Sunday’s 34-15 loss to Miami saw the Patriots flagged for five pre-snap penalties - an unacceptable number for a professional football team by any measure - en route to 10 accepted penalties for New England on the day.
Week 12 was just the latest example of a season filled with flags for New England, a franchise that once prided itself on being among the least penalized teams in the NFL.
Flags by the numbers for New England in 2024:
- Seven different times this season, New England has had seven-or-more accepted penalties against them. Their record in those games is 1-6.
- Six different times this season, the Patriots have ended the game as the more penalized team, with one game seeing them tie their opponent in the flag column (Week 11 vs. L.A., each team had seven)
- Sunday was the second time this season that New England saw double-digit penalties accepted against them (the other: Week 5 with 12 vs. Miami), and the third time they’ve had nine-or-more. They’re 0-3 in those games, and have been outscored 90-47.
- New England’s 81 accepted penalties is tied for sixth-most in the NFL this season with the Carolina Panthers (3-8)
It’s all been very sloppy, which is the exact opposite of what you want when trying to establish a culture in year one with a new coaching staff.
One of those new coaches is offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt, who was pulling no punches when talking about his team’s lack of focus against Miami while meeting with the media before practice on Wednesday.
“There’s no question, that’s horse crap,” said Van Pelt when asked about his team’s problems on Sunday with being flagged before the snap. “We went down there with the intent, one of our main objectives of the game was to - operation was a huge one, that’s pre-snap.
“We talked about not going backwards on first down or second down, and we went backwards. We were digging ourselves in a hole, especially in the first quarter. So that’s just an area of just locking in.”
One of the glaring failures of Sunday was left tackle Vederian Lowe being called for three false starts in the first half alone. Van Pelt said on Wednesday that this aspect of the game was not only coached up ahead of their trip to Miami, but was something the unit had issues with in practice all week. Unfortunately for Van Pelt, the practice penalties did not translate into execution at Hard Rock Stadium.
“We work on the cadences in practice,” said Van Pelt. “And to be quite honest, I showed those guys yesterday - we had false starts by those guys in practice last week. And just reiterated to these guys how important practice is. It just carries over into games in good ways and bad ways. I showed them both examples, and that was the bad way that carried over. So focus on practice - focus on doing it right during the week, and in general it carries over into game day.
“But that was a disappointing - it’s the most disappointed I’ve been, it was like a dang preseason game early in that first quarter. And that’s not, you know - I told the group we took a step backwards. And we’ve taken a couple steps forwards, now we’ve just gotta find a way to get it moving forward again this week.”
They’ll try to take that step forward in Week 13 against the Indianapolis Colts (5-7), who are currently heading to Gillette Stadium on Sunday as a 2.5-point road favorite.
This will be their last game before hitting their bye week in Week 14.