FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Coach Bill Belichick questioned a defensive pass interference penalty against his Patriots.
Raiders coach Dennis Allen didn’t agree with a holding penalty that nullified a potential tying touchdown on the next play.
There was no doubt about the play that followed ”“ an interception by 325-pound defensive tackle Vince Wilfork that ended Oakland’s last chance with 51 seconds left and gave New England the ball at its 11-yard line.
All Tom Brady had to do was kneel down three times and throw an incompletion before time ran out on the heavily favored Patriots’ 16-9 win on Sunday.
“Sometimes you’ve got to grind them out,” New England wide receiver Julian Edelman said after catching 10 passes. “An ugly win is better than a pretty loss.”
This one was supposed to be easy.
The Patriots (2-1) were coming off a 30-7 win at Minnesota and had won 11 of their previous 12 home openers. The Raiders (0-3) lost their previous game to Houston 34-14 and had lost 14 straight games in the Eastern time zone.
But Oakland led 3-0 on the first of Sebastian Janikowski’s three field goals, a 49-yarder in the first quarter, before New England took a 10-3 lead at halftime on Tom Brady’s 6-yard pass to Rob Gronkowski with 4:41 left and Stephen Gostkowski’s 21-yard field goal on the last play, the first of his three.
“We had some opportunities there to score more points,” Brady said. “There are some teams that are playing really well already. We’re not really doing that offensively yet.”
The Patriots have just three offensive touchdowns in their last 10 quarters. The Raiders have only four all season.
But both teams were pleased with their defense.
“We started fast on defense and we just got into a rhythm,” Oakland defensive end Justin Tuck said. “We had a good chance to beat a good team on the road and it didn’t happen.”
New England held Oakland to 241 yards, but that wasn’t the most important number to Belichick.
“The big thing defensively is we gave up nine points,” he said. “The rest of those stats, really, you can do whatever you want with them. They don’t really mean much.”
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