For much of the night, Super Bowl LX between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks was a defensively-dominated affair. There was no touchdown scored until the fourth quarter, and even then it took
Seattle recovering a Drake Maye fumble to set it up.
Ultimately, plays like those ended up making a difference in what was ultimately 29-13 loss for the Patriots. And it is why, afterwards, the team’s defenses pointed to itself despite playing an overall solid game.
“We didn’t handle what we needed to,” linebacker Robert Spillane said during his postgame press conference. “At the end of the day, we lost the game and our defense did not play well enough to win the game. I put that on my shoulders more than I put it on anyone else’s. I needed to play better. I needed to get the ball out. We knew that going into the game and we we just fell short.”
While Seattle’s defense finished with three takeaways, the Patriots failed to register even one of them. They did try, going aggressively after the ball particularly on pass plays early in the game, but the end result was still a zero-turnover performance by their defense.
That was only one part of the issue. Running back Kenneth Walker, who eventually was voted the game’s MVP, also proved to be a consistent problem and finished with 161 total yards.
“I said it coming in, he’s a special back. He’s talented. Real patient and he got some speed,” said defensive tackle. Milton Williams, who registered the Patriots’ lone sack of the day.
“We knew coming in he was the head of the snake. Put it on me, put on the D-line. We didn’t do enough to win the game. Credit to Seattle. It isn’t often a running back can win MVP and control a game like he. sort of did there in the first half especially. Give them credit. They made plays when they needed to. We didn’t.”
While the Patriots defense fell on the sword for the team and refrained from blaming the team’s offense for the loss, rookie safety Craig Woodson did point to “complementary football” as one of the Patriots’ big issues. He too, however, acknowledged that an ultimate lack of big plays on defense was a problem in the grand scheme of things.
“Honestly, I feel like we played good defense. We just didn’t make enough plays,” Woodson said. “We didn’t make more plays than them. They took over in that aspect, and they had a few explosive plays as well. With a game like that, you have to play complimentary football and we just didn’t do that today.”
