Fan Notes from the Patriots’ win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

How are we already 10 weeks through this NFL season?

And how are the Patriots currently sitting at 8-2? With road wins over the Bills and Buccaneers?

I’ll tell you how: like Tony Romo said in yesterday’s broadcast, this team is D.T.F. I don’t remember what Romo filled out those letters with – Determined, Talented, Fast? Deep, Trained, Fighters? – but that’s neither here nor there. The Patriots won another one and are now not only positioned well atop the AFC East, but may very well be in the conversation

for the…

You know what, I’m not even going to go there. Let’s just leave this as it lies and get into the Fan Notes.

1. I don’t know if anybody else coined this game the Draker Mayefield Bowl. but if not, consider this first Fan Note my official filing for copyright
2. And a lot of folks, yours truly included, had pegged The Draker Mayefield Bowl as a loss as soon as the schedule was announced. But like they have done all season, the Patriots made the plays they needed to make and closed out a tough road win against a very talented team.
3. Let’s be fully honest with ourselves, though. This Bucs team is not the one we all thought we’d see back in early September. They were without their best three offensive weapons. They’re banged up along the offensive line. Baker Mayfield is playing through injury as well. A full-strength Tampa Bay roster might have allowed for a different outcome. But that’s the NFL. You play who’s available.
4. It was good to see New England get back to their roots of allowing their opponent an unfathomably effortless opening drive score with wide open receivers and massive chunk plays. Are scripted plays that much more effective than game-fluid plays? If so, why aren’t DCs looking at how terrible the Patriots are at stopping opening drives and just scripting the first 40 plays?
5. I’d also call a decent chunk of the playcalling yesterday more than a little odd. I don’t know how many times you can fail at an A-gap run before you decide to pivot, but McDaniels was going for some kind of record yesterday. The tosses, sweeps, and off-tackle runs were working…so let’s cram it down the middle some more!
6. This also marks the second week in a row where Marcus Jones has been asked to cover a receiver with at least a foot on him. Unless Jones has plans for a second career taking all of Kevin Hart’s roles and there are NFL receivers looking to replace The Rock in that never-ending slew of bad buddy comedy movies, I’d like to see Jones doing what he does best in teh slot and just leave the WR1s to our DB1.
7. Which means I guess I’m starting with the defense. As always, other than that first drive, which just seems to be baked into the New England pie at this point, the Patriots held a potent offense to 10 meaningful points for the rest of the game before surrendering a garbage-time TD to bring it to a deceptive one-score game. They unfortunately ended their no 50-yard rusher streak yesterday, as Sean Tucker put up 53 on the ground, but at no real point were the Bucs able to find any consistent offensive rhythm. Tampa had to earn almost every yard that they gained, and when the defense needed to make a play, they made it.
8. I don’t know if there have been enough positive things said about Milton Williams yet, so let’s remedy that today. That man has been an absolute force along the interior of the defensive line, and his ability to push into multiple gaps, beat double teams, and collapse the pocket allows this defense to manufacture pressure as a unit that is really struggling to rush the passer. He’s sneaky one of the best Patriots FA signings we have seen in a long time and he’s only 26 years old.
9. I’d also love to get mid-week news very soon to the effect of “Patriots in talks to extend Christian Gonzalez.” I know he won’t be a Free Agent until 2027, but he’s one of the best corners in the league and I’d rather lock him up long-term now.
10. This goes for the offense too, but what I most love about this defensive unit is that they’re exactly that – a unit. This isn’t a line, the linebackers, and the secondary; this is a living, breathing, pulsating entity that consumes everything it comes across and operates with a sort of organized chaos and energy rivaled only by Father’s Day at Philip Rivers’s house. Coverage sacks. Well-timed blitzes. Stunts and gap crashes. They’re making up for what they don’t have with what they do. If they can add an elite pass rusher this offseason, they could be in the conversation for best D in the NFL.
11. What makes the defense even better is that it’s complemented by an offense that is capable of making big plays and sustaining long drives. e
