Tom Brady during Sunday's loss to the Jaguars. (Scott Halleran/Getty Images)
BOSTON (WBZ-AM) -- Patriots were terribly outplayed by the Jaguars Sunday in Jacksonville in their conference championship rematch, so ... the Jags are the AFC team to beat, right?
Jaguars QB Blake Bortles isn't going there.
"I think everybody kind of hyped the game up more than we felt the importance of it was," Bortles said. "It was our home opener, week two. To us, besides that, it wasn't really anything else. We expected to come out and play good and win the football game."
Maybe the Jags are great. We'll see. But, fact is, Pats often suffer uncomfortable losses the first month of the season. During the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady era, they've lost to Alex Smith and Mark Sanchez twice each, Kevin Kolb, Tyrod Taylor, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Jake Delhomme, Jake Plummer, and Jake Fiedler, to name a few.
Chiefs last year, or 2014. Dolphins that season. Bills in 2016. Patriots historically use these weeks to determine where to improve.
Tom Brady expects more urgency.
"It's a long year," he said. "You have a bad day against a good team, it's a recipe for losing. We certainly had a bad day, and we gotta learn from having bad days. Things don't magically happen, you gotta make 'em happen. All of us have to have more urgency to do things right more often, and then it's a matter of us going out and executing. It was us."
So, its 1-and-1 Pats at the winless Lions Sunday.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Adam Kaufman (@AdamMKaufman) reports