Everyone outside of Patriot Place is on the verge of mutiny over the Patriots' poor installation of their new offense through two weeks of training camp.
Bill Belichick sees what those people see, of course. When asked before Monday afternoon's practice about whether or not he's assessing the process of the "McVay"-ification of his offense after decades of Tom Brady and Josh McDaniels building on the previous system, the coach emphatically said change is always on the table.
"In camp, in preseason, during the season, mid-season, yeah," Belichick said. "You see things that are going well, you try to figure out a way to maybe exploit that more. Obviously you see things that aren't going well, figure out a way to improve them or get rid of them and move on…if you're spending time on something that's not productive, you need to either change it or move on to something else. It's not efficient."
So far, "not efficient" would seem to describe the offensive game plan thus far. The outside zone schemes the Patriots have repped to exhaustion to this point have failed to look crisp, and the passing game adjustments haven't helped the receiving corps get more open for Mac Jones.
If anything, the offense has looked slightly better when they've occasionally worked some of their old concepts, which isn't a ringing endorsement of the new direction.
Belichick said the team is still working to find out the strengths and weaknesses of his players and use those evaluations to determine "things we need to do less of and things we need to do more of."
But though Belichick admitted he would ultimately "have to make that judgement" on the offense, he didn't sound like someone seriously considering another scheme change on Monday.
"Not really worried too much about that right now," he said. "We have a lot of balls in the air. We're trying to get ready for the Giants game [on Thursday].
We're trying to evaluate players. We're trying to work against each other so that we can get high-quality work rather than just running plays from another team. There are a lot of things that have to come together."
If the offense can't get on track well enough to give the defense a decent look in practice, it's a bit hard to imagine them being particularly good against a live NFL opponent. Then again, perhaps a change of pace can put some life into a fairly hapless offensive unit.
Something has to. If not, as Belichick hinted, more change could come "sooner rather than later."
