Devin McCourty said why the Patriots were ‘locked in’ during shutout win over Lions

The Patriots' defense made several big stops throughout Sunday's win.

Devin McCourty and the Patriots' defense had a lot of things to high-five about on Sunday. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff

October 9, 2022

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The Patriots were “locked in” on Sunday, according to safety Devin McCourty – and it sure looked like it.

New England put up a strong showing on both sides of the ball, defeating the Detroit Lions, 29-0, to improve to 2-3 on the season. The Patriots suffered a pair of consecutive losses entering Week 5. To help get back on track, they did something unusual at practice this week by taking off the pads.

McCourty credited that as part of the reason for the shutout the defense pitched after allowing 64 combined points over the last two games.

“I thought it was a great effort defensively,” McCourty said. “I think we were locked in all week. I would say from the beginning of the week, talking about what we needed to do, we had, I would say, a less physical practice Wednesday.

I think sometimes everybody’s like ‘Oh my goodness they’re not in full pads.’ But I think the good thing about that is guys being locked in. We were able to talk about a lot of different plays, see a lot of different looks, kind of figure it out, and come back in the play calls and the things that we had scheme-wise. We were able to watch the film together. Talk about it, what we liked, what we didn’t like. I thought you saw that progress throughout the week with our play calls.”

After the change on Wednesday, McCourty believed that the Patriots were able to “play fast.”

They certainly played fast against a team they needed to play that way against. The Lions entered Sunday’s game as the highest-scoring team in the NFL, scoring 35 points per game. Amon-Ra St. Brown looked like one of the league’s elite receivers in the early part of the season while T.J. Hockenson has been one of the best tight ends recently in the NFL. Even without D’Andre Swift, Jamaal Williams has looked strong out of the backfield, rushing for 108 yards a week ago.

None of those players made a major impact though against the Patriots. Hockenson only had one catch. St. Brown finished with just 18 receiving yards. Williams rushed for 56 yards on 3.7 yards per carry.

In order to take down a highly potent offense, McCourty recognized it was going to take a team effort.

“I think like Bill [Belichick] said this offense had everything,” McCourty said. “Tight end’s really good. You’ve got good receivers. You got the running game. So we had to all do a good job. We all had to kind of ‘do our job’ and play good team defense and we were able to do that and get some key stops throughout the game.”

While shutting down or limiting the Lions’ three best offensive players was impressive, it might not have been the most impressive thing the Patriots’ defense did on Sunday. They prevented the Lions from getting a first down on all six fourth-down attempts, which is the most fourth-down attempts a team has had without picking up a first down in a game in NFL history.

McCourty credited his team’s mentality, realizing that Detroit doesn’t take a conventional approach on offense.

“I think the big part of that was understanding if you watch the third downs, we’re in the huddle, we’re saying, ‘This isn’t the end. They’re going to go for it on fourth down,'” McCourty said. “They’ve done that all year. So I think that was a big part of preparation. Everyone was ready to go after getting a third down stop.

“I’m calling guys back in the huddle. I think sometimes you get in those situations, guys say ‘oh my goodness they’re going like –’ We didn’t have to rush anything. We were locked in, ready to go. We were able to execute and play good defense in those situations. Those are huge plays in the game.”

Not only did the Patriots top the Lions from picking up a first down on fourth down, they stopped them from scoring on all six drives that they got the ball into New England’s territory.

Whether it was a fourth-down stop in the red zone (the Patriots had two of them on Sunday) or a red zone interception by Jack Jones, McCourty knew his squad was feeling it.

“That kind of kills momentum and morale,” McCourty said. “So I think the preparation going into the game, and then going out and executing it was a good job by all 11 guys.”