The Patriots are moving on from Cincinnati.
Head coach Jerod Mayo sounds like he now sees the only win of the Patriots season, against the Bengals, as more of single game solution than a formula for long-term offensive success.
“We knew, going into the season, that we would take our lumps,” Mayo said Wednesday. “Even after the first game, when we beat Cincinnati, we understood that it was unsustainable, as far as winning that way.”
Calling the winning game plan “unsustainable” is a far cry from the praise Mayo heaped on the team’s approach after the win, when he attributed their success to establishing the run game behind Rhamondre Stevenson and an offensive line whose issues he deemed at the time as “overblown.”
To be fair, the loss of center David Andrews and rotating left tackle situation have made the offensive line dramatically worse, but Mayo sounds like a guy who’s realized grunting out 3-yard runs with no risk of a deep play is a tough way to live when Brock Purdy or Aaron Rodgers is slinging it on the other team.
So how are these guys supposed to play?
“I’m just giving you a snapshot of what we told the team. In this league, you have to score points to go out there and win. You have to win time of possession. Those are things you have to do, and there aren’t too many game you’re going to win if you score under, let’s just say, 21 points,” Mayo said.
He’s not wrong, and he’s being incredibly transparent. But the issue is that here, in Week 5, it sounds like an about-face from the “run-first” team plan he and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt committed themselves to over the summer. Their offensive identity appeared to be a team who wouldn’t turn the ball over, who would be physically tough, and who would win on slim margins.
The margins disappeared when injuries ravaged both sides of the ball and the star running back got a case of fumble-itis.
Now, it sounds like Mayo wants the Patriots to be more than the recipe asked for. Van Pelt was baking a pound cake, but other teams are perfecting triple-layer chocolate ganache truffles. How do you change, when the only ingredients you bought are flour, eggs, and vanilla, and oh yeah - the butter’s gone bad?
Wednesday, Mayo expressed the possibility of elevating Antonio Gibson into Stevenson’s RB1 position to avoid fumbles against Miami Sunday. By the way, Stevenson said he hadn’t been told that was a possibility before Mayo revealed it in a press conference to reporters, but sounded unsurprised discussing the situation at his locker before practice.
The move would be just one small tweak to a team that either needs to be exactingly methodical in their execution going forward or make dramatic changes to score more than 20 points a game going forward.
New England is in desperate need of both chunk plays and fundamental soundness. Van Pelt has shown the ability to scheme up creative plays, like DeMario Douglas’s lateral to Stevenson against San Francisco last week. But a penalty called it back, wasting one of the more intriguing pages of his playbook. Most of the time, the Patriots look utterly predictable, ranking 25th in the league in motion plays.
Rookie Drake Maye could provide scramble plays, quarterback keeper looks, and arm talent the offense currently lacks. But it’s frightening to consider how much time he’d have to read any defense, let alone move through his progressions, behind a line that revolves the left tackle every game and is now without David Andrews. Starting Maye is also opening Pandora’s Box in a season with 13 games left and a trip to Jolly Olde England.
If Mayo wants his team to look really different, he has to hope Van Pelt can show more creativity in the coming weeks, and that young talent like Ja’Lynn Polk, DeMario Douglas, Keion White, and Caedan Wallace can grow into playmakers of consequence – fast. Maybe then, Maye can enter a situation in which he can flourish.
Otherwise it’s hard to picture the Patriots becoming something more than who they are today: a losing team who looks close to lost.