the Bills scoring two touchdowns to move up to 14-7. Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick passed for both touchdowns and extended the Bills lead early in the third connecting with Donald Jones with a 68 yarder
to put his team up 21-7.
Going down by 14 points was just the wakeup call Brady required and the Patriots quarterback turned on the style connecting with Danny Woodhead from 17 yards at 8:10 in the third quarter to make it 21-14 while taking the responsibility on his own shoulder
to bring the scores level late in the third with a surging four-yard run into the end zone.
New England then went about to put the game to bed in the fourth quarter as they completely ravaged the Bills in the final 20 minutes scoring four touchdowns and a field goal to win 52-28 and silence their doubters.
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