Bailey Zappe had a chance to take a bit of a victory lap following the New England Patriots' upset win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 14. But the Patriots quarterback isn't feeling any vindication after picking up an upset win in his second start of the season.
In an interview with WEEI's “Jones and Mego” show, Zappe explained the approach he's taking when he was asked if he felt vindicated by his performance in the Patriots' win over the Steelers.
“Not really,” Zappe initially said when asked if he felt vindicated. “I think there’s still a lot more things I can get better at and do better. I think this week, we’ll try to do that. Looking back at these past few weeks, there are a lot of things we did good and didn’t do good. We’re just trying to take it week by week.”
Zappe faced a good number of bumps this season prior to Thursday's win over the Steelers. He had a rough training camp and preseason, leading the Patriots to waive him on cutdown day. He rejoined the team on the practice squad a day later and reemerged back on the active roster on the eve of the start of the regular season.
However, Zappe failed to get an opportunity to start when Mac Jones began to struggle in October as he also didn't do much to impress in any of the four occasions he replaced the starting quarterback. Zappe eventually got his first start of the season in Week 13 but failed to lead the Patriots to a score in their 6-0 Week 13 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, who had the league's worst defense at the time of their matchup.
So, Zappe's performance of completing 19-of-28 passes for 240 yards and three touchdowns was definitely a bit of a surprise, at least to some.
But Zappe doesn't believe that was the case for his coaches.
Bailey Zappe explained why he thinks Patriots coaches aren't surprised by Week 14 outing
Bailey Zappe put down any notion that his coaches were surprised by his performance against the Steelers.
“I wouldn’t say I surprised anybody. I just did what [Patriots offensive coordinator Bill] O’Brien coached me to do,” the Patriots quarterback said. “I did exactly the reads I was supposed to go through. There were things that I missed and things we went into film today wanting to fix going into this week. I don’t think there was anything I surprised him with. I did exactly what he taught me to do throughout the week as far as the read, what coverages we want to attack and we were able to do that in the first half. Second half was a little shaky but the first half started off great.”
As Zappe brushed aside any vindication or surprises, it's clear his focus is on the Patriots' next opponent: the Kansas City Chiefs.
“The most important thing, of course, is to win,” Zappe said. “That’s the thing I try to do every week. … We were able to do that last week.”
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