At least one national NFL Insider is raising alarm about the Patriots before the season.
In an appearance Tuesday on the Bay Area’s 95.7 The Game, Mike Silver, who now works for the San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets, said he finds the lack of national panic over the Patriots’ curious offseason and bad preseason to be puzzling.
“It’s super surprising that people are not reacting to what’s going on in Foxborough the way they would in normal times,” he said. “I just think it looks awful, it seems awful on paper, and it seems like a lot of denial to me. If you listen to Mac Jones or Bill Belichick talk, it’s not the usual Bill Belichick blowoff like, ‘I don’t have time for your analysis.’ He’s kind of like, ‘We’re going to be fine.’ Are you? Because I really question that.”
Silver seemingly isn’t attune to the media here, which has been hammering Belichick all summer long for the team’s woeful play and lack of defined roles on the coaching staff. But nationally, few voices have publicly criticized New England’s preseason performance, outside of ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky and a couple of others.
Some pundits, such as Robert Griffin III, have even curiously suggested it’s an advantage for the Patriots to not name an offensive coordinator.
If that’s the case, it didn’t play out over the Patriots’ preseason, which culminated in a 23-6 loss to the Raiders last Friday night.
Silver was tied into the Patriots years ago, when he served as one of Tom Brady’s go-to reporters. So he’s not speaking from a place of ignorance.
The “In Belichick We Trust” narrative still seems to be going strong at the national level. We’ll see if a weak September performance would change that.
