New England’s offense is in a bad place right now. After Sunday’s 38-3 loss to the Cowboys, the Patriots now rank 30th in the NFL with 13.8 points per game. They have yet to score more than 20 points in a game this season.
Much of the blame this week has come down on quarterback Mac Jones, who turned the ball over three times Sunday. Devin McCourty, however, says there is plenty of blame to go around and that it’s not a quarterback change the Patriots need, but rather a change in philosophy on the part of Bill Belichick.
Making his weekly appearance on The Greg Hill Show (listen to the full interview above), the former Patriots captain said it’s time for his former coach to invest more in the offense and shift away from trying to win low-scoring, defensive games.
“He’s gonna have to change his philosophy a little bit,” McCourty said. “Because we’re not really seeing, like back in the day, games that are gonna be won on a regular basis 13-10 or 17-14. Those games are really hard. It’s hard for a team every single week to go out there and say, ‘This is how we need to play. We’re gonna hold our opponents under 13 points and we’re gonna score around 17 points a game.’ That’s really hard to do.
“I think Bill was probably better than anybody else at building teams that could produce like that, and then having Brady from an offensive standpoint, now you jump up to top three in the league every year in scoring and your defense usually finishes top 10 in the league in scoring defense. So, it’s balancing out perfectly.
“Now your defense is top 10 in scoring, sometimes top five maybe, but your offense is 30th or 28th. Now it’s not balancing out. So, I think they would be better off switching some of these weapons up and guiding more to an offensive standpoint. The defense can rank in the top 10 or 12 teams, but offensively you’re in the top five, now you’re giving yourself better odds. I think that’s always been his key. He’s always talked to us, ‘The NFL is about points, scoring more points and holding teams to points.’ They still have that on one side. But on the other side, they have to find a way to score more points, and I think that’s going to be investing more in the offense.”
While the Patriots did bring in a new offensive coordinator in Bill O'Brien after last season, they invested little in the way of dollars or draft capital to upgrade the offensive line or offensive weapons. So far, the coaching change alone has clearly not been enough to turn things around offensively.