FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The New England Patriots returned from Minnesota on Sunday night with a 1-1 record following a 30-7 victory, but not as many questions were answered against the Adrian Peterson-less Vikings as the final score might seem to indicate.
A week after earning nine penalties in a loss to the Miami Dolphins, New England more than doubled that with 15 enforced penalties in Minnesota, most ever for the Patriots under coach Bill Belichick.
The flags were spread pretty well amongst the team, and on both sides of the ball. Things were so bad at one point that left tackle Nate Solder was called for three penalties on a two-play stretch, obviously including two on one snap.
Through two weeks of NFL action, with only the Monday Night Football game to be played, New England had an NFL-worst minus-179 penalty yards differential. The second-worst team was the Jets at minus-132, and the two AFC East foes with very different coaches were the only NFL squads at minus-100 or worse.
So after breaking down the film from the win, Belichick made it clear that the penalties were one of the major areas of concern moving forward, one that he “absolutely” was focused on cleaning up.
“Fifteen penalties accepted and there were several early ones where we had multiple fouls on the same play and (163) yards, it’s way too much. We can’t keep doing that,” Belichick said. “We had a lot of penalties last week, we had a lot of penalties this week and it’s not just the penalties it’s the yardage, it’s too many personal fouls. We had two interference penalties on their last drive that got them almost down there the whole length of the field. It must have been almost 60 yards in penalties it seemed like. Things like that, we just can’t afford them.”
While Solder leads the team with four penalties, 19 different New England players have had a penalty thus far. Six have had multiple.
It’s a team-wide, 53-man issue.
“One is too many. If each player gets one penalty, we’d set an all-time record,” Belichick said. “It can’t be well, ‘I just had one penalty.’ We have to play penalty-free. We have to do a better job of that. We have to coach it better. We have to, not that we haven’t spent a lot of time on it because we have, but that’s certainly an area that we need to improve in.”
It was a problem that played a role in defeat in Miami in Week 1. It wasn’t as big an issue in Week 2, thanks in large part to Minnesota playing without Peterson while quarterback Matt Cassel was throwing four interceptions.
But Belichick knows that as the season rolls on and the games get tighter against some of the more talented completion on the New England schedule the flurry of flags on his team could be a major factor in the squad failing to live up to its still-high expectations.