Most of watching last year's experiment unfold in training camp could tell the Patriots' offense had a chance to be as bad as we thought it could be. In the end, it was even worse with the triumvirate of Bill Belichick, Matt Patricia and Joe Judge failing to create anything resembling a consistently competent offense.
But as Patriots Hall-of-Famer Tedy Bruschi pointed out on ESPN's "Get Up!" on Monday morning, the biggest problem with Belichick's approach last year wasn't simply the fact that he hired Patricia, a defensive coach, to run his offense.
"I think that the biggest mistake that Bill made was this: He overestimated his players' ability to handle that type of change.
That’s what I think the problem was," Bruschi said.
"Because when they’re looking around and they don’t know who the offensive coordinator is, they see Judge, they see Patricia, they see confusion. They didn’t have anybody in there to say, 'Hey, fellas, stop. This is the way it’s going to be. Let’s all get on the same page,' from a player perspective. That’s what they didn’t have, and Bill overestimated his players to do that."
Teams change coaches and coordinators all the time, of course. The Patriots aren't unique in that way.
But, perhaps unlike any other team in the NFL last season (aside from maybe the Colts firing Frank Reich and replacing him with Jeff Saturday), the Patriots actively chose to put their team in the hands of coaches on the offensive side of the ball who simply did not have the qualifications to do the job.
In doing so, they tarnished the development of Mac Jones, who left his second season with people questioning whether his team should trade him after having as strong a rookie year as you could ask for.
That dysfunction, Bruschi intimated, wasn't fair to the young quarterback.
"I can understand the frustration by Mac Jones," Bruschi said. "We all got on them about his antics and the way -- his body language and the way that he was constantly complaining. But when you don’t know -- I can only imagine when I’m a linebacker and I’m looking for a call, and I’m not sure who to go to and there’s miscommunication and there’s confusion -- it’s going to happen.
"I don’t think they were strong enough from a leadership perspective on the offensive side of the ball to deal with this type of coaching change."
Belichick downplayed any pessimism over the state of the roster at the annual NFL owners meetings, citing "the last 25 years" as a reason to trust him and the coaching staff. To be sure, adding Bill O'Brien back into the fold does inspire much more confidence than Patricia and Judge did.
But it can't be denied that Belichick made one of his gravest blunders yet as New England's head coach last season -- possibly ruining a franchise quarterback because of it -- and failed on multiple occasions to fully take responsibility for it.
His cache for doing whatever he wants because of his past success feels like it's been used up, and even a few of his beloved former players aren't letting him off the hook.