12. The story of the week, heading into this game, was whether or not Kyle Williams would actually show up in Boutte’s absence. Nobody wants to be without Boutte. We all need us some Boutte. And maybe we should all learn to appreciate Boutte a little bit more now that we see what life is like without Boutte. But this was Williams’s moment. He had been getting about one or two targets per game, and if he caught one, it was a big moment. And I appreciate the consistency in only giving Williams two targets all day, but I appreciate him taking his one catch 72 yards to the house even more. Not as much as I appreiciate Boutte – but there’s enough of me to go around.
13. We should also talk about the other rookie, who had his best game as a pro and it isn’t even close. I have absolutely zero clue why it took an injury to an UDFA to get Henderson more carries, but whatever. His strength is clearly running to the outside, so let’s get some more of that. And his two big touchdown runs are going to get all the shine this week – rightly so. But what I’m most excited about from yesterday’s game was the improvement he’s showing in blitz pickup. He’s still not quite there yet, but the difference between yesterday and early in the season is pretty vast.
14. People are going absolutely nuts today over the way that Henderson looked towards the sidelines before scoring on that game-icing TD run, how it was a wiser-than-your-years move and how it’s the ultimate team-first play and blah blah blah. As for me, I’m just amazed that he smoked the whole secondary so thoroughly that he had time to slow down, check with the coaches, get the go-ahead, and then steamroll into the end zone. You usually only see that kind of stuff in pro wrestling.
15. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far without talking about Drake Maye, who once again didn’t play his best game but still did more than enough to win and more than enough to remind everyone that he belongs in the MVP conversation. There’s still a lot to clean up, but week in and week out Maye will make a throw that I have to rewind and watch again just to make sure I saw it right. And yesterday had about four of those. That fourth and goal fade route to Diggs for the score. A third and seven strike to Mack Hollins where the pocket was gone and he was surrounded by Buccaneers like Ron Weasley caught up in Devil’s snare. That third and 14 bomb to Hollins that should have iced the game before he threw that awful end zone pick. He’s just making play after play after play, and they’re coming in major moments.
16. Which is why I’m always wary of anyone who lives and dies by stats. Stats are a lot like bathing suits; they can reveal a lot, they just don’t show you any of the really good stuff. It’s always easy to find some arbitrary metric or cherry-picked number to show why this player is good and this player is bad, or why this player is overrated and this player is underrated. But when you put moments into context and allow the game itself to be your guidepost, it’s hard not to look at Drake Maye and see something special in the works.
17. What I need now, more than ever, is a Khyiris Tonga rushing touchdown, receiving touchdown, and maybe even a passing touchdown. The legend grows.
18. What I also need now more than ever is for the Patriots to put teams away when they have the chance to do so. This is the second week in a row where New England could have put the game out of reach, but didn’t, and it was way closer than it needed to be. The margin for error is going to be nonexistent very soon, and when the chance to stomp some face arrives, they need to take it.
19. Overall, though, how can you not be happy with…well, with all of this? It’s all house money at this point, and I’m ecstatic to say that we’ve reached the point where a playoff exit is going to be a disappointment, not a “I’m just so happy to be at the dance I don’t even care that nobody asked me to boogie down on the floor with them and I had to bounce awkwardly in the corner by myself.” That puts them about two full years ahead of schedule.
20. Last thing I’ll say as we put this game behind us and immediately turn our attention to what I’m sure is going to be an ugly, sloppy, disaster of a game this coming Thursday: this is fun. This is the most likable Patriots team in recent memory. Mike Vrabel has these guys all-in on everything. 2025 has already been a massive win, and there are still seven more games to go. In a week that shook out almost perfectly for the Patriots around the league (the Falcons are just gonna Falcon, aren’t they), the Patriots have a real chance of heading into their bye week at 11-2 or 10-3, which is absolutely insane.

Under most other circumstances, I would be incredibly confident heading into this Jets game. The Patriots are at home, the Jets stink, and these are two teams heading in very different directions. But it’s a Thursday Night divisional game. There are exactly zero things you can count on whenever any two teams meet up on a Thursday, and that goes double for divisional games. Let’s just hope the Patriots can get away injury free.