It’s been a quasi-magical season for the Patriots under Mike Vrabel – until Murphy’s Law struck the offensive line Sunday in Cincinnati.
“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” is the commonly understood meaning behind the principle attributed to 1940s aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy, an American Army and Air Force vet.
That adage may sound as pessimistic as your typical sports radio personality, but it was actually meant as a means of safeguarding best practices in the face of potential ruin. Expect the worst and stay prepared for crises.
Sunday’s 26-20 win over the Bengals had Murphy’s Law written all over it. It was a truly bad watch.
In the span of three quarters, New England went from a fairy tale to flirting with disaster. Both rookie offensive linemen from quarterback Drake Maye’s blind side were carted off the field with injuries. Left tackle Will Campbell was almost immediately ruled out for the rest of the game with a hurt knee. Right tackle Morgan Moses missed a handful of snaps in the first half with an illness that forced him into the locker room.
And the worst of those losses came after Maye started the game 2-for-5 with a pick-6. He looked absurdly unlike the MVP candidate we’ve seen since Week 2, and the injuries to his protectors couldn’t be cited as the reason. He recovered from his ugly start, but the same can’t be said for the fate suffered by the big fellas up front.
The Patriots’ offensive line has played with unbelievable consistency and availability this year. They’re not perfect, but they’ve been above-average and acted as the spine of the team’s typically dynamic passing game. O-line coach Doug Marrone has managed to start the same five for every game but one through Week 12.
Now, it looks very much like that’s about to change, and how the Patriots handle this brutal blow will be fascinating.
"Everybody wants to talk about numbers and records. That doesn't mean [expletive]," a hot-to-start Vrabel said immediately postgame. He also remarked on media's focus on injuries leading up to Sunday's game.
Let’s put the stakes out there, and get this out of the way: losing a left tackle is just a tier below losing a quarterback. It’s difficult to knock the team for being unprepared for the injury because some positions are just unrealistic to replace. That’s why they’re worth top-5 draft picks.
But there are countless questions the Patriots will face, depending on the outcomes of Sunday’s injuries. Can Maye’s mobility make up for a potentially more porous line? Is the success of the pass catchers, (with Hunter Henry posting an above-100-yard-game, four different players have reached that threshold in the last four games) mostly based on the protection the line has afforded Maye? Did the team brass have the correct read of who they have in the locker room when they assessed the prices at the trade deadline, if only for another guard, or a tackle with slightly more experience than Vederian Lowe and rookie Marcus Bryant? (Again, there’s no replacing Campbell, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t make marginal improvements, right?)
Moreover, how resilient are these guys?
After the Patriots beat the Jets in Thursday Night Football, linebacker and captain Robert Spillane said he has, “something called, like, ‘player delusion.’”
“Every year I felt like I was going to be 11-0 after 11 games,” he said. “It’s part of my confidence, I guess. It’s part of my process. Every game I’ve ever gone into, I expect to win the game.”
Spillane described the locker room as sharing in that mindset. Every man thinks he’s the best and the team believes they’re capable of beating anybody.
The Patriots have worked hard for their 10-2 record. Nobody can take that away from them. Still, objectively, they do have an easy schedule compared to others in the NFL. They haven’t faced a whole lot of hurdles in terms of losing players, or suffering a demoralizing loss at the hands of much-better team.
One notable example of this group's character has been the ability of the team, and its head coach, to rally in the aftermath of defensive coordinator Terrell Williams' cancer diagnosis early this season.
From a football X's and O's perspective, these injuries look to be the biggest test yet for a locker room who has simultaneously sidestepped the “underdog mentality” while echoing the very words Vrabel uses, week after week. The Patriots have been beneficiaries of health luck on their roster. That’s not the only reason behind their success, but it certainly matters. If that luck has run out, we’ll see what else they have in its wake.