In the wake of the Patriots’ disastrous, game-losing final play against the Raiders on Sunday, much of the blame from fans and media alike has been directed at Bill Belichick and Matt Patricia for seemingly not having the players prepared enough to know what to do -- and more importantly, what not to do -- in that situation.
Making his weekly appearance on The Greg Hill Show, CBS analyst and WFAN host Boomer Esiason said that while the coaches bear some responsibility, the players -- specifically Rhamondre Stevenson (who made the first lateral) and Jakobi Meyers (who made the final ill-fated backwards pass) -- shouldn’t be let off the hook.
“Players have to make plays,” Esiason said. “For years, the Patriots always had players that seemed to understand where they were in the game, what the object of the game is. I can go all the way back to Troy Brown, all the way through Julian Edelman, and anyone who might’ve played defense, Mike Vrabel or Ty Law. You can go on and on and on and on of players that have gone through there, and the reason that they played for Bill Belichick is because they were smart, intuitive players that don’t make mistakes like this team makes.
“It has to be extremely frustrating for the fans of the team to watch, and watch them implode late in games when their signature has been for the last 20 years winning games late in games by not making boneheaded plays the way that Jakobi Meyers made. We were stunned, is the only way I can put it. That’s a Bill Belichick-coached team. He bears some responsibility, but you’d like to think that guys that are in uniform, playing in an NFL game, understand the situation of the game so they don’t make that unbelievable mistake that Jakobi made.”
Esiason called the play “the biggest boneheaded play that I’ve ever seen” and said that the entire CBS studio was left in stunned disbelief watching it live. He said the only possible explanation he could think of for what Stevenson and Meyers did was that they somehow thought the Patriots were losing instead of it being a tie game. Meyers, however, said after the game that he knew the score.
“We were sitting in the studio yesterday when this took place. There was a stunned silence that came over literally 50 people all watching the game together,” Esiason said. “They could not believe their eyes. I have no idea how to explain what Jakobi Meyers was thinking about.
“I don’t know what was said to them in the huddle. I have no idea if someone on the sideline said, ‘Hey, if we get something out of this, let’s do this.’ I’m thinking that Rhamondre Stevenson did this on his own, and then that led to the ultimate decision by Jakobi Meyers. Thinking that they must’ve been behind in the score, not knowing that the score was tied, is the only thing that I can think of.”
