Hey, Patriots, give us one more — with feeling.
It’s a new week and a new start for the defending Super Bowl champions, who were blown out by Kansas City in their opener, 42-27. That’s the most points New England has surrendered in the Bill Belichick era, and Alex Smith badly outplayed Tom Brady.
That said, writing off the Patriots is just plain foolish. After all, they were on the wrong end of a 41-14 pounding by the Chiefs in Week 4 of the 2014 season, and people were questioning whether both Belichick and Brady were kaput.
All New England did was come back and finish the season on a 10-2 run, winning every game except Week 13 at Lambeau Field and a meaningless finale against Buffalo, then go on to win the Super Bowl.
So New Orleans will have its hands full in playing host to the agitated Patriots on Sunday, especially with New England getting 10 days of rest and the Saints, who lost to the Vikings on Monday night, coming off a short week.
Then again, all that extra time isn’t always welcome.
“It’s probably easier when you’re getting right back to work,” Brady said Monday during his weekly interview on sports radio WEEI. “It actually kind of sucked having three extra days to think about it and rewatch the game.
“The good thing about football season, when it’s Sunday to Sunday, is (on) Monday you kind of watch it and then by Tuesday you’re already moving on to the next team. I’ve kind of moved on to the next team, but we haven’t really done that formally as a team. We’re doing that today.”
It’s worth noting that the Patriots, who will be on the road for the next two weeks, are having their artificial turf replaced at Gillette Stadium while they’re gone. It was good enough to pass NFL muster for the opener, but it’s not up to the team’s standards.
Patriots replacing field turf
FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts — The New England Patriots are replacing their artificial turf field after just one regular-season game because of what some players said was a surface with too much give.
Since it was installed in May, the field also has been used by the New England Revolution.
“While it met the safety requirements of the NFL and MLS, it wasn’t up to the standards of the Patriots and the Revolution,” Patriots spokesman Stacey James said. “This was the first time all summer that we had a two-week window to replace it.”
ESPN first reported the decision. On Monday, the playing surface at Gillette Stadium was bare and the tunnel where the players come out was filled with hundreds of bags of small rubber pellets used to mimic the feel of a natural grass field.
The Revolution do not play at home until Sept. 23. The Patriots play the Saints in New Orleans this weekend and return the following Sunday to play the Houston Texans.
“It will be good to have some new turf out there,” said Patriots running back James White, who agreed that the field was softer than players would prefer. “But like Bill (Belichick) says, you’ve got to play on … whatever’s out there.”
A survey of NFL players in 2006 voted the Patriots’ field as one of the two worst in the league. After several rainy games in which players kept losing their footing, the team tore up the grass and replaced it with artificial turf.
The surface was replaced several times since then, most recently in May with a strain of FieldTurf the team said “plays soft, feels real, looks great and hangs tough.”