Bill Belichick has even lost Mike Lombardi.
The long-time Belichick confidante ripped into the Patriots’ offense on the latest edition of his “GM Shuffle” podcast, correctly characterizing their passing game as a complete joke.
“There’s going to have to be a really hard self-evaluation, and it’s going to have to start with the head coach because they can’t throw the ball,” he said. “Let’s just put it out there. They cannot throw the football. This whole Matt Patricia-Joe Judge — it’s not working.”
The Patriots hit their nadir Sunday in Las Vegas, and that was before Jakobi Meyers’ bizarre game-losing lateral. Jones played his worst game of the season, and maybe his entire NFL career. The second-year passer went just 13-of-31 for 112 yards, and the offense was forced to burn two timeouts on an atrocious goal-line sequence.
Entering the season, Belichick defended his decision to place Matt Patricia and Joe Judge in charge of the offense by insisting that good football coaches can coach anywhere. But Lombardi, who worked with Belichick in Cleveland and New England, doesn’t buy it.
“Just because [Patricia] coaches defense, doesn’t mean he can call offensive plays or set up an offense,” said Lombardi. “It’s not there.”
This isn’t the first time that Lombardi has voiced his displeasure with Belichick’s strange coaching configuration. Earlier this month, Lombardi said the “Patriots don’t have an offense. They just run a bunch of plays.”
He repeated those criticisms on his podcast this week.
“They just have no idea on how to set up a game plan, how to attack a [defense], how to attack the adjustments,” he said. “All the things that I learned from [working in the NFL], all the things that I believe in offensive football from learning it from there, from [Bill] Walsh, from Belichick, from all the coaches. They just run plays.”
If Belichick has lost Lombardi, it’s fair to say he’s lost Patriots Nation.
