It did not take long for the injury bug to bite the New England Patriots on Sunday night. Just 10 plays into the game against the Baltimore Ravens, at the tail-end of a 25-yard pass play, wide receiver
Stefon Diggs had to exit for the blue medical tent.
After some protest on his part, Diggs eventually returned to the game to finish with nine catches for 138 yards. But while he only missed five offensive snaps, others were not quite as lucky: several of his teammates were unable to finish the contest altogether.
Four players — RB TreVeyon Henderson, DT Khyiris Tonga, DT Joshua Farmer, CB Charles Woods — were announced by the team as being out after their respective departures. Multiple others were banged up, including right tackle Morgan Moses and wide receivers Kayshon Boutte and DeMario Douglas. In total, 11 players were either evaluated or showed signs of discomfort at some point in the game.
With only 48 players on the game day roster, that meant that the oft-mentioned “next man up” mentality was put to the test. However, the Patriots managed to overcome the challenge.
“That’s a group effort,” said head coach Mike Vrabel after his team’s 28-24 victory. “One, it’s on the players that go in there. Two, it’s on the training staff to work hard to evaluate guys. And then on the coaching side, just being able to figure out what packages we could still get into, and what we are able to do and some of the things that we weren’t able to do.”
Vrabel pointed at one position group in particular: the defensive line.
Already without starter Milton Williams, who remains on injured reserve but is eligible to come off this week, the unit saw the aforementioned Tonga and Farmer exit as well. Add edge Harold Landry being questionable to enter the game — he ended up playing 55% of snaps — and you get a difficult situation to deal with.
“We lost a lot of defensive linemen,” Vrabel said. “To have a guy like Anfernee Jennings — a lot of credit going in there and playing defensive line and helping us out. I appreciate what he did and everybody else that was able to step in.”
“I’m so proud of this team. It took everybody,” added quarterback Drake Maye, who at some point seemed slow to get up himself. “That’s what we knew coming into it. Our goal this week was to win together, and it was together. It felt good to get that one. Just props to these guys. Keep fighting. We had guys going down, guys coming in taking more plays than they probably have ever had, and guys getting tired from pushing through.”
