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Are you telling me the Patriots should’ve been getting Kendrick Bourne the football this whole time?
That’s what Saturday’s loss against the Bengals seemed to scream at everyone. After the Patriots scuffled through an anemic offensive first half, Mac Jones just said, “F’ it, Bourne’s down there somewhere” and started letting it fly in the veteran receiver’s direction.
The result: Bourne finished with six catches for 100 yards — the best yardage total of his career — and a second-half touchdown to jumpstart the offense. He and Jones also combined for possibly the best throw and catch combination the Patriots have put together this year on an amazing sideline toe-tapping grab to set up Jones’ Hail Mary score to Jakobi Meyers.
Bourne also added a big run on a jet sweep for good measure, which he got to do pretty frequently in 2021.
It hasn’t all been perfect when he’s on the field, of course, with he and Jonnu Smith getting jammed up and failing to get open on a third-down sack of Jones. But Bourne’s play was one of the first times all season where a receiver repeatedly made a play for Jones every time he got an opportunity to do so, which feels notable given how little Bourne has been used this season.
The sixth-year receiver has been targeted just 41 times this year after topping 70 targets the prior two seasons. As such, he’s managed just 373 yards receiving — less than half his total from a breakout 2021 (800 yards). He also has just five rushing attempts as opposed to 12 last season.
The personnel hasn’t changed that much aside from the addition of DeVante Parker and Tyquan Thronton, and neither has been so impressive that necessitates keeping Bourne off the field. Yet, the Patriots continue to use Bourne basically as a pass-catching specialist, another sign of the inherent predictability of this offense, and continue not to try and get him the football. That seems counterproductive given Bourne was the team’s best big-play threat last season.
It’s hard not to look at Matt Patricia and whatever beef he had with Bourne in the preseason as a continued hindrance to the receiver blossoming in this offense — that, and the general dysfunction of the offense itself, of course. That’s probably a bigger part of it.
The Patriots have been in this spot before this year where they’ve used an interesting wrinkle in one game and simply let it die completely after that. Once the parlor trick is used up, they revert back to the same stuff that hasn’t been working all year.
They simply can’t afford to do that with Bourne in the final two weeks of the season. Though he’s not some monster No. 1 receiver who dictates coverages and dominates games, he’s one of the few offensive players the Patriots have that has proven he can make chunk plays in an offense that looks as basic and stale as it did in Week 1. Leaving him on the sideline or not scheming up touches for him is no longer an option.
