It’s been an ugly season for the Patriots, to say the least.
They dropped to 2-10 after Sunday’s 6-0 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday afternoon at Gillette Stadium after another ugly showing from the offense. Bailey Zappe got the start and even though he didn’t turn the ball over, he didn’t look like someone who’s miles better than Mac Jones.
The issues the Patriots have extend well beyond the quarterback. The offensive line has done their QB no favors, the offense has struggled to put up points and the defense — though they played a strong game Sunday — are dealing with injuries to key players.
On the latest episode of “Eye On Foxborough,” MassLive Patriots reporters Chris Mason and Mark Daniels discussed who deserves the blame for how New England has performed this season.
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“I think the blame plot pie for me is really easy. It’s Bill Belichick,” Daniels said. “The way he built this offense, the way he built the offensive line, the way he built the weapons, it doesn’t work. And truthfully, the offense hasn’t really worked in a while. Tom Brady, his final two years he was actually pretty frustrated. Tom Brady had some issues with that last Patriots offense that actually won a Super Bowl. But if you all remember, they won a Super Bowl at the lowest lowest scoring output and offensive history.”
Daniels acknowledged that New England was aware of the offensive issues and tried to correct it in the 2021 NFL Draft. But the Patriots drafted N’Keal Harry in the first round and turned out to be a bust. They also took a chance on Antonio Brown who didn’t work out.
“… I think it’s been just a huge failure on Bill Belichick’s part to really get with the times here. The Patriots’ leading receiver over the last three years — the guy we’ve talked a lot about is Jakobi Meyers,” Daniels said. “But the truth is Jakbi Meyers wasn’t a No. 1 receiver. They’ve never really replaced Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski. And and I think that really sort of speaks to Bill Belichick being stuck in his ways. You can call him the greatest defensive minded head coach in NFL history. But at a certain point, especially when you lose the greatest quarterback of all time, you need to get elite weapons.”
Mason pointed to not only the team taking flyers on players who didn’t work out, but also Belichick’s draft evaluation.
“A lot of his approach in trying to get some of those weapons feels kind of like flex sealing things,” he said. ”It’s like, oh, OK, you took a flyer on Antonio Brown and brought Josh Gordon in and traded a second for Mohamed Sanu. A lot of these things are like OK, you don’t really have a plan. But the evaluation in the draft is just terrible to where it’s like N’Keal Harry and Tyquan Thorton are the most recent, early round picks they’ve taken at wide out. And it’s almost like N’Keal didn’t work to the point where they tried to take the exact opposite player in Tyquan and he also doesn’t work where the evaluation just isn’t there.”
Thornton has had two stints on injured reserve — one in 2022 and the other in 2023 — and hasn’t quite panned out the way the Patriots had hoped. And he dropped a deep ball in the final two minutes of the third quarter on his only target of the game. Thornton took accountability for it, but it’s just another reminder of a draft pick not working out early on.
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