Analysis
10/8/23
8 min read
The New England Patriots Have Officially Hit Rock Bottom
It's been 23 years since the New England Patriots were last 1-4 to open the season. Bill Belichick was in his debut year as their coach, and Drew Bledsoe was still his quarterback. Tom Brady was a sixth-round rookie riding the bench, a nobody. There were only 31 teams in the NFL, as the Houston Texans would join two years later. It was a very, very different time.
Unfortunately, the Patriots find themselves right back in that position this season.
The Patriots dropped to 1-4 on Sunday after getting bludgeoned 34-0 by the New Orleans Saints. The record is bad on its own, but it's made worse by how the Patriots are losing. They've lost their past two games by a combined score of 72-3. Belichick had never lost a game by 33 points or more in his entire Patriots career through Week 3 of the 2023 season, but he's now done it in back-to-back games.
None of the post-Brady era has been kind to the Patriots, but it's never been this bad. They've never been laugh-out-loud bad. Boring, sure, but a team that you could blow out twice in a row? Hardly. This is uncharted water for the Belichick Patriots.
Mac Jones, Offense Shoulder the Most Blame
The offense is what's sinking the ship in New England, and QB Mac Jones is the primary culprit. Jones is playing like there's malware in his brain. He's rebelling against the offense — all of the timing and accuracy that made him work as a rookie is gone. Jones was kind of holding it together the first few weeks, but he's been an unmitigated disaster the last two weeks.
The thing is, Belichick only has himself to blame. Belichick the GM, to be clear. Everything Belichick has done to build the offense since 2021 has led to this moment. That started with drafting Jones in the first round three years ago. Understandable as it was, that move started the clock on a specific kind of rebuild that Belichick probably wasn't equipped for in the first place.
Coming out of Alabama, Jones was always a high-floor, low-ceiling proposition. The arm talent was well below the league's elite, and he's not exactly an electric scrambler. Jones was always going to be someone who won with decision-making and accuracy, and he needed the skill players around him to be the ones to raise the ceiling of the offense. Jones is a distributor, not a playmaker.
Quarterbacks like that can work at a high level. Think of what the Kansas City Chiefs were with Alex Smith during the early days of the Andy Reid era or what Kyle Shanahan got out of Jimmy Garoppolo with the San Francisco 49ers. Even what the Miami Dolphins are putting together with Tua Tagovailoa right now falls into this bucket, though certainly the idealized version of it. It's not a quarterback archetype without merit.
The problem is that building teams with that caliber of skill talent is extremely difficult. A draft pick or two needs to hit, and the team may need to be willing to part with premium draft capital to get an elite playmaker. It's a fine needle to thread and would only become more difficult if Jones ever became a quarterback worthy of being paid.
Patriots' Overall Skill on Offense is Lacking
Belichick instead tried to microwave a new skill corps with mid-level free agents and hasn't found a crown jewel in three years.
The Patriots signed TE Hunter Henry and WR Kendrick Bourne to three-year deals the same year they drafted Jones. They also signed WR Nelson Agholor to a two-year deal and chose not to re-sign him this offseason when his contract was up. Those are fine players but not real building blocks.
The following year, the Patriots drafted WR Tyquan Thornton, a speedster from Baylor, in the second round to be the piece de jour that would complete the offense. Thornton has barely been able to see the field because he can't get open on anything but pure vertical routes, and he's not really a ball-winner. He's the only receiver the Patriots have drafted top 100 since the Jones draft.
Even this past offseason, Belichick let the ever-consistent Jakobi Meyers walk in free agency to sign Juju Smith-Schuster, an injury-prone version of the same player.
Now the Patriots’ skill group is left in a spot without their most consistent player, Myers, and without any explosiveness or No.1 WR potential anywhere. Defenses aren't scared at all to tee off on the quarterback and play fast downhill in coverage because they know there's nobody on the Patriots' offense who can make a play, quarterback included.
According to NFL Next Gen Stats, DeVante Parker (4.5 yards) and Mike Gesicki (4.6) are dead-last in the NFL in average cushion, and Parker ranks third-to-last in average separation (2.0 yards). Bourne (2.3) and Henry (2.3) have not helped much either.
Add in Smith-Schuster having the league's worst YAC above expected, and you need far more than a game manager to lead this offense.
Staff Flaws Magnified Jones' Issues
All of the talent issues are only exacerbated by whatever it was Belichick thought he was doing by having Matt Patricia and Joe Judge call the offense last season. Beyond being a trainwreck in and of itself, it stunted Jones' development. After a promising rookie year in 2021, Jones spent the whole 2022 season developing bad habits under constant pressure and without any safety outlets to rely on. Jones learned to fade away from all pressure and the consistency of his timing and decision-making faded.
Quarterbacks like Jones need stability to develop. It doesn't have to be perfect, but they must be given a chance to hone their skills. They need to play in an offense they trust and with players they trust. The more reps they get in that environment, the more they'll sharpen the timing and accuracy that makes their game go. That's how you get the most out of a quarterback without real-deal NFL talent.
Jones kind of had that in his rookie season with Josh McDaniels, but the Patricia/Judge season did seemingly irreparable damage. He's gone backward, not forward.
Hiring the perfectly average Bill O'Brien was supposed to solve some of that, but that may have been wishful thinking. O'Brien wasn't going to be the disaster the Patriots saw in 2022, but, in hindsight, there isn't anything on his résumé to suggest he was going to "fix" Jones. While O'Brien helped stave off the worst of it for three weeks, Jones has completely short-circuited the past two weeks. It's as if all the dysfunction and stress of the past season and change have all washed over Jones in full.
What Will Belichick, Patriots Do Next?
If Jones continues on this path, there's no question the Patriots will be in the quarterback market again. Even for as many bizarre decisions as Belichick has made before, he couldn't possibly run it back with Jones the way he's playing right now.
The question is whether Belichick has it in him to try this thing again. Belichick will be 72 by the time he handpicks a new quarterback in April. He would be 75 by the time the team would have a choice to give that new quarterback a second contract. There has never been an NFL coach in that position at that age.
Of course, we all know Belichick operates under a different set of rules than the average coach. Belichick is the greatest to ever do it and an outlier in so many ways already. It would hardly be a surprise if he pushed past another barrier when it comes to age and longevity.
More realistically, however, you would imagine he knows he's too close to the end of his career to want to smash the reset button. He doesn't have the time for it, and this last attempt with Jones might have proven he doesn't have the patience or wherewithal for it anymore, either.
This might well be the last breath of the Patriots as we know them. Belichick had his try at a new franchise quarterback after Brady, and it's failed miserably. The team is as bad as it's ever been this century. Maybe Belichick proves us all wrong and hangs around in Foxborough until he's 100, but it's becoming more and more like things have finally run their course in New England.
Derrik Klassen is an NFL and NFL Draft film analyst with a particular interest in quarterbacks. Klassen’s work is also featured on Bleacher Report and Reception Perception. You can follow him on Twitter (X) at @QBKlass.
