In case you needed more evidence, Matt Patricia and the Patriots’ offense is doing Mac Jones exactly zero favors this season.
A new film breakdown from The Athletic’s Patriots beat reporter Chad Graff and film guru Ted Nguyen reveals the systemic dysfunction killing the offense’s production, how it’s hurting a young quarterback who went from being a solid quarterback last season to one of the NFL’s worst passers in 2022 and what the team can do to salvage this unit before it’s too late.
Not surprisingly, the issues with the offense start with the guy calling the plays: Matt Patricia.
The experiment of having Patricia, a former defensive coach, call offensive plays has unfortunately lived up to the worst expectations many had for it, with Jones’ numbers falling off and the offense going with him (sixth in scoring, 15th in yards in 2021; 14th in points, 26th in yards in 2022).
Recently, the Patriots have also discussed the fact that opposing players like the Jets’ C.J. Mosley, whom New England is about to face again this Sunday, have been calling out certain offensive plays before the snap, though they’ve also tried to downplay that as “defensive plays get paid, too” (to paraphrase).
Still, Nguyen suggested Patricia and the coaching staff aren’t doing a good enough job of keeping defenses off-balance.
“Watching the film, there are definitely some detectable tendencies in the Patriots’ play calling. In the passing game, you see a lot of the same concepts over and over again. They are dressed up differently, but they run a ton of different variations of sail, mesh and shallow cross. As Belichick said, with how quickly linebackers have been able to blow up some of their plays, the offense must have some tells,” he wrote.
Graff concurred, noting that repetitiveness hints at a lack of creativity by the offense.
“Beyond that, there’s a lack of proper spacing on passing patterns and apparent disinterest from Patricia to utilize many play-action passes or run-pass options — since the Patriots rank 27th in play-action percentage and 28th in RPO usage,” he said.
This goes back to a problem the Patriots have had when calling plays for Mac Jones all season: calling consistently deeper routes without always providing easy outlets all while dealing with subpar protection and little help from play-action. Failing to use run fakes in the passing game essentially means defenses are rarely put in conflict — when the quarterback puts the ball out for the running back, it’s going to be run about 90 percent of the time. (Only two quarterbacks with more than 100 snaps — New Orleans’ Jameis Winston and Andy Dalton — have run play-action less than Jones’ 13.6 percent rate per The 33rd Team.)
Even their nascent RPO game, which has started to come into play a bit more in the past few weeks, is extremely unimaginative and basic. Basically, you either hand the ball off or you throw a bubble screen; the “glance” routes and advanced RPO concepts put together by teams like the Miami Dolphins simply don’t exist in this offense yet.
On its face, opponents being able to call out a play or two for the Patriots might not be the huge deal it’s being made out to be. After all, other smart players exist in the league outside of the New England Patriots.
The problem is that everything about New England’s offense looks stale and redundant, and they have to change that in short order if they want to compete for a playoff spot.
