Patriots defense hopes to bounce back after struggles in Detroit | Poll

DETROIT – This isn’t how the Patriots defense expected to come out of the gate.

For the second-straight week, the unit struggled and for the second-straight week, the Patriots lost. Sunday’s 26-10 loss to the Detroit Lions showed more issues for the team’s defense. The Patriots allowed the Lions to convert 50 percent of their third downs (7/14) as Detroit ran all over the place on Sunday.

The Pats have been in this position before – [...]

DETROIT – This isn’t how the Patriots defense expected to come out of the gate.

For the second-straight week, the unit struggled and for the second-straight week, the Patriots lost. Sunday’s 26-10 loss to the Detroit Lions showed more issues for the team’s defense. The Patriots allowed the Lions to convert 50 percent of their third downs (7/14) as Detroit ran all over the place on Sunday.

The Pats have been in this position before – struggling in the first four weeks of the season. Now, they have to fix their mistakes.

“I’d say the only thing is every year is different. That was last year. Problems this year are different,” Duron Harmon said. “We’ve got to look at what the problems are, be better than them, work as hard as we can. Work like hell this week and do whatever we can to put ourselves in the best position to go out there and win a game against the Dolphins next week.”

The Lions gained 414 yards on Sunday. They didn’t punt for the first three quarters and wouldn’t punt until there was 9:32 left in the contest. The Pats couldn’t get off the field in part because they couldn’t stop the run. Kerryon Johnson became Detroit’s first 100-yard rusher since 2013.The Patriots struggles in the trenches carried over to the pass rusher where the team finished with just one sack and one quarterback hit – both on Deatrich Wise’s sack.

As they couldn’t stop the run, the Pats also allowed a big pass play when Stafford hit Marvin Jones for a 33-ayrd touchdown in the third quarter.

Simply put, the defense struggled everywhere in spurts.

“It’s everything,” Harmon said. “We’re just not playing Patriot football. We’re not doing anything that we’re supposed to do. Not playing with good enough techniques. The thing is, when we do it, we do it well. It’s just consistency. We’re not consistent with it. we’re not starting fast. The last two weeks we’ve started in a hole. We’ve got to do a lot more things better. We’ve got to control the clock better – time of possession was crazy…

“We’ve got to get third-down stops. We’ve got to do a lot of things better. We’re not doing good right now. We’ve got to start with really looking at ourselves in the mirror and figure out how we can do better so we can play better next Sunday.”

This start is reminiscent to the Patriots lackluster start last season. The team started 2-2 allowing an average of 32 points per game. Eventually, the Pats figured it out and finished the regular season on a better note.

“Adversity hits, we’ve just got to stick together,” Devin McCourty said. “Keep preparing and keep working.”