FOXBORO, Mass. — As the late, great Rodney Dangerfield might have put it, the NFL held a Patriots-Giants game Monday night and a Red Sox-Yankees game broke out.
True, the first-quarter dust-up that took place at Gillette Stadium played no significant role in the New England Patriots’ 33-15 victory over the New York Giants. But it never hurts a team on the surprising rise to receive an extra dose of late-season adrenaline, and make no mistake: Gillette Stadium was a rock ‘n’ roll revival after the Patriots’ Christian Elliss put a crushing hit on Jaxson Dart after the Giants quarterback made the unfortunate decision to grind out an extra yard rather than step out of bounds.
To make matters worse for the Giants, tight end Theo Johnson responded to Elliss’ legal hit by delivering one that was decidedly illegal. His hard shove of Elliss cost the Giants 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct and essentially ended their drive.
The ensuing chaos after Johnson shoved Elliss had a pitchers-running-in-from-the-bullpens quality to it, and, sure, these things always make for lively banter during the drive home. Especially when it’s Boston-New York. But there was so much more to it than that. Turns out the play was a PowerPoint presentation that explains why one of these teams (the Patriots) is 11-2 and preparing for the playoffs, while the other team (the Giants) is 3-11 and preparing for the 2026 draft.
Players had to be separated after Patriots LB Christian Elliss hit Jaxson Dart along the sideline. pic.twitter.com/wZPTVasGSw
— ESPN (@espn) December 2, 2025
Yes, the Patriots are riding so high that they’ve cracked the No. 1 spot in The Athletic’s NFL Power Rankings. But to quote every coach at every level of football throughout history, the team still commits a weekly array of “things we need to clean up.” In other words, the Patriots are still young and inexperienced, and young and inexperienced teams make mistakes — despite their newly won perch atop those power rankings.
So let’s go back to that play. The Giants have a promising future if Dart remains healthy, but the last thing anybody wants is to see a 22-year-old quarterback who’s coming off the concussion protocol attempt to gain an extra yard on a keeper. What Dart dared to do, then, was mistake No. 1 for the Giants on this drive.
“I thought he was just gonna go out of bounds,” Elliss said. “But then I saw him tiptoeing … you stay in bounds, what am I supposed to do? We play hard on defense. We try to bring life to this team. So that’s all I was trying to do, just do my job and hit anything in the whites.”
Mistake No. 2 for the Giants was Johnson shoving Elliss, because after-the-play protection is no protection at all. And it cost the Giants 15 yards.
Elliss did see Johnson’s side of things, offering that “we probably would have reacted the exact same way” had somebody on the Giants delivered that legal hit on Patriots quarterback Drake Maye.
“I was ready to celebrate on the sidelines with my teammates, and I saw (Johnson) come flying in,” Elliss said. “And I was, like, ‘Oh!’ But we’re good.”
To repeat: The flip side is that what Elliss did to Dart, while scary in real time, was perfectly legal. Which brings us to something else every coach at every level of football throughout history has been saying: “Play through the whistle.”
As a matter of fact, here it is: “Christian’s playing through the whistle,” Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said. “As long as the player’s inbounds, he’s going to try to hit him legally.”
It was a win-win for Vrabel. He was able to celebrate the hard hit while also using it as a teaching moment for his own wandering quarterback, whose occasional pursuit of the extra yard has everyone inside Gillette Stadium suffering nightmares of Maye hobbling around on crutches and telling kids how he used to play in the NFL.
The Elliss hit, Vrabel said, “is a weekly reminder to our quarterback … to not get too cute over there by the sidelines.”
Naturally, Maye was asked if the Elliss hit inspired Vrabel to shoot a glance over at his quarterback. Maybe a wink, a nod, something to convey the message that dangerous running can result in bad things happening to good quarterbacks.
“I don’t think he needed to,” said Maye, who completed 24 of 31 passes for 282 yards and two touchdowns. “I think everybody in the stadium knew.”
Put it all together — the skirmish, the Boston-New York element, the two big mistakes by the very bad team and the big, aggressive play by the very good team, and, oh, let’s not forget the millions of Monday Night Football devotees who watched it all on national television — and what we have is an impressive display of muscle-flexing by the Patriots.
This one wasn’t as big as the road victories over the Buffalo Bills and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And the Patriots again showed an irritating habit of getting cold and tentative inside the opposing team’s 20, something that has the potential to be this team’s kryptonite in the playoffs. As Vrabel acknowledged, yet again, “We need to be better in the red zone, obviously.”
Yes. Obviously. But as the Patriots enter their bye week, the Elliss hit sends them there with swagger. Talk about a Gillette Stadium golden oldie.
Asked if the Patriots fed off that hit, the coach turned his answer into an invitation to a party.
“I think I certainly did,” he said. “I think our fans did, I think our team did.”
And just like that, a lot of people now think the Patriots are the No. 1 team in the NFL.