Some thought this version of the New England Patriots would end up picking top-10 in next year’s draft and win six games at the most. Others thought this squad would shock everyone and somehow win the AFC East.
As often happens, the answer to those two extremes likely lies somewhere in the middle.
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The Patriots are sitting at a perfectly average 5-4 going into the well-timed bye at the halfway point of the season, holding the eighth seed in the AFC (one spot outside the playoffs). It hasn’t always looked pretty, and the offense has been simultaneously not as bad as expected (at points) and yet horribly dysfunctional in the last few weeks especially. But, just like last year, the defense and special teams have kept them competitive with teams that came into the season better on paper.
So…both better and worse than you expected, maybe?
Here’s how I’d grade the team’s performance thus far, starting with the offensive side of the football.
Offense: C-
Quarterbacks: C
Bailey Zappe’s two starts against the Lions and Browns are doing a lot of work to make those grade average. (He was solid in relief against the Packers, too.)
Aside from three quarters against the Baltimore Ravens, Mac Jones is nowhere near where we hoped he’d be at this point of his second season, though you could say that about every second-year quarterback not named Justin Fields at the moment.
Not all of it is his fault; in fact, you could say most of it isn’t. Matt Patricia and company have failed him with their inability to play properly to his strengths, forcing a more vertical offense on him and personnel groups who can’t handle it rather than building a true spread offense for him to thrive in. Injuries and ineffectiveness from the offensive line have left him uncomfortable in the pocket and running far more than you want to see, and the receiving corps has been highly inconsistent aside from Jakobi Meyers.
But Jones also doesn’t have the raw ability to play over those flaws, and it shows. When the situation around him doesn’t look optimal, he struggles at times to just control what he can control and keep up a high level of execution.
Zappe put those problems into stark relief during his brief but highly effective stint in a largely different play-calling scheme than Jones received, but the rookie’s limits where exposed badly when he had to play from behind against the Chicago Bears. He’s not it either.
The Patriots’ best chance to make the playoffs this season is to do what the Bears did for Fields: scrap their old plan and remake the offense in Jones’ image (more quick throws, RPOs, then build deeper concepts off of that). Of course, that’s betting on Jones to be able to make that bet pay off. So far, he’s left a lot to be desired.
Running Backs: A-
Rhamondre Stevenson (618 yards rushing on 4.8 yards per carry; 35 catches for 227 yards) is awesome and clearly the best offensive player on the team. His ability to force missed tackles in a phone booth and growth into a true three-down back has been fun to watch all season.
Damien Harris (302 yards on 4.3 y/c) has been solid as well when he’s played, considering the nagging injuries and illnesses he’s been fighting through.
After that, though, the Patriots haven’t gotten anything too useful from any of their other running backs aside from J.J. Taylor’s Superman fumble recovery against the Colts. Ty Montgomery, who could’ve been a huge addition to the passing game, has been on IR since Week 1 and has shown little to no signs of returning.
A little extra punch would be nice, but Stevenson’s emergence still makes this unit great.
Wide receivers: C
Jakobi Meyers (40 catches for 457 yards) continues to get better every year, though his fumble against the Colts wasn’t ideal. But he’s still not a true No. 1 receiver. Unfortunately, no one else has been playing up to his level.
Most of DeVante Parker’s 321 receiving yards came in that Baltimore game. Otherwise, he’s been spotty in his production.
Then, you have Nelson Agholor (227 receiving) and Kendrick Bourne (167) sitting behind Hunter Henry (240) and Stevenson on the team’s receiving yards list. That’s a rough look for two guys who were supposed to benefit from the space Parker came to open up. Both Agholor and Bourne have fumbled twice as well, and that can’t be helping their cause.
Given that the Patriots didn’t trade any of their receivers, you’d hope that have a better plan for using them after the bye.
The next order of business: find more touches for Tyquan Thornton, who scored his first two touchdowns against the Browns but hasn't done much since.
Offensive line: C-
Contrary to how it feels now, it really hasn’t been all bad for the offensive line. In fact, there was a time when you could say the unit was actually a strength.
Trent Brown still remains one of the better left tackles in the league despite routinely getting the least help on his blocking assignments, and Michael Onwenu has been one of the highest-graded offensive guards in football all season.
The problems have come just about everywhere else.
David Andrews has been his normal solid self when he’s played, but the concussion that knocked him out of the Bears game has wreaked utter havoc on this unit.
Cole Strange looked every bit a developing star at left guard up until Andrews went out. He’s since gotten benched two weeks in a row in favor of Isaiah Wynn, who himself got benched at right tackle for Marcus Cannon (now on IR with a concussion and pretty bad when he was playing), and looks more lost than he has at any point this season.
The turnstile at right tackle, meanwhile, has led directly to Brian Hoyer’s concussion against Green Bay and multiple turnovers for the offense due to defenders jarring footballs loose from quarterbacks or causing interceptions.
Expect the Patriots to take some hard looks at who their best five offensive lineman are during the bye.
If they thought Yodny Cajuste was good enough to keep at right tackle — I’m not sure he was against the Colts — that could keep everyone else in their normal spots. But my money is on the original five with a different configuration from left to right — Brown, Strange, Andrews, Wynn, Onwenu — sliding their best and most versatile offensive lineman (Onwenu) out to tackle.
Tight Ends: D-
The only thing stopping them from failing is the fact that both have contributed as blockers all season, especially Smith.
But they weren’t paid all that money to come here and block. They were supposed to catch passes and score touchdowns, and they haven’t made an impact in either category thus far (just one touchdown catch between them).
At this point, it’s hard to view the Smith signing as anything other than a failure, and Henry’s positive momentum from last season has been wasted.
Again, maybe if the Patriots had a real offensive play-caller, they could’ve gotten more out of them in their second years here.
Coaching: C-
I said before the season that the decision to have Matt Patricia call offensive plays was puzzling but might not be as big a deal as we thought by the end of the season. For about seven weeks or so there, it looked like a decent prediction. But man, these last couple of weeks have been ugly.
The Patriots have scored just two offensive touchdowns in the last two weeks, and Jones clearly doesn’t look like himself in an offense that doesn’t seem to have any identity of its own. This idea of game-planning specifically for every team is nice, but you have to have a Plan B if that doesn’t work. New England doesn’t have one.
They tried to implement a Sean McVay-style wide zone offense before the season, and it blew up in their faces. Then, they tried to use Mac Jones like Carson Palmer, only to see his interception numbers skyrocket and the quarterback’s discomfort mount.
Zappe’s strong play in the middle of that saves Patricia and the staff here; having to play a fourth-round rookie is often a death knell for teams trying to compete, but they thrived with him at quarterback (albeit against very bad defenses).
Then, Bill Belichick, Patricia and Co. needlessly created talk of a controversy by benching Jones and inserting Zappe during the Bears game, only to leave the game feeling worse about both players.
The Patriots have seemingly committed to Jones since then, but they still don’t have a proper plan for him. The result: the best rookie quarterback from last season now looking like the one who’s regressed the most in Year 2. Jones certainly must share some blame for that. But it’s the coaching staff’s job to put their still-young passer in a better position to succeed, and they have failed spectacularly at doing so.
They better have a really good plan for transforming this offense during the break the way the Bears did with Justin Fields (minus all the running, of course). Otherwise, they’re going to flush a first-round pick down the drain, and it’ll be almost wholly their own fault.
