Miami loss worked miracles for Pats

ATLANTA — After the Dolphins' Kenyan Drake scampered 51 yards for a shocking, game-ending touchdown on Dec. 9, you could feel the mood inside the Patriots locker room in Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.

The silence was deafening. Defensive players talked in hushed tones. Some struggled to get changed. The loss was almost too painful to perform a simple task like taking off your cleats. The Patriots' 34-33 loss to the Miami Dolphins, on a last-second hook and [...]

ATLANTA — After the Dolphins' Kenyan Drake scampered 51 yards for a shocking, game-ending touchdown on Dec. 9, you could feel the mood inside the Patriots locker room in Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.

The silence was deafening. Defensive players talked in hushed tones. Some struggled to get changed. The loss was almost too painful to perform a simple task like taking off your cleats. The Patriots' 34-33 loss to the Miami Dolphins, on a last-second hook and ladder play, could’ve ruined them.

Maybe it should’ve.

A loss that devastating could send a team spiraling downward. When the Patriots lost the following week to the Pittsburgh Steelers, it looked like it might have. Instead, it had the opposite effect on the Patriots' defensive players.

The "Miami Miracle" miraculously brought them closer. They say they're better because of the Miami loss, and they’re confident heading into Super Bowl LIII against a talented Los Angeles Rams offense.

“When losers win, they lose focus. When winners lose, they learn from the loss and then they take that lesson on forward in life,” said defensive end Deatrich Wise. “After that loss, we just took everything that was good and bad from the game, learned the lesson and tried to carry it on through the following weeks.”

After the Patriots lost to the Steelers in Week 15, the defense returned to New England feeling confident. After allowing 34 points to the Dolphins, the defense held quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers to 17 points in Pittsburgh. The players weren’t happy, but they had a clear understanding — with the help of defensive play caller Brian Flores — of what they had to fix.

Flores ripped into the team’s run defense and challenged his players to improve, pointing out that the Pats had allowed 7.3 yards per carry against Minnesota in Week 13, 9.0 yards against Miami in Week 14 and 6.3 yards in Pittsburgh in Week 15.

“It was like, enough is enough,” safety Duron Harmon said. “We have the players, we have the talent, but we just need to be consistent. We had good plays in the run game earlier in the year, but it was just about consistency. We just made a commitment to ourselves and to our teammates that we were going to be better. We did.”

“The one common theme is just continue to fight,” cornerback Jason McCourty added. “Guys continued to bond and work together to try and figure out what the issues were. On a week-to-week basis, the staff would come to us and say, ‘Hey, X, Y, Z is not working and we have to move on to these things.’”

The defense had the opportunity to iron out its problems against two weaker division foes — the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets. 

The Bills rushed for 72 total yards against the Patriots in Week 16, and the Jets totaled 104 yards on the ground as the Patriots beat both opponents. Those games proved to be confidence-builders for the defense, ahead of the postseason. 

“There’s a lot of up and down moments throughout the season,” linebacker Dont’a Hightower said. “We just kept fighting. We didn’t give up. We kind of knew that around the time when you want to play your best ball trickling into the playoffs. It wasn’t going the way we wanted it to go. We just kind of had to have a sit down and get things ironed out.”

“When you’re going through adversity, we just told each other that we got to come together as a family,” added rookie cornerback J.C. Jackson. “That’s the only way things are going to get better. That’s what we did as a team, as a group.”

The run defense improved in the playoffs. In the divisional round, the Patriots held the Los Angeles Chargers to 19 rushing yards. In the AFC Championship Game, the Chiefs ran for 41 yards. 

They didn’t let that Miami loss ruin their season. They’re stronger now and hope to play that way on Sunday.

“When you have great guys in the locker room, team guys, you know eventually it’s going to come together because we were working as hard as any team out there,” Harmon said. “We put the work in. We try to play the game the right way. We knew eventually it was going to take a turn.”

Added linebacker Kyle Van Noy: “Guys didn’t want that to be our fall. The coaches didn’t want it, either. We just grew together.”