We are now four games into the 2023-2024 NFL season, and closing in on number five. Impossible as it seems, we are nearly a third of the way through the season. It is fair then, at this point, to begin making some preliminary assessments. We believe that there is both good news and bad news. There is also some news that goes against the current and growing received “wisdom” surrounding the team. Mostly, this news has to do with Bill O’Brien’s upgraded (and, yes, it IS an upgrade, despite the lack of scoring) offense, and what it illuminates for us about the way that Bill Belichick has approached offensive unit building over the past four years since the departure of Tom Brady. Specifically, it allows us to see very clearly – in a way that Patricia’s disorganized, makeshift offense did not – what is succeeding and what is failing about that approach. Some issues are obvious, some are not so obvious, but all of them are damaging the Patriots’ ability to construct an offense that is capable of competing in the modern NFL.
Bill O’Brien’s offense has kept the Pats competitive in three out of the four games they’ve played so far. Although none of them were called perfectly (no games ever are), all three were called well enough for the Patriots to win. The first two losses were by one possession or less and were against consensus Super Bowl contenders. The fatal errors made in those games primarily boiled down to three categories: quarterback mistakes, rookie mistakes, and receiver mistakes. Some of these mistakes carried over even into the victory against the Jets, and were amplified in the loss against Dallas, where Mac Jones and Bill Belichick both experienced career level implosions. Because the offense is still not scoring enough points to win games consistently, a growing consensus in the Boston sports media and fan base seems to be emerging that O’Brien’s offense is no better than Patricia’s. This, as we alluded to earlier, is false. O’Brien’s offense, while not overly complex, has positioned the Patriots to win games against competitive teams.
When Patricia was calling the plays, the offense was ugly, amateurish, and disorganized. Routes took forever to develop, were poorly designed, and receivers ran into each other with some regularity, forcing them to adjust on the fly. Jones didn’t have half the time to throw that the routes took to develop, and neither Patricia nor Judge knew enough to answer any of his questions. Games were won because of defensive playmaking and Nick Folk. As a result, Mac predictably regressed, and it was impossible to discern what was the quarterback’s problem, what were the receivers’ problems and what was happening because Matt Patricia and Joe Judge didn’t know what they were doing. Now that we have a professional OC at the helm, these questions have become much easier to answer.
We can now see that Mac Jones’s well-documented problems are only one piece of what ails the Patriots offense (and they are not the focus of this post). The root of all the other issues – rookies not being able to secure a catch or running into another player, veteran receivers not being able to hold onto the ball, or not exerting the effort to go after catchable ones – lies elsewhere. We all expected O’Brien’s offense to tell us whether Mac could be the guy; perhaps surprisingly, it is also telling us whether Bill Belichick can still be the guy, at least on offense and as a GM. The primary issues that we see are: roster building, player usage and execution, and receiver development. These are all problems that relate to management and coaching, and thus should be properly placed at Belichick’s door. All of these problems have manifested and are revealing themselves clearly, now that a professional, organized offensive scheme is in place.
We don’t need to go on and on about the offensive roster building. Belichick’s failures in that department have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere. Giving up the reliable Jakobi Meyers for an injured JuJu Smith-Schuster (despite the on-paper upside), DeVante Parker’s expensive, three year extension, despite him being on the wrong side of thirty and a role player, these have mystified everyone, quite rightly since the beginning. If Demario Douglas is the reason Belichick won’t spring for a true WR1 (hey, maybe they think Pop can be The Guy!) then why is he only playing roughly a quarter of the offensive snaps?
While we are on the subject, we would also like to throw in the trading of Nick Folk, for good measure. This was an alarming trade, and one which we were thoroughly against. We feel that this trade did not throw up as many red flags in the Boston sports media as it should have. Folk is a veteran whose consistency and icy blood won many games for the Patriots during his tenure here, and we remain both confused by and irritated at the fact that Belichick got rid of him. If it was because of his age, we would point to the Parker extension. Parker is also old for his position, and he is a role player who has not had a tremendous impact on the team. Folk may be getting older, but he still remains elite and he was undeniably a difference maker when he was here. He is currently 100% at Tennessee.
Even worse, is that Belichick seems to not trust his new kicker completely, which has caused him to go for it on fourth down more than he usually would. Because the offense can’t even do a quarterback sneak effectively on 4th and 1, much less anything more than that, they usually end up turning the ball over on downs. “Being aggressive” is not smart when you only succeed in that situation 20-25% of the time and give up valuable points in the process. “Being aggressive” on 4th down just to be aggressive (or because you have to, because the coach doesn’t trust his new kicker) is bad situational football. We know this, because we have heard Bill Belichick say it multiple times. It’s what bad coaches like Brandon Staley do.
