With 5:13 left in the game, Jalen Ramsey came off the edge blitzing Drake Maye. The Patriots rookie quarterback saw him coming and with no time, tried to make something happen in the split second of time he had available to him. As he backpedaled he tried to loft the ball to Antonio Gibson. But the pass was intercepted, essentially ending any hope of a wild comeback.
It was a bad decision and a bad throw. But it was also a reminder why a lot of smart people didn’t want Maye playing too soon. It wasn’t so much the injury risk of playing behind New England’s incompetent offensive line, but the concern that Maye would develop bad habits by learning the NFL while almost constantly under fire. While Tua Tagovailoa had time to do his taxes in the Dolphins’ pocket, Maye was constantly on the run. He was sacked four times and hit eight.
It’s difficult to learn that way.
This was a wasted week. From the moment it became obvious that the Patriots weren’t going to make the playoffs, this season became about building good habits, momentum and confidence. They need to learn from mistakes. New England went backward in every area.
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Some, not all, of Maye’s turnover issues have been the result of him feeling pressure — both actual pressure from the defense and theoretical pressure as the only guy who can get anything going for the offense. It’s a lot to have on his shoulders as young as he is.
Playing Maye right now is the right decision. He’s obviously proven himself ready and worthy. But he’s not getting the education and development that he could be if the Patriots had built a competent roster around him.
It’s a waste of time to rehash all of the mistakes Eliot Wolf made when creating this team. This wouldn’t have been a one-year rebuilding project even if he’d hit all his marks. But he didn’t. And with better picks and better signings, the Patriots could be a lot further along. Assuming Wolf is back for year two, this needs to be a make-or-break offseason for him.
Wolf gets and deserves the blame for the lousy roster, but the coaching staff has earned its growing share of scrutiny too. There are two kinds of penalties. There are the ones where guys commit an infraction to cover a mistake or the fact that they’re simply outgunned in a matchup. Better to commit a holding penalty that let the quarterback get clobbered.
Then there are penalties born of being unprepared of ill-prepared in situations — like Anfernee Jennings blatantly jumping on a hard count at the end of the first quarter.
The Patriots had plenty of both. The offensive line is going to get a lot of the first kind. They’re just too often overmatched. The recurring second kind is a reminder that the Patriots are lacking in efficient preparation as much as talent.
“We’re hurting ourselves,” Maye said. “We felt like we had a chance to move the ball on these guys. Penalties set us back and put us behind the 8-ball. We can’t do that in this league. ”
The Patriots took 10 penalties for 75 yards on Sunday, over half of which came before the snap.
“It starts with me,” Mayo said. “We’ve had these hiccups, games where the penalties really affected us.”
Mayo’s speaking style is occasionally prone to understatement. But they might have been hiccups in September. They’re a symptom of something larger now. And he’s right fixing it starts with him.
Bill Belichick got and deserved criticism for building staffs of his friends, his contemporaries and his kids late in his career. The Patriots went too far the other way. This team needs some more experienced hands to balance their youthful staff. Having a first-time coach, first-time defensive coordinator, first-time offensive play-caller, first-time personnel chief and first-time quarterback has produced a leadership group that might have fine minds, but not enough experience or institutional memory.
If Robert Kraft wants to rescue his hand-picked coach, he should mandate some staff upgrades and then give him a budget to be aggressive in pursuing them.
They only have a finite amount of time before the players lose faith. When the plays a team runs and the instructions they hear during the week lead to failure, there will come a time when the team tunes it out. Some of them might already be there.
The Patriots aren’t going to the playoffs. But they need to be going forward. They can’t afford five more wasted weeks.
“What we put out there was not good enough at all,” Hunter Henry said. “It felt like we were trending in the right way in the last few weeks. The wins aren’t there, but it felt like we were playing better football. We didn’t do that in the first half at all. We put ourselves behind the 8-ball. We had to play from behind and play catch-up the whole game.”
Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.
