It certainly wasn’t a happy scene in the New England Patriots lockerroom after Sunday’s gut-wrenching 25-24 loss to the Indianapolis Colts, as one might expect.

Players sat at their lockers and stared straight ahead, contemplating what might have been. Few plays here and there, or a couple of kicks.

Patriots place kicker Joey Slye sat at his locker after showering and dressing for a few, checking his phone before he was set to face a small band of media. Look, you never have a huge gathering around the kicker, win or lose.

But Slye is a tough cookie and knows the deal. A miss,he’s at his locker. A make on what would have been a record 68’yard field goal for the win as time expired would have met the podium press conference. Plus you can bet he knew he’d have to face the music for missing a 25-yarder at the end of the first half that would have given the Patriots a 19-14 lead.

And Slye’s potential game winner was about a yard short. He thought it might be good when he hit it.

“Yeah, I mean I hit it clean,” he said. “It was dead down the pipe from where I was looking so I knew if I just got the distance I would be fine. Cold weather toda, wind in our face going that way as well so I know I needed to put pretty much everything I had into it and just fell a little bit short.”

Slye wasn’t shocked that Mayo & Co. chose his foot over QB Drake Maye’s arm with the ball sitting at the 50 after the Patriots used a time out with one second left.

“I couldn’t say i was surprised, in that situation,” Slye said. “Ibthink Coach has a lot of faith in me that I’m going to hit from that distance. … I think they understood how far I can kick it at times and if we can get to the 50 we’d have an opportunity.”

“That was 100% me,” Mayo said. “Look, [Joey] Slye was hitting it well in pregame, and I felt that that was the best thing to do to help our team win the football game. Not sure what the numbers are on Hail Marys versus the field goal there, but that’s what I felt was right.

Maye didn’t disagree with the call, saying he could go either way.

“I think it’s up to the coaching,” he said. “I’m here to support what Coach Mayo and the special teams guys and what Joey thinks. So I think whether it’s that or the Hail Mary, either one.”

The odds, as Slye’s boot showed, were with the kick. Please let’s not do the Mayo moaning again.

Of course Slye didn’t shy away from his chip shot miss, either. Mayo said it wasn’t complicated, just a clubbed wedge ho the green.

“Just a miss-hit,” he said. “Nothing with the operation. It was a miss-hit.”

Ah but kickers feel theirs is a delicate job, so a make or a miss is never that simple.

“I need to be better on my communication as a whole,” Slye said. “Just a (expletive) situation….We have certain things we talk about before we come out (for a kick). I just didn’t do a good job communicating.”

In any event, the Patriots,after a couple of mid-week practices, will head into their time off from Wednesday through Sunday on a downer. They take the positives out of this one — and offense that can move the ball and a defense that seemed to have awoken — and cringe at the negatives. Those would be the costly penalties (7 for 88 yards) and going just 2 for 6 in the red zone. Heck, Colts QB Anthony Richardson couldn’t connect deep with his receivers on that fateful final drive until Alex Austin was called for pass interference.

“I thought we handled the situations the right way, the way we wanted to, and we gave ourselves a chance to win,” Mayo said.. Gave ourselves a chance to win at the end.”

But, as Slye said, “Just under the bar. Need to get a little stronger, have to get back in the weight room.”

Right now, the bar the Patriots have set is low, like any struggling,rebuilding NFL team.