There are no moral victories in December.
The Patriots came close to an upset over the Colts in Week 13, and for a brief few moments, Gillette Stadium felt a little like the old days. The singular talent of New England’s quarterback had made up for the rest of the team’s shortcomings and now the game was on the line. The guy on the other side? He was all over the place. The game was theirs.
Until it wasn’t – and the truth is that in critical situations, the game had no business being as close as it was. A team who goes 0-2 in Goal to Go situations and 2-6 in the red zone is not executing to win. And the Patriots know it.
“I got a ball taken off me today, luckily it bounced back.
It’s FUBAR stuff like that, that happens. It’s like, you can’t beat the team before you stop hurting yourself, and there were a number of those today. It’s not for a lack of effort, a lack of busting our ass. It’s just FUBAR stuff that happens out there that gets you scars in this league,” tight end Austin Hooper said at his locker postgame.
Wondering what FUBAR means? It’s a common acronym for “fouled up beyond all recognition,” although there’s a far less polite word that can be substituted for “fouled.”
It’s an apt description for the way the Patriots keep slamming their heads against the wall in the red zone – on both ends of the field. The Colts were 3-4 in the red zone and 3-3 in Goal to Go. Most notably, they were able to pull off the two-point conversion with seconds left on the clock.
Fouled up beyond recognition. Who is this team? Drake Maye and Christian Gonzalez are bona fide playmakers. Maye had an 80% completion rate, threw for 238 yards, and averaged nearly eight yards per pass attempt. He had a tremendous bounce back game after a slump in South Beach. Gonzalez made a crucial late game pick and then a tackle on Jonathan Taylor to force 4th and 3, with 17 seconds left on the clock.
Everyone else is suspect. They’re either not long for the future of this franchise, or they haven’t shown enough to be recognizable for the rebuild. DeMario Douglas, Hunter Henry, and Kendrick Bourne are all nice, complementary players. Ditto for Austin Hooper. Do they change the other team’s game plan? Probably not. Do they wreak havoc on secondaries? That’s a tough sell. The Patriots offense does more to inflect chaos on themselves. They line up wrong, their spacing is absurd, and they’re flag magnets. They turn 1st-and-goal from the 2 into 1st-and-goal from the 22. Yes, they actually did that against the Colts. Their defense breaks, then bends and bends, and breaks again.
And that is what’s most frustrating about the 2024 Patriots: it’s hard to tell whether they’re learning from these experiences. They repeat mistakes. Is that a reflection of trying to overcome shortcomings in their own talent, or a failure of coaching? It’s probably a little of column A, and a little of column B. Outside of Maye and Kayshon Boutte – who’s made tremendous strides to improve his approach in Foxboro – who else is getting better as the games go on? Progress isn’t linear, but a team has to show actual growth. They can’t just get close. They have to learn how to perform in critical moments.
The Patriots’ three wins this year have come against teams in utter disarray: the Bengals, the Jets, and Chicago. Two of those three teams have already fired their head coaches. New England is barely above the dumpster fires in the league. They’re close enough to feel the heat of the flames.
A few weeks back, head coach Jerod Mayo said he had a goal for his team. At the end of the year, he wanted them to be a dangerous opponent, to be the kind of team who others didn’t want to see in December.
But the Patriots just don’t feel close to resembling a feisty team. When they show pluck, a flag is likely to follow. And that’s been the case for months now. Hooper was right. They do FUBAR stuff, and they do it week after week. The scary part is, they don’t sound like they can recognize how to learn from it.