THE NEW ENGLAND Patriots kept themselves in the NFL playoff picture with a 27-13 victory on Monday over the Arizona Cardinals, who lost quarterback Kyler Murray to injury on their opening drive.

Murray was carted off the field with a knee injury and was visibly upset after going down without contact on the third play from scrimmage, his right leg buckling beneath him.

He was to have an MRI exam on Tuesday to confirm the extent of the injury, which made a disappointing season worse for the Cardinals, who fell to 4-9 with the defeat.

“It doesn’t look good,” Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury said. “But we’ll know more in the morning.

“It’s tough, no doubt,” Kingsbury said. “You see teams go through it every week but you lose your starter on third play of the game, non-contact, it’s just tough to watch.

“I’ve never seen him in that type of shape,” Kingsbury added. “So I assumed it wasn’t good.”

New England improved to 7-6 to remain in the hunt for a wild card berth.

The Patriots defense had six sacks and an interception, forcing one fumble and coming up with four fourth-down stops and one touchdown.

Josh Uche sacked Cardinals backup quarterback Colt McCoy three times.

Linebacker Raekwon McMillan gave the Patriots a 20-13 lead when he collected DeAndre Hopkins’s fumble and returned it 23 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter.

Patriots quarterback Mac Jones connected on 24 of 35 passes for 235 yards and an interception and rookie running back Pierre Strong rushed for 70 yards and a TD.

“Shout out to the defense,” Jones said. “Had some great stops. We’re still working through it but we came here to win and we got the ‘W.’”

With that in the books, Jones said, a relative lack of offensive production was beside the point.

“We came here, we just wanted to win the game. That’s all we cared about,” he said. “To do that you’ve got to execute on a play-by-play basis, and we did that pretty well.”

– © AFP 2022