Stevan Ridley: ‘We moved the ball when we had to’

Stevan Ridley was all smiles after Sunday's escape against the Bills. (Mike Petraglia/WEEI.com)

FOXBORO — The Patriots were outgained by the Bills on Sunday, 481 yards to 347 yards yet they scored 37 points in a heart-pounding win that moved them to 6-3. They are once again the most productive scoring machine in the NFL. They are averaging 33.2 points a game, tops in the league. They were averaging almost 441 yards a game before Sunday, before falling nearly 100 yards shy of that ridiculously productive standard.

The Patriots saw their streak of consecutive games with at least 350 total yards end at an NFL-record 17 games. But the way the Patriots executed in the red zone was very encouraging, going 4-for-5 with the only failure to score a touchdown coming in their final series.

And maybe that’s unfair but that’s what many will remember, including a dissatisfied Brandon Lloyd, who said the idea of a four-minute offense is to leave “zero” time left on the clock.

The Patriots would’ve gladly taken a few more ticks on the clock had they punched it in to make it a 10-point game with two minutes left. Instead, Stevan Ridley committed a costly false start and Tom Brady threw a pass a foot in front of Danny Woodhead.

“That’s a mental error by me and that’s something that I have to do better on and I can’t continue to live by,” said Ridley, who had a 1-yard TD run in the first quarter, the first of four Patriots TDs on the day. “That’s a blow to us because we’re lining up to punch the ball in and get a touchdown. [I] get a false start and bring us back. Those are things we have to eliminate to play cleaner football. But overall, I just say the team, we did a phenomenal job to finish it and play 60 minutes.”

It figured to be a day for the running backs to shine, as the Bills entered with the 31st ranked run defense, giving up 169 yards a game. The trio of Ridley, Woodhead and Shane Vereen combined for 118 yards on 28 carries, good for a 4.0 average. But the more important point is that they combined for three of the four touchdowns on the day.

“We’re all contributing to the ‘W’. That’s what they do,” Ridley said, referring to the offensive line in front of him. “That’s what they do. The coaches do a great job of rolling us in and keeping us fresh and ready to go. When our number is called, we just go out there and make a play. It’s coaches job to rotate us in and they’ve done a phenomenal job up to this point, nobody is really tired.

“We moved the ball when we had to. There were some times when we stalled out but there were times when we came through and did what we had to, and that’s finish the game the right way.”