Patriots Come Up Short In Super Bowl Test Vs. Packers
BOSTON (CBS) -- The stakes and hype level could not have been much higher than they were for the Patriots heading into their Sunday showdown with the Green Bay Packers. It was dubbed by the football world to be a Super Bowl preview, a clash of the league's two top teams. And for a Patriots team that entered the day having won seven straight games, a clash with Aaron Rodgers and the Packers was deemed to be the biggest test of the season.
The results? Well, they didn't fail, but they certainly didn't earn an "A," as the Packers were able to fend off the visiting Patriots, 26-21.
The loss in Green Bay hardly derails the Patriots' season, but it does change the outlook as the team heads into the final month of the season. The lead in the AFC gets one game smaller, and the road to the No. 1 seed in the conference becomes less accommodating to any room for error. The Patriots may still be the best the AFC has to offer, but if that is to mean anything, the team knows that work must be done.
Because while the final score may have indicated that New England was right there with Aaron Rodgers and Co., the fact is that the Patriots were playing catch-up all afternoon long. They fell behind 13-0 in the first quarter, they were outgained 347-181 in the first half, and they let Jordy Nelson slip free for a back-breaking 45-yard catch-and-run just before halftime, stretching a two-point Packers lead to nine.
Though both teams made their mistakes late in the game -- Mason Crosby and Stephen Gostkowski each missed kicks they should have made, Davante Adams dropped an easy touchdown -- the Packers were simply the better team in this one.
"In the end, they made a few more plays than we did tonight," Bill Belichick said after the loss, which drops his team to 9-3. "I thought both teams competed hard, I'm really proud of the way our guys hung in there, fought right to the end. We just couldn't quite make enough plays in the end to come out on top. And they did."
RECAP: Packers Beat Patriots 26-21
In a sense, some of those plays are unstoppable. Rodgers is a quarterback who now has thrown 32 touchdowns and just three interceptions all season long. He is the best quarterback in the league, in his prime at age 30, and he's simply not going to make too many mistakes. He finished the game with 368 passing yards and two touchdowns, making just about every throw he needed to -- including a dagger to ice the game on a third-and-3 dart to Randall Cobb just before the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter.
"Aaron Rodgers is a great quarterback," Belichick plainly stated.
Rodgers' counterpart, Tom Brady, is no slouch himself. Brady faced a heavy dose of pressure from Green Bay, taking six hits and one sack, but he was able to complete 62.9 percent of his 35 passes for 245 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. Still, Brady seemed to be in a state of dejection that rivals his reaction to losing Super Bowls XLII and XLVI.
"I like to win. I like to win and I like to go out there and compete. Couldn't have asked for anything more than this opportunity today. You have your whole life for moments like this, and we just came up short," a visibly disappointed Brady said. "I just wish we would have won this one. I think we put a lot into this one. It was just a great test for us and I think the guys knew how important it was for our season."
While no loss is easy to take, Brady and the Patriots can take solace in the fact that they lost to the best. The Packers entered Sunday as a truly dominant team on home field, where they were 5-0 and had outscored opponents 219-85, which comes out to an average score of 44-17. They needed some luck to eke out a win over the Jets at Lambeau in mid-September, but since then, they had won their four games by an average of 32 points.
The Patriots were able to keep it within five points, which doesn't account for much in the standings but will at least provide a reason to believe things will be different should these teams meet again in February on a neutral site.
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here, or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
MORE PATRIOTS COVERAGE FROM CBS BOSTON