David Andrews took the blame for a taunting penalty in the Patriots’ 33-21 loss to the Bills Sunday afternoon. New England’s center is known for being a team player.
“I have to be better,” he said. “I take pride in not trying to hurt the football team and that hurt the football team. I understand how they’re calling it and I have to be better.”
“We have to execute and we have to be better,” Andrews added. “So that’s really what it comes down to to have some help obviously wager talk really just comes down to execution and we didn’t do a good enough job of that.”
Andrews’ taunting penalty offset a Matt Milano unnecessary roughness call where he hit Patriots quarterback Mac Jones too late — after he had already slid down. The Patriots still picked up a touchdown on the drive, but it would have been accomplished in much easier fasion had Andrews not picked up the penalty.
The NFL has had a crackdown on taunting penalties this year, as they’ve fined numerous amounts of players doing something as simple as holding a peace sign with their fingers before trotting into the end-zone.
Referee Shawn Smith explained what happened on Andrews’ penalty.
“After we had the foul for the dead ball personal foul on the Buffalo defender, we had the situation under control and then the New England player got into the face of the opponent and started yelling,” Smith told a pool reporter, according to MassLive.com. “So, we had a taunting foul.”
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