Brandon LaFell would be the first to admit that Sunday was far from his best day. He was targeted eight times, catching two for 25 yards, but dropping six.
On WEEI's Dennis and Callahan Show on Monday morning, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady voiced his support for LaFell in the receiver's first game back on the field after spending the first part of the season on the physically unable to perform list.
"Everyone has confidence in him," Brady said. "It was his first game back, and those weren't all easy catches. Some may have hit his hands but they weren't right in the sweet spot. I think for all of us, it's getting back into the football mode, and dealing with the game speed and so forth. But I've got a lot of confidence in Jo and what he's been able to do. He's been great here and we're going to keep finding ways to get him the ball."
Though some of LaFell's drops were very catchable throws, one of the two he did catch was among the toughest catches any Patriots receiver had to make in their 30-23 win over the Jets. With just over three minutes left in the first half, near the left sideline, LaFell was hit hard by safety Calvin Pryor but still picked up 19 yards.
"He got sandwiched there and held onto it," Brady said. "He's that physical presence that, honestly, we don't have a lot of other guys that can provide. The way that he's played, the way that he can take hits and give them out, run through the defense, break tackles -- he's a very unique player to our team."
Finding a 6-foot-2, 212 pound receiver who can do all the things that LaFell does is rare. Finding one who can keep up with everything that the Patriots playbook demands is even tougher.
Brady explained why it's so difficult to play that position in the Patriots offense, which may help explain why LaFell was rusty in his return even though he felt fine physically.
New England Patriots
"We do a lot of different things with the receivers," Brady said. "There are some teams that bring a receiver in on a Monday and he can play on a Sunday. They have a limited route tree, there's not a lot of checks, there's not a lot of audibles. Everything with what we do is memorization. We got words, and words, and words, and words that mean formations, and plays, and audibles and stuff like that.
"When you have a new guy that comes in and you give him three sheets of paper where this one word means four different things, and there's 70 of those words, you really need to build it up over the course of the year. And we move those guys a lot. It's not like one guy plays one position. Julian [Edelman]'s on the perimeter one one side, then he's in the slot, then he's on the perimeter on the other side. That means all the other guys gotta adjust . . .
"You gotta have a high football IQ. It's a lot different than run a 5-route or run a 7-route. I'd say a lot of offenses are probably like that. Our receiver offense isn't like that. Being in the same system for a long time, we've built up a lot of offense. We have a lot of tools at our disposal. It's just a matter of us going figuring out how they're going to defend us and then going out there and executing."