The New England Patriots have been able to keep mistakes at a minimum this season, but there were some hiccups lately: against the Los Angeles Chargers in the wild card round of the playoffs, the team of head coach Mike Vrabel turned to the ball over twice.<\/p>\n
While this did not prevent them from still winning 16-3, a repeat performance could spell doom for the Patriots on Sunday. After all, their divisional opponent, the Houston Texans, are one of the top teams in the NFL taking advantage of other teams\u2019 miscues.<\/p>\n
During the regular season, Houston ranked second in the league with a +17 turnover differential. They dropped to +16 last week versus the Pittsburgh Steelers, but it is clear that this is a team more than capable of winning the turnover battle and making the most of those extra opportunities afforded.<\/p>\n
And yet, Vrabel is not demanding perfection from his team when it comes to ball security. Instead, he has something else in mind: precision.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to try to be as precise as possible,\u201d he explained on Friday. \u201cNobody\u2019s going to be perfect. We\u2019re going to need to be precise. We know how critical taking care of the football is in every game, especially against a team that\u2019s plus-16 in the turnover margin. But I\u2019ve never once said that we have to be perfect at anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite their coach not putting that kind of pressure on them, the Patriots as close to perfect as one could expect from a team winning only eight games over the last two seasons combined. Going 14-3, winning the AFC East, and locking up the No. 2 seed in the conference, they were among the top-performing clubs in all of football.<\/p>\n
They did so despite finishing with only three more takeaways than giveaways, ranking 10th in turnover margin. Vrabel and his team are well aware of the impact this part of the game can have, but New England\u2019s first-year head coach also knows that mistakes can happen.<\/p>\n
For him, therefore, the aim is a different one than playing the perfect game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t talked one time about being perfect since I\u2019ve been here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re aiming for success and not perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New England Patriots have been able to keep mistakes at a minimum this season, but there were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1167,249,52113,91604,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-683218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-england","10":"tag-new-england-patriots","11":"tag-new-england-patriots-first-read","12":"tag-new-england-patriots-playoffs","13":"tag-newengland","14":"tag-newenglandpatriots","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115908135171622096","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}