The New England Patriots in Week 12 barely escaped from Cincinnatiâs Paycor Stadium with a 26-20 win over the Bengals, as they lost four key players to injuries, including two members of the starting offensive line, left tackle Will Campbell and left guard Jared Wilson, charged with protecting sophomore quarterback and MVP candidate Drake Maye.
After that costly game, New England entered its only Monday Night Football game of the season â facing the New York Giants, with a degree of uncertainty about whether their so-far storybook season was about to come to a crashing halt.
Instead, the Patriots played what was very likely their best game of the season, dominating on both sides of the ball, as well as special teams, from start to finish for a 33-15 win that was not as close as the score made it look.
And that was not the only inspiring news for the Patriots.
Patriots Make New England History With Win
The win was history-making, in that it gave the Patriots a 10-game winning streak â the only such streak in the history of the franchise led by any quarterback other than the future Hall of Famer Tom Brady.
Brady quarterbacked the Patriots for 19 full seasons, and in that span led the team not only to six Super Bowl victories, but to five winning streaks of 10 games or more.
But since the team’s founding in 1960 as one of the original franchises in the American Football League, 35 other quarterbacks have started games for the Patriots, who were known as the Boston Patriots until 1971, playing in college football stadiums in the Boston area â and even sharing the iconic Fenway Park with Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox from 1963 to 1969.
Not one of those quarterbacks presided over even a portion of a 10-game winning streak â until Monday night when the 23-year-old Maye, the Patriotsâ 2024 first-round draft pick (No. 3 overall out of North Carolina), led the team to its 10th consecutive victory.
New England Again Reigns Atop NFL
The Patriots have not lost since Week 3, when they committed five turnovers, essentially handing the Pittsburgh Steelers a 21-14 victory.
The unprecedented achievement for the Maye-led Patriots may have seemed like the best news ever, but it wasn’t even the best news of the night.
The Patriots now head into their long-awaited bye week carrying the best record in the NFL at 11-2, and also becoming the first of the NFL’s 32 teams to win 11 games this season.
Their record, of course, also puts them atop the AFC, meaning that if they can hold on to their spot over the season’s final four games, the Patriots would earn a bye out of the first round of the playoffs â getting a much-needed extra week to rest and recover from injuries before jumping straight to the divisional round.
Maye completed 24 of 31 passes for two touchdown passes â the sixth time this season he has completed at least 75 percent of his passes (77.4 percent, to be exact) while also throwing two touchdown passes. Only two quarterbacks in NFL history have ever done that more than six times in a single season â one is, not surprisingly, Brady. The other is Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff, who did it last year.
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