Hurley: It wasn't pretty, but Patriots delivered a win that only comes around once in a lifetime

FOXBORO -- Drafted in 2008, Matthew Slater has been a part of many Patriots victories. More than he can possibly quantify without a laptop and some free time.

Yet when asked in the celebratory locker room if he's ever been a part of a win like the one he experienced on Sunday against the Jets, the longtime special teams captain cut off the question before it could be completed.

"None like that," Slater said. "I've never won a game like that at any level of football. So, just when you thought you had seen it all, in year 15, you see something else. That was awesome."

"A game like that" may be difficult to distill down to a simple sentence or two, but here goes: A 60-minute showing in which neither offense is productive at all, a game in which zero offensive touchdowns are scored, a game in which six total points combined are scored over the first 59 and a half minutes of football, and a game that is won in the final seconds by a remarkable punt return for a touchdown.

That was the game that took place between the Patriots and Jets on Sunday, with rookie Marcus Jones taking the Jets' 10th punt of the day 84 yards back for a touchdown to break a 3-3 tie. And while the game wasn't pretty, it certainly was one of a kind.

"This is a 3-3 game, a total slugfest, divisional rival. It's about as grimy as it could get out there," running back Damien Harris said. "And on the last play of the game, we were able to walk it off."

It wasn't quite the final play of the game, as Jones crossed the goal line with 5 seconds left on the clock. The Patriots had to kick the ball back to the Jets and prevent a return the other way in order to secure the win. But that's a scene that may get left on the cutting room floor when this game is shown on Deatrich Wise's big screen.

"How the game ended was phenomenal. I think it was like a movie script, in a sense," said Wise, who had one sack of Zach Wilson in the team effort to limit the Jets to just 103 net yards on offense. "I think out of all the football movies -- 'Rudy,' 'Any Given Sunday' and 'Remember The Titans' -- this beats it, you know what I'm saying? The way it ended was phenomenal."

Perhaps what made the return so unlikely -- beyond the intrinsic difficulty and rarity of such a play -- was that in a game filled with punts, the Patriots (and the Jets, for that matter) had generated almost nothing in the return game. Prior to the game-winning play, Jones had returned three punts for a total of 25 yards, while fair-catching another. Two punts were downed, and two punts went out of bounds. Myles Bryant also returned a punt for zero yards.

That was nine Jets punts, with a grand total of 25 return yards. On a day when the wind was blowing steadily toward the Jets' sideline, punter Braden Mann was careful to use that boundary to his advantage.

Yet with 29 seconds left in the game, after the 11th stalled Jets drive of the game, Mann let his punt stay in the center of the field. And Jones -- who was an electric returner in college at Houston -- made him pay.

Fittingly, Mann ended up as the last line of defense on the play. Jones naturally outran him with ease.

A third-round pick, Jones came to the Patriots with plenty of talent and experience as a returner. But head coach Bill Belichick credited the Patriots' coaching staff -- namely, Troy Brown -- for helping Jones improve in a rapid fashion at the NFL level.

"Marcus is really quick. And I think Troy Brown has done a great job with him. Where Marcus was when he got here and where he is now are ... they're an ocean apart," Belichick said. "And Troy's really done a good job with the ball-handling, ball-catching, making the first guy miss, ball security, setting up blocks, having vision on the ball, the gunner, playing the wind and so forth."

Belichick reminded everyone that at the start of the season, despite the high draft status, Jones was not given the starting job as a returner. Instead, it went to Bryant. But Jones' work behind the scenes helped set the stage for a moment like the one on Sunday.

"As Marcus got better and gained more experience and confidence and then performed well, then he's handled all the return game for a number of weeks now. So certainly there's some innate skill that goes with that, there's certainly a developmental aspect," Belichick said. "He's had a number of big returns for us, but obviously today, going to the house, might have been the first one in the league this year, I don't know."

Belichick, of course, did know. That was indeed the first punt taken back for a touchdown in the entire NFL this season, a factoid which can be added to the calculation of just how improbable that moment was.

It wouldn't, though, be a Patriots moment without a hint of controversy, and a borderline block in the back by Mack Wilson at the 16-yard line certainly could have been called on the play. Jets fans obviously wanted to see the flag fly, as kicker Nick Folk uncharacteristically missed two field goals on the blustery day, but there was no yellow on the field after the play.

Jets head coach Robert Saleh was asked if he thought the block deserved a penalty, and he opted instead to highlight the fact that the punt was not directed toward the sideline.

"I thought Braden did a really nice job of punting the ball today. He hung one out in the middle and that's about it," Saleh said.

While a punt return for a touchdown is always an exciting play, this one was different. The 68,000 fans who gutted out a cold day in Foxboro weren't exactly pleased with the product on the field -- at least not offensively speaking. But for as long as the Patriots' defense continued to smother the Jets' offense, the Patriots always had a chance. Granted, it looked like that chance would be coming in overtime, but Jones and the punt return unit ensured that wouldn't be necessary.

"Coach is just telling us day in and day out, you know, we gotta make a play on special teams," a composed Jones said at the postgame podium. "So that was the main thing that we always try to enforce, especially this game, because it was offense, defense, things like that. So he definitely told us it would come down to a special teams play."

Back in the locker room, Slater spoke of how the Patriots' special teams units -- which had a busy day, defending 10 punts and covering seven punts, along with defending three other punts that were replayed due to penalties -- had to keep the faith that the levee would eventually break.

"You can't flinch. You can't back down in those scenarios," Slater said. "We just knew at some point, one of us was going to make a play to open the game up. I'm glad it was us. We saw how the game was going, saw how both defenses were playing, and I think we did a good job of just talking with one another and saying, 'Hey, let's stay locked in, situation by situation. We got to make a play.' And our desire to make a play, our focus to make a play, it was there for the entire 60 minutes and, you know, the dam broke at the end."

And while the 37-year-old Slater has the most experience of any player involved in Sunday's game, it still pales in comparison to that of Belichick, who entered the NFL in 1975 and has been there for 48 years. The only question after a game that featured zero offensive touchdowns and six combined points before a defense or special teams touchdown in the final minute won the game was whether or not the coach could call upon such a game in his vast memory of football.

"Uh, nope. Not off the top of my head," Belichick said, while offering a caveat. "But my memory's not that good, so we could probably find one. But yeah."

Obviously, Sunday's game was unique. It may not go down as the greatest game ever played, it may not provide much confidence in the region regarding New England's offense, and the complete details may one day get muddled in memories as one of the 14 straight victories by the Patriots over the Jets. But anyone who watched that game on Sunday, anyone whose eyeballs took in all 60 minutes of offensive ineptitude followed by a burst from a rookie to electrify Gillette Stadium and deliver the hardest of hard-earned victories? Nobody will be forgetting this one. No matter how much football you watch or participate in, might only see a game like that once in your whole life.

You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.