During his midweek press conference at Gillette Stadium, Patriots’ (2-5) QB Mac Jones declared that consistency was the “word of the week” in Foxborough.
Consistency also happens to be the great unknown of Bill Belichick’s team through what should have been a revealing stretch of seven games as the NFL swiftly nears the midpoint of the 2023 season. Even if September were still treated as the so-called extension of the preseason, teams throughout football should indeed be hitting true midseason form as the midseason indeed rolls around.
Coming off last Sunday’s improbable but much-needed 29-25 comeback win over the Bills in front of the home crowd that was forced to remove the paper bags from their heads, it’s really hard to say what the Patriots are at this point and what they might be in the coming weeks and months. It no longer takes pure faith to see what the upside of the team can be. But it also takes a really short memory to forget what the downside is.
“Really just want to build off the momentum and continue to do it, do it over and over again,” Jones said.
Because while Jones said consistency was the word this week, that’s not exactly what he meant. He needs to add the word productive, positive, successful or winning before the word consistency.
After all, there was a stretch this year where the Patriots were seemingly quite consistent, as in consistently playing losing football.
New England consistently got off to slow starts. Consistently turned the ball over. Consistently dug holes that allowed the opponent to play from in front.
Jones himself consistently looked like an incapable QB, struggling behind an inept offensive line that consistently ruined all things offense dating back to even training camp practices.
Consistent? Not these Patriots. Nope. They opened the year by fighting the good fight in a moral victory against the defending NFC champion Eagles. But a couple weeks later they were losing in embarrassing fashion in Dallas, the worst defeat of Bill Belichick’s long, Hall of Fame career. A week later came the shutout to the Saints at Gillette, the worst home shutout loss in franchise history!
But two weeks after that dysfunction that seemed characteristic of the team, New England went out and beat the Bills in what was one of the better wins in recent memory. A big-boy victory over a big-boy opponent. No qualifiers or asterisks. Simply impressive.
Jones has ridden a similar roller coaster. His second quarter of the Week 1 loss to Philly had people very much believing in what Bill O’Brien was bringing to the mix, Jones completing 11 straight passes in consecutive scoring drives. That was weeks before some started erroneously calling O’Brien the worst offensive coordinator in the NFL.
But by the time the second quarter rolled around in Week 4 in Dallas Jones was melting down, making horrific decisions and even worse throws on his way to being benched for the first time in consecutive weeks. His career and hold on the starting job seemingly hanging in the balance.
Then all Jones did was go out and win a borderline shootout with annual MVP candidate Josh Allen. The third-year passer getting the comeback, game-winning drive many thought he would never get. Doing it against a real opponent with a real QB.
And, now, here we are. The Patriots head to Miami on Sunday to take on the AFC East-leading Dolphins (5-2). A game against the latest, greatest offense the NFL has to offer with Tyreek Hill and Co. trying to rewrite some record books. Jones faces MVP candidate and former Alabama teammate Tua Tagovailoa who’s not lost to Belichick’s Patriots.
A win on Sunday, a couple days before Halloween’s NFL trade deadline in what has traditionally been a house of horrors for the Patriots, would go a long way toward changing the narrative this fall about Jones and his team. It would create, as the QB said, “momentum” for a team that still has an unlikely path to late-season credibility. It would be another step toward making people forget the embarrassments and ineptitude of the performances from earlier this month. It would fuel hope and maybe some belief with theoretically “winnable” games on the horizon against the Commanders, Colts and Giants.
Jones has been admirably consistent with his comments and his approach, both as the front-facing team leader and with his process behind the scenes. But his play on the field has been utterly inconsistent. He’s played some of the best and worst football of his career over the last seven games as his team has played some of the worst football Belichick or New England has literally ever seen.
“Whatever we have to do as an offense to win, we’re going to try and do it really well,” Jones said.
Consistency is the word of the week in New England.
What exactly that means for Jones and these Patriots, well, for better or worse we’re about to find out.
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