1 – The Patriots will be looking to win consecutive games for just the second time this season when they host the Colts at Gillette Stadium on Sunday. Mac Jones will be looking for his first winning streak of sophomore season as he starts his sixth game of the year.
New England is a middling 4-4 team for many reasons. But one of the biggest is indeed a lack of consistency. Bill Belichick’s team hasn’t been consistent enough from week to week. Or quarter to quarter. Or even drive to drive. Inconsistency has been an issue in all three phases for just about every player on the roster.
So as Week 9 hits and the Patriots supposedly hit midseason form, the leaders of the team know that more consistency is needed throughout the team’s efforts.
“I think consistency comes with hard work and execution really. You’ve got to be able to do it every day,” Jones said. “It obviously starts in practice and that’s the important part. But, yeah, we definitely want to be more consistent and that kind of goes back to your process as an individual player. What can I do to be a better quarterback and how am I putting myself in a position to do that? It’s kind of individually focused and then with that, when one guy does it, then you’ve got to get all 11 guys to do it. That’s where the consistency comes from.”
Veteran defensive captain Devin McCourty joked that consistency is something everyone seeks in every aspect of the world, something he’s trying to teach his children by emphasizing their need to remove their lunchboxes from their book bags when they get some from school. Not some days, but every day.
Consistency is key.
“It’s for our football team and I would say it’s for every person in life,” McCourty said. “I think that’s the hardest thing to do in life is be consistent, to show up day in and day out. For us it would be competing at a high level and a standard that you do that every day.
“But I think for us as a football team you talk about getting all 11 guys do it on the field at the same time whether it be offense, defense or special teams. To be consistent in doing their job. Not trying to make a play. Not trying to go outside the scheme. I think [Linebackers coach Jerod] Mayo says it perfectly all the time. As a defense we have a canvas. We have a lot of tools we can do. You can’t paint on that canvas any way you want. Just stay inside the lines of the canvas. So that’s the goal, everybody doing their job play, after play, after play and not getting tired of doing that. From my time in the league when you have teams that are able to do that it’s not about having the best players in the world, it’s not about the best stats. It’s about 11 guys committing to doing their job every single play and not getting tired of doing that. I would say that’s hard to do.
“I think that’s something we’re building towards and we have to keep staying on top of each other, holding each other accountable of getting that done.”
2 – One area of the offense that could certainly use a dose of consistency is the offensive line. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen against Indy. New England placed veteran tackle Marcus Cannon on IR this week due to a concussion that popped up during the week and kept him from practice.
Cannon had started at right tackle the last couple weeks in the place of the struggling and banged up Isaiah Wynn. Wynn actually replaced a struggling rookie Cole Strange at left guard last week in New York. David Andrews will miss his second straight week to a concussion, leaving James Ferentz for another start at center. Nowhere is consistency and continuity more prioritized than on the offense line, but unfortunately for the Patriots there’s none of that right now with the group up front as New England will field a different starting offensive line for the fourth straight game.
3 – Second-year quarterback Sam Ehlinger will make his second career start Sunday afternoon against New England. Ehlinger ran the ball more than 500 times in his college career at Texas. He ran the ball six times for 15 yards in his first NFL start a week ago against Washington.
Given the Patriots’ defensive struggles against running quarterbacks – namely Justin Fields’ 14 carries for 82 yards and Lamar Jackson’s 11 runs for 107 yards – it would seem a safe bet that Ehlinger will look to hurt New England with his legs as well as his arm.
“With Ehlinger in there you saw some more of the designed runs. How much they want to do it we won’t know, we’ll have to see once the game starts,” McCourty said. “But I definitely think there is a possibility, especially I would say in key situations, call it third-and-1 or the red area, times like that. I think we have to be alert. Obviously throughout the season we’ve struggled with that a little bit when you think back playing against Fields and Lamar Jackson. So I think we have to be ready if there is a chance we see that.
We always talk about it’s a copycat league. Things that have hurt you throughout the season you always have to be ready when teams have the ability to do that, to see it again. It might not be a big part of their plan but if they run it one time and it works you’ll see it all game.”
