Josh McDaniels Accepts Blame For Patriots’ Troubled Comeback, Answers Josh Gordon Question

New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels stepped in and accepted full responsibility for the Patriots’ failure to complete the drive in the final minutes of Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“Whenever we don’t finish the drive, it’s never good. You could put that right on me. Obviously, I didn’t do well enough at the very completion of the drive,” McDaniels said.

The Steelers kicked afield goal in an effort to extend the lead to seven with 2:34 left of the game.The Patriots had exhausted the timeouts, and managed to drive 64 yards in six plays to the Pittsburgh’s 11-yard line, due to the 34-yard completion to wide receiver Julian Edelman.

A holding penalty on Shaq Mason on second-and-5 bumped New England back to the 21, but McDaniels’ play-calling on the following three plays triggered a different reaction in the next few days. New England sent four receivers on vertical routes on their final three snaps, and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady threw incomplete into the end zone on all three snaps.

“I thought we were doing really well moving the ball. We got it into the scoring zone quick enough that we didn’t have to do anything dramatic. I think we made it to the 10- or 11-yard line. Whenever you have any negative situations, it kind of resets the whole scenario, and we had a penalty there and put us in a situation that’s a little bit longer yardage, obviously, in that scenario,” McDaniels added.

“I have to do a better job than we did at the end of that drive to get that thing in the end zone and to give our team a chance to win the game.Hopefully, I’ll learn from that one as best I can and try to apply it here going forward next week.”

“We had just run quite a few plays in a row,” McDaniels said. “I know there was a timeout before that. Both of those guys have worked at that spot and in that type of situation based on what we were doing. We just made the choice to go with CP at that point. No ulterior motive on that at all. Just put a fresh guy in to go ahead and do something on the last play to see if we could get into the end zone. It is what it is,” he said of Josh Gordon and Cordarrelle Patterson.