The Patriots' decision to kick off to the Jets in overtime, rather than receive the ball, was not a mistake, coach Bill Belichick said.
Captain Matthew Slater called heads at the coin toss and told referee Clete Blakeman the Patriots wanted to kick. Here's the exchange:
The exchange that could help send the Jets to the playoffs... pic.twitter.com/5ErbnKUyfE
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 27, 2015Slater looked confused after the exchange, but he said he just wanted to clarify if the Patriots could choose which way they kicked off.
"The only question that I had for the referee was whether or not we got to choose the direction that we kick off and because we already elected to kick off, we didn't have any more decisions to make," he said. "They got to choose which way they wanted to receive the ball and that was that."
Advertisement
Belichick said the defense was playing better than the offense, which is why New England elected to defend on the first possession of overtime.
"There was no confusion," Belichick said.
Slater said he double- and triple-checked with coaches before heading onto the field for the coin toss. He also said Belichick told Blakeman the Patriots wanted to kick off to make sure it was clear.
"I was just double checking to make sure that we did or didn't get to choose which way we wanted to kick off," Slater said. "But we certainly wanted to kick off. That was our intention. We won the toss. We kicked off. We did want we wanted to."
Slater said there was no second guessing of the choice.
"100 percent confidence in Coach and he knows what he's doing a lot better than all of us," he said. "They made more plays than we did at the end of the game."
The Jets went on to score a touchdown on the possession, handing the Patriots their third loss of the season.
Follow Rachel G. Bowers on Twitter @RachelGBowers.