How to ruin your Thanksgiving:

Get called for roughing the kicker, go off-sides defensively on third down, give up a 97-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, and, oh yeah, have an apparent touchdown catch reversed by a replay review.

It all added up to a Thanksgiving night in Minneapolis the New England Patriots would like to forget.

It’s on to the Bills.

But just five days we were lauding the Patriots’ special teams and still questioning the quarterback, in Thursday night’s 33-26 loss to the Vikings Pats QB Mac Jones looked fine while the Patriots’ vaunted special teams units couldn’t get the job done. And their defense wasn’t all that great, either.

It’s crunch time. The next game the 6-5 Patriots will play will be in December, and that means we’ve begun the do or die portion of the season.

As Patriots safety Devin McCourty said, “From now until the rest of the season, every game is huge.”

This was a tough one. Jones played his best game of the season, throwing for 382 yards and two TDs and doing his best to match his Viking counterpart Kirk Cousins, who threw for 299. But one pass Jones threw looked like a winner, an apparent TD to Hunter Henry that would have given the Patriots a 30-23 lead with the PAT. But the ball may have moved a centimeter when Henry hit the ground, and upon further review….

“We left everything out there we had,” Jones said. “Everything else was out of our control.

“Obviously the refs have a job to do, they looked at the review and ruled it incomplete. We’ve got to move on from that play. … One call can’t determine the outcome.”

NFL Senior Vice President of Officiating Walt Anderson told Patriots pool reporter Mike Reiss of ESPN that Henry wasn’t able to fit the description of “surviving the ground” as the ball appeared to have moved.

“He was going to the ground,” Anderson said, “the ball ended u touching the ground and then he lost control of the ball in his hands.”

Gee, remember when “breaking the plane” was really all you had to do? Henry had possession of the ball when it crossed the goal line in the air, but Anderson said because he was falling to the ground, he had to, well, survive the ground.

But either way, the Patriots are now facing pretty much a must win Thursday night at Gillette Stadium vs. Buffalo, whose QB Josh Allen needed just 23 seconds to get his team into field goal range to win yesterday’s game at the Bills’ new favorite place, Detroit’s Ford Field. As good as Jones is, it would take him and this offense a heckuva lot longer than 23 seconds. Maybe 23 hours.

But Jones still showed why the Patriots have never wavered in keeping him in the starting role, coming through with his best game of the season.

Just wasn’t good enough, and that’s been the story of these Patriots too often the last couple of years. Their defense last night gave up 231 yards in the first half – more than the last two full games combined.

“We’ve got to be able to score more points to win the game,” Jones said. “That’s all I care about, that’s all we care about is winning, and we didn’t do that tonight. …

“We’ve got to flip the switch here and figure it out.”

And quickly. Thanksgiving, after all, is now in the rear view mirror.

Tom King may be reached at @Telegraph_TomK on twitter, or tking@nashuatelegraph.com

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