The last time the New England Patriots started a season with a 1-4 record was 23 years ago. Drew Bledsoe was still the team’s quarterback, while Bill Belichick was making his coaching debut. As a sixth-round rookie sitting on the sidelines, Tom Brady was an unknown. The Houston Texans would join the NFL two years later, bringing the total number of clubs to thirty-one. It was an era apart from anything else.
Unfortunately, this season has seen the Patriots return to that situation.
The Patriots’ record fell to 1-4 on Sunday following their 34-0 thrashing at the hands of the New Orleans Saints. Even though the record is poor already, the Patriots’ losing streak makes it even worse. Their cumulative score in the last two games has been 72-3. Up until Week 3 of the 2023 season, Belichick had never lost a game by 33 points or more during his entire tenure with the Patriots, but he has now done so in back-to-back games.
The Patriots haven’t had much luck in the post-Brady era, but things have never been this awful. They’ve never been so ridiculously awful. Uninteresting, to be sure, but a team you could easily defeat twice in a row? Not really. The Belichick Patriots are unfamiliar with this territory.
Mac Jones, Offense Is Mostly at Fault
QB Mac Jones is the main offender in New England’s offense, which is what’s sinking the ship. Jones is acting as though he had malware on his mind. His timing and precision, which were crucial to his success as a rookie, are all gone, and he is rebelling against the offense. For the first couple of weeks, Jones was sort of holding it together, but over the past two weeks, he has been an absolute mess.
The problem is that Belichick is the only one who is at fault. To be clear, this is Belichick the GM. This is the culmination of everything Belichick has done since 2021 to develop the offense. Three years ago, that began with Jones being drafted in the first round. As understandable as it was, that action set the clock for a particular type of rebuild for which Belichick was most likely ill-prepared in the first place.
Jones had always been a high-floor, low-ceiling player coming out of Alabama. He is not exactly an electric scrambler, and his arm talent was much behind that of the league’s best players. Since Jones would always win by making accurate decisions, the skill players in his immediate vicinity had to be the ones to increase the offensive unit’s potential. Jones is not a playmaker; he is a distributor.
Such a quarterback can function at a high level. Consider the success the Kansas City Chiefs had with Alex Smith in the early years of Andy Reid’s tenure, or the results Kyle Shanahan achieved with the San Francisco 49ers with Jimmy Garoppolo. Even the Miami Dolphins’ current lineup with Tua Tagovailoa fits under this category, albeit it is undoubtedly an idealized one. There is value to this quarterback archetype.
The issue is that it is really challenging to assemble teams with that kind of expertise and talent. The team may have to forfeit premium draft money in order to get an elite playmaker, and one or more draft picks must be selected. Threading a fine needle only gets harder if Jones ever developed into a quarterback good enough to get paid.