“Any good offense is looking at the things that hurt the team that they’re playing against. They’re gonna probably try to do it,” linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley said. “It’s the NFL. So they are definitely watching tape. Tape’s out there. We just look to improve on that.”
Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen, even if Ehlinger isn’t nearly the athlete that Fields and Jackson are. So, how can the Patriots do a better job against running QBs?
“I wish I had the magic answer for that question,” Bentley admitted. “The main thing is addressing the issues that come up throughout the game. Then just everybody rallying to the ball and tackling and things like that. You have to understand that the team may come up with a good scheme but at the same time we have to run and tackle. Then we can talk about what happened after that.”
4 – Nicknames are a big part of football and all sports, if not life. Jones revealed this week that his offensive line coach from high school called him “Sunshine,” a reference to the quarterback character from “Remember the Titans.”
It was a lighthearted moment near the conclusion of Jones’ weekly press conference that was observed by his defensive teammate and fellow Patriots captain Bentley. As such, Bentley was asked during his subsequent chat with the media if he had any nicknames back in his high school days.
“Just Bent. JB. Kind of the layups. The easy ones,” Bentley said. “They didn’t get too crazy. My coaches probably weren’t thinking about nicknames. It was more like hard coaching. Like, Ja’Whaun get your ass on the line.’ Stuff like that.”
5 – Following the Week 9 battle with the Colts, New England will be at its bye week. Though the time off is likely very much appreciated and deserved after a long stretch of training camp, preseason and regular season action, Patriots’ players made it clear it was not on their minds heading into action against Indy.
“I don’t even know what a bye week is. I’m just trying to win on Sunday,” McCourty said.
“We’re not too focused on the bye,” Bentley said. “Our main focus is the game at hand. I feel like you lose track of everything when you focus too far into the future. Right now our focus is solely on this game.
Right now we’re putting all our eggs in this basket and getting down to it.
“One of my coaches told me, ‘You can’t cheat the game.’ The game knows how much effort you put into the process. We’re just looking to keep our head down and keep working.”
6 – Colts owner Jim Irsay recorded a rather strange video that he posted via social media when he arrived in “Boston town” for his team’s matchup with the Patriots this week. Irsay recounted the history of what was once one of the best rivalries in football and maybe all of sports, though it’s fallen on far less relevant NFL times in recent years. After noting that Belichick was once a Colts’ assistant to open his legendary coaching career, Irsay offered an extremely honest, accurate assessment of the state of the Patriots and Colts rivalry.
“We miss Peyton and Tom Brady, that’s for sure,” Irsay said.
Yes, yes we do.
7 – Prediction Time: As Irsay alluded to, once upon a football time the early November meetings between the Patriots and Colts were must-see, primetime TV with AFC playoff seeding on the line in a battle of Hall of Fame quarterbacks. That’s not the case anymore as two middling AFC squads with Wild Card hopes at best prepare to do battle. It’s a matchup of quarterbacks from the 2021 draft trying to prove their relative worth. It’s a matchup of the two teams who turn the ball over as often (16 giveaways each!) as any in the NFL. It should be an opportunity for Belichick’s Patriots to get right and feel good going into the bye week with a home win. But the Bears game was supposed to be a similar opportunity and recall how that worked out on Monday night football. New England isn’t good enough to overlook any opponent or take any foe lightly. And the injuries/inconsistencies on the offensive line are a concern going against a DeForest Buckner-led defensive front that can cause problems. Still, Rhamondre Stevenson should be given every chance to run the ball against a mediocre rush defense. That should set up some play-action chances for Jones, who simply needs to take care of the football and go at least one game without a turnover! (It would also be nice for Jones to get in a home game with no boos or Bailey Zappe chants from the Foxborough “faithful.”) Defensively Belichick’s troops need to make a young QB look like a young QB, as they’ve done so many times in the past. Matthew Judon and Deatrich Wise should play a key role in that. The Colts are near the bottom of the NFL in turnover differential. That could and should be the difference. It should also help the home squad that Colts star runner Jonathan Taylor won’t play. These teams don’t really score a ton of points, but the Patriots should be better suited to play the game on their terms and get the victory. We’ll go with a conservative 17-13 win for New England. But as we’ve learned this year with these inconsistent Patriots, really anything could happen.
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