Vince Wilfork: Showed 'heart of a champion'

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- After falling behind 14-7 at halftime in their Week 4 matchup with the Buffalo Bills, Patriots nose tackle Vince Wilfork said there was no panic despite the sloppy start.

"We kept our poise. We know coming here was going to be a tough game against a division team; the Buffalo Bills always plays us tough, especially the first game," he said. "So, we just kept our poise, stuck together, we didn't panic, and we just executed well and that's one of the things coming into this week was executing."

With their "backs against the wall," (Wilfork's own words), Wilfork echoed Bill Belichick's belief that improved execution in the second half, not major adjustments, played a pivotal role in the team's turnaround.

"Continue to execute," Wilfork said of the second-half performance. "We were giving up big plays and we were shooting ourself in the foot offensively and just going out in the second half, we just wanted to play better football for 30 more minutes and got it together. Like I said, we just kept our poise, and I think we showed the heart of a champion today. Being down on the road, dropped two in a row, backs against the wall and everybody kept their composure."

The nose tackle said his team didn't need any sort of pump up speech at intermission to swing its second-half fortunes.

"We felt that we were doing a pretty decent job, the plays that we gave up we thought that we gave them, we just needed to be better on the plays but we kept to our game plan and we executed well," he said. "So, there wasn't a big rah-rah speech, it was just executing well."

Despite squandering a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter a week ago, Wilfork said after the game that holding on to today's lead was not about proving something to anyone other than themselves.

"Our goal is to play well every week," he continued. "We knew coming here we had to play well to win this ballgame, we don't have to prove nothing to nobody but ourselves, but we know what we have in here and as long as we stick together we'll be ok."


(espn.com)