Times were so much simpler when all we had to worry about were whether Matt Patricia could teach a new offense and call the right plays to maximize the Patriots’ personnel.
Lo! and behold, New England isn’t even putting its best players on the field to run Patricia’s plays, and the de facto offensive coordinator is apparently behind it all.
In an interview with WEEI’s “Gresh and Keefe” Tuesday, Tom Curran of NBC Sports Boston broke open the mystery surrounding Kendrick Bourne’s bizarre benching against the Miami Dolphins in Week 1, naming a familiar culprit in the proceedings.
“I think it’s a Patricia thing,” Curran said of what he’d gathered about Bourne’s diminished role. “… I think from what Albert Breer reported about Kendrick Bourne not being fully onboard with the way the install was going, looking at his role and seeing it diminish with two tight ends on the field. There was a meeting prior to the Carolina Panthers [preseason] game that he was just a smidge late to. I was told that resulted in the benching that night.
“All those things I think combined have landed him in Matt Patricia’s doghouse.”
Well, doesn’t that sound familiar in the worst way possible?
You may recall Patricia was at the center of another benching scandal with Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler ahead of the Patriots’ failed title bid against the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2017-18 season. ESPN’s Seth Wickersham wrote in his book “It’s Better to be Feared” that Patricia and Butler got into a verbal spat about the cornerback’s lack of effort in practice going into the big game, and, before you knew it, the Super Bowl came and went without Butler touching the field defensively.
Fast-forward a few years, and Patricia is back in New England after his failed attempt at coaching the Detroit Lions and doing the same thing with Bourne.
The former undrafted receiver — seemingly poised for a breakout in 2022 after posting several career-bests last season — had a quiet training camp, got demoted for the aforementioned preseason game and played just two snaps in the season-opener against Miami.
On that second snap, he hauled in a deep ball from Mac Jones down the left sideline for 41 yards. Then, he promptly left the game, never to return. By that point, the game was in hand for the Dolphins and beyond Bourne’s help.
Though playing him probably wasn’t the difference between a win and a loss on Sunday, Bourne’s absence in no way made the Patriots a better team in Week 1. This receiving corps is so dependent on its collective talent that missing even one player from the mix throws off the entire equilibrium, let alone taking away the one player who consistently generates chunk plays.
Then again, Patricia has apparently shown once again that he has no problem risking losses to prove a point with players he’s got issues with. Bourne’s multiple infractions during the Carolina joint practice week and his reported discontent with the offensive install Patricia is running has clearly touched a nerve, and the coach’s wrath has followed him longer than any of us expected.
Of course, “the-buck-stops-with-me” Bill Belichick is also complicit in this, given that he has empowered Patricia to make those personnel decisions (again) and has either directly or tacitly endorsed Bourne’s demotion.
However, the man who signs the checks — owner Robert Kraft — might reportedly be getting involved as well.
Whoever ends up making this call, it’s time to get Bourne back on the field for the good of the football team.
For one thing, he simply makes your offense better and more explosive. While he’s not exactly Tyreek Hill or Deebo Samuel, he clearly has a track record of creating big plays for this team when he’s on the field, and he was the only offensive player to show up for Mac Jones during that ugly playoff loss to Buffalo this past January.
On top of that, the locker room is reportedly ready to go up in smoke if Bourne’s benching continues, especially if the offense keeps struggling.
Calling plays and teaching the Patriots’ offense is a massive part of the job, but so is putting the right men on the football field and getting the most out of your players. That latter part probably contributed more to his failure in Detroit than the first, and he’s at risk of making a similar mistake now that he’s back home in New England.
If Patricia is to have any chance at silencing the doubters who believe Belichick made a catastrophic error in judgment trusting him to run his offense, he’ll have to do that in more ways than one this Sunday.
Task No. 1: get your offensive line to protect Mac Jones better.
No. 2: get Kendrick Bourne off the sidelines and back into the game, even if it hurts your pride to do it.
