FOXBOROUGH – Jonathan Jones didn’t sugarcoat his answer. When asked about the team’s performance at home in recent years, the Patriots veteran cornerback let it rip.
“We’ve sucked,” he said.
That’s one way of putting last year’s 1-7 disaster at Gillette Stadium. In Bill Belichick’s final season, the Patriots played some of their worst games in front of the home crowd.
They also didn’t do the best job protecting their home turf the previous year. They were 4-4 In 2022, 4-5 in 2021.
Progress for the Jerod Mayo’s team means conquering that demon.
Last year, the Patriots averaged just 13 points per game in their eight home games. They also “hosted” the Indianapolis Colts in Germany – which they lost – but that won’t count toward the Gillette total.
While at home, they didn’t score any points twice (New Orleans, LA Chargers). Another time, they only mustered three points in the season-ending loss to the Jets. Defensively, they weren’t terrible, but they surrendered 22 points per game when playing below the lighthouse.
It wasn’t always like this. Opposing teams used to hate coming to Foxborough. It was almost a given the visitors would leave with a loss.
Time to change the narrative. The Seattle Seahawks are in town, fresh off their win over Denver, and the Patriots need to produce another statement win.
They pulled off a stunning upset in Cincinnati last week. That helped raise their profile. To prove it’s no fluke, to keep the ball rolling, the Patriots need to show the home fans that Week 1 wasn’t a mirage.
“It means a lot for us to change course,” Jones said. “I don’t want to get into ‘back in the day’ but it meant a lot to come into Gillette Stadium, and have the fans supporting you, and giving them a reason to support you.
“This week is our first opportunity to go out in front of our fans, put a good product out there and show them that they have something they can be proud of as a fan base and support.”
Jones said it’s one thing to get booed on the road. It’s another to have the home fans hooting and hollering at the Patriots when they’re in town.
“Having the fans boo you – for justified reasons – that’s not what we’re looking for,” Jones said. “We’re looking to give them a good product.”
Jerod Mayo certainly got off to a memorable start with the Patriots taking down a Super Bowl contender right out of the gate.
That was a good product. It was enjoyable to watch the effort, and adherence to a winning plan put together by the coaching staff.
But that win basically goes out the window if the Patriots can’t hold serve at home. A win would get them to 2-0 before taking on the New York Jets Thursday night in their first division game. Beating Seattle would give them a little more momentum, and get more people on the bandwagon.
“We’d like to win at home, defend our home turf. Win one for the fans. So that’s kind of our model for this week,” defensive captain Deatrich Wise said. “This is another opportunity to get better. There’s some things we need to work on from last week. This is a great opportunity to improve on that and improve from Week 1 to Week 2 and then go into the third game being 2-0.”
The Patriots executed the game plan against Cincinnati to near perfection last week. Jacoby Brissett did a good job managing the offense, Rhamondre Stevenson was a rock star, and the defense lived up to its hype. They didn’t make mistakes and limited penalties, which also helped the cause.
Against the Seahawks, who also chalked up a win in their season opener, that’s a good formula to work from. The Patriots can’t beat themselves, and they have to be on-point with the plan that’s drawn up.
“A lot of that stuff isn’t going to carry over. You’ve got to go earn it this week,” Center David Andrews said. “I think guys had belief from the jump that we could play how we wanted to play, and do what we needed to do to win the game. Obviously, we’ve gotta do that again this week.”
The Patriots would love to run the football as well as they did against the Bengals. They gashed the Bengals with 170 rushing yards, 120 of those coming from Stevenson, who put the final nail in the Bengals coffin in the closeout drive.
To run the ball as well as they did, they controlled the line of scrimmage. They’ll need to do that again to give themselves a chance. It also helps that the Seahawks aren’t particularly good at stopping the run, ranking 30th last season.
They fared pretty well against the Broncos run game last week, so it’ll be interesting to see if the Patriots can impose their will.
While teams traveling from the west coast have had trouble with 1 o’clock games given the time difference, the Patriots can’t count on that from Seattle. New head coach Mike MacDonald, who was hired to replace Pete Carroll, will have his team up and running.
“You want to start fast at home. Play on our terms,” Andrews said. “Hopefully the fans are as excited as we are to come back here, and open it up at home.”