Player usage and execution are also commonly discussed problems, and rightfully so. We will not beat that dead horse, except to point out that Belichick has not adjusted or adapted the way in which he uses players or trains rookies since Brady has left. This despite the fact that, in losing Brady, he lost an elite, knowledgeable, veteran presence on the field who worked with the receivers as much as any receiver coach and was twice as effective. Belichick has made no move to adapt or upgrade his coaching staff to make up for this loss. Instead, he still operates the way he always has – not playing rookies consistently, despite the fact that they have the potential to be the most dynamic offensive weapon on the team (Douglas), putting players in the doghouse for minor infractions (Bourne), and healthy scratches for mistakes that can be traced back to his own coaching staff (Boutte).
For instance, in the Eagles game, Kayshon Boutte failed to secure a catch because he only got one toe down as he was falling out of bounds. In the postgame, WR coach Ross Douglas said he still needed to “learn to keep both feet down,” in the NFL, since it was a different rule than in college. Call us crazy, but shouldn’t mastering the difference between a catch in college and a catch in the NFL be literally one of the the first things a rookie receiver is drilled on, until it’s second nature? They had the entire offseason and preseason to make sure the rookies had it down cold. So why was Kayshon Boutte spotted drilling the double toe touch this past week, as though it was the first time he’d ever been made to do it?
Likewise, WR coach Troy Brown refuses to accelerate Pop Douglas’s development, despite the fact that he is objectively the most dynamic playmaker on the team. In the Eagles post-game presser, Brown said he was putting Douglas “in the same bucket as the other rookies,” because it was “too small a sample size.” Sample size? Well, how are you going to get a bigger sample if you never play him? And why are you waiting for a big enough sample size anyway? Are we running a science experiment, or trying to train a kid to win football games? And while we’re on the subject, how big of a sample size do we need before we conclude that JuJu Smith-Schuster is still injured and shouldn’t be playing at all?
Brady’s coaching of and work with receivers is not discussed as much as it should be. Losing him meant the loss of a tremendous amount of offensive expertise – especially with receivers – on the Patriots coaching staff. Expertise that Belichick has failed to even come close to replacing. We honestly have no idea why Brown – an astounding receiver himself while playing, and we take no pleasure in saying this – can’t see that Douglas is exceptional, and represents the Patriots best chance to make dynamic plays. Great players, however, don’t always make great coaches. Perhaps Brown’s perspective has changed, since Douglas was one of the only bright spots in a putrid Dallas game. We must all hope so, because if the Patriots continue to approach rookie development in the same plodding, disorganized manner that they are now, then Foxborough will soon become an undesirable destination for receivers.
Of course Brady himself is irreplaceable, it’s true. But Belichick could – and should – have taken steps to acquire at least one receivers coach from a team with an elite, successful offense to begin to fill the knowledge gap left by his departure. Instead, he stood pat, then allowed more than half of the offensive staff to walk out the door a couple of years later with Josh McDaniels. He did nothing to replace them, either. The fact that rookie receivers don’t remember to put both toes down for a catch, the fact that veteran receivers drop catchable passes with regularity, the fact that the receiving corps in general is lifeless and lacking energy, the fact that guys like Kendrick Bourne and Mike Gesicki aren’t making the extra effort to go after catchable passes – these are all problems that can be laid at the feet of the offensive coaching staff; specifically, the receivers’ coaches. This is a coaching staff that Belichick has selected, allowed to stagnate, and has not made any moves to upgrade outside of bringing in Bill O’Brien.
Robert Kraft has always said that the secret to his success has been hiring smart people and letting them do their job. If this is true, he has some soul-searching to do and some decisions to make. It has become clear that Bill Belichick is trying to do a job for which he is currently ill-suited (GM). The offensive coaching staff is not doing their job well enough to elevate the players on the roster, even those with above average and/or dynamic potential. On the contrary, rookie receivers have been withering on the vine and veterans have been stagnating in New England for several worrying years now. Yet, if they had a dedicated, offensive-minded GM, and Belichick were free to focus only on coaching, most of these problems could be resolved.
O’Brien’s offense has cleaned up the most egregious offenses from last year and provided the clarity necessary to identify exactly where and what the problems are. It remains, however, only the first step in reimagining the Patriots offense in a post-Brady world. This is Robert Kraft’s team. It can’t be easy to lay it on the line with Bill Belichick, but sometimes even GOATs need to be saved from themselves. At 71 years old, two high pressure jobs is too much for anybody. If the Patriots are going to start winning again, they need Belichick’s full focus to be on what he does best – coaching. If Kraft does not step in soon to hire an offensive-minded GM, he will risk losing everything that he, Belichick, and Brady worked so hard to build over the last twenty years.