The New England Patriots lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London on Sunday…and heaven knows, we’re miserable now. They wanted Belichick gone, and now he’s definitely gone…and heaven knows, we’re miserable now. In our life…oh, never mind. Watching the Patriots lose a winnable game in London couldn’t have been easy for Robert Kraft. For one thing, this was the second week in a row, and only the second game in his nascent career, that the Pats crapped the bed despite rookie quarterback Drake Maye outdueling a well-respected opposing quarterback. Last week against the Texans, he outshot no less of a young gunslinger than C.J. Stroud. This weekend he went up very favorably against five-star hype machine, shampoo model, and all-around good guy Trevor Lawrence. Maye has been throwing for over 250 yards and 2-3 touchdowns per game and rushing for 15-30 yards. Against the Jaguars, he didn’t turn the ball over a single time the way he did against the Texans, proving that his rookie jitters are already beginning to smooth themselves out.
Drake Maye won the day as a quarterback, yet the Patriots still managed to lose the game. Maye went 26/37, threw for 276 yards, with 2 touchdowns and 0 interceptions; Lawrence was 15-20, with193 yards, 1 touchdown, 0 interceptions – yet Lawrence’s performance was still graded as “excellent” vs. Maye’s “pretty good” thanks to a variety of tortured “metrics” that are the reason so many average quarterbacks get assessed more highly than they should be (including the conceptually ridiculous and stupid sounding “big-time throw”). The intellectual dishonesty of some of these “analysts” would make Caligula blush worse than Morrissey’s mom.
Maye has absolutely demonstrated so far that he is A Guy, and the Pats fan base is officially queuing up behind him (they know what great quarterbacking does and does not look like). In two games, Maye already has thrown only one fewer touchdown pass than Patrick Mahomes has all season. Maye is on pace to score 30 tds in 12 games but, sadly, the team around him has regressed so badly that we don’t even recognize their defense anymore.
If Maye had started the season, and if the Patriots had taken rebuilding their team and coaching staff seriously over the past five years, he would be at the head of the race – not in the running, but in the lead over Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels – for Offensive Rookie of the Year. The script has flipped in Foxborough: the quarterback – even the offense in general – is not the problem anymore, nor is their special teams unit.
But all is not lost! We have been ruminating on this for the past couple of weeks and we think we’ve hit on a successful action plan. It won’t be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. It just depends on how badly Robert Kraft wants to protect everything that he, Belichick and Brady spent twenty years and swallowed buckets of each others’ shit to build. We hope the answer is “really, really badly,” because if he isn’t willing to make some bold moves and spend some real money in the upcoming offseason now that he knows Maye is The Guy, he risks throwing one of the most profitable and respectable franchises in American football into a death spiral of devaluation and disgrace. Here, then, is our four-pronged plan to fix the New England Patriots:
1. Bring in Robert Saleh as Defensive Coordinator to fix their defense. They need experience and intelligence, not feel-good, in-house legacy promotion bullshit. Saleh was one of the quality control coaches for Seattle’s awe-inspiring Legion of Boom (for which he won a Super Bowl) and he made the Jets’ defense relevant for the first time in years. He could do wonders with Gonzo, Christian Barmore, Keion White, Kyle Duggar and the Jones Boys. The Krafts cannot afford to stand on ego and insist on continuing to only hire and promote exclusively from within their own defensive system. That system walked out the door when they released Bill Belichick from his duties and neither Jerod Mayo nor DeMarcus Covington has managed to keep the ship completely afloat. They need to suck it up, stop being so cheap, and call in a specialist.
Dark Horse: Steve Belichick. He knows the system, obviously. And the Patriots will always feel just a little bit more like “The Patriots” when there’s a Belichick on defense. There has to be a price point that will make “we screwed your dad” feel like water under the bridge.
2. Bring back Josh McDaniels as Offensive Coordinator to reconstruct the offense and train Drake Maye. We can’t be the only ones who have secretly allowed this idea to seep back into the darker corners of our minds. Yes, when he left to become the head coach of the Raiders, we believed that McDaniels was finally a firmly closed chapter in Patriots history. Yes, we know he sometimes had his issues as a playcaller. And yes, we know that the Patriots are committed to “cleaning house and starting fresh.” Still, we can’t help but indulge the idea, simply because desperate times call for desperate measures. He came back once before and it worked out great, right? Plus, rumor had it that he was never really happy after leaving New England; he might be persuaded to return if it meant doing what he does best (strictly offense) and the opportunity to develop a truly blue-chip quarterback this time.
He is a championship Offensive Coordinator, with multiple Super Bowl rings. He is organized, a tough coach, and an excellent enforcer of the “good parts” of Patriot culture (focus, discipline, work ethic, preparation). He is so experienced, he can work pretty much independently, thus unburdening a defensive minded head coach from having to worry about the offensive side of the football. He worked with Tom Brady for many years and can impart the GOAT’s thought processes, choices, and approaches to the job to Drake Maye, giving the young qb another perspective and new ideas to think about from someone who did it the best. He brought the Pats to the playoffs with Mac freaking Jones and had Mac throwing down 40- and 50-burgers during his rookie season. McDaniels is old enough to be the adult in the room, but is still young enough to “relate to the kids.” Imagine what Maye might accomplish with an OC like him.
Dark Horse: Zac Robinson. We know everyone was probably expecting Kliff Kingsbury here, but we seriously doubt that Kingsbury would make a lateral move away from the Commanders and Jayden Daniels and ship up to Foxborough, since the Commanders are already winning. Kingsbury also has potential upward mobility in Washington; Robinson knows he’s not replacing Sean McVay in Los Angeles. In addition, Robinson might appreciate the opportunity to take control of an offense all on his own. He is known for his abilities with the passing game (one of Maye’s strengths), and with quarterbacks, so he might also be intrigued by the opportunity to develop a potential top 5 guy like Maye.
3. This one is hard for us, because we actually like Jerod Mayo, and would prefer to give him some more time to prove himself. Unfortunately, in order to get Mike Vrabel, the Patriots would most likely have to let Mayo go this upcoming offseason. So there you have it. Vrabel, like Mayo, played for Belichick. Vrabel, like Mayo, is a defensive minded head coach. Vrabel, like Mayo, knows and buys into the Patriots system and culture, so Robert Kraft wouldn’t have to get his knickers in a twist that he was bringing in some Red-Headed Stranger who was going to blow the whole enterprise to smithereens. Vrabel, however, has one thing that Mayo does not seem to have: an iron set of cojones. And he has absolutely no problem smacking people upside the head with them if he thinks any of you fucking degenerates are slacking off on the job.
Much as we support Mayo and want him to succeed, we can’t help but notice that multiple disciplinary lapses have taken place within his short tenure. We don’t need to get into them all here; suffice to say, there have been several, of varying levels of severity, and the fan base is talking. Or, to be more precise, fulminating. One encounter with Vrabel’s iron ballsack and we suspect that those disciplinary lapses will sort themselves out pretty damned quick. And if Saleh’s reputation for being a bit too lenient is really true, well, no problem. Just tell any oppositional and/or non-compliant employees that Coach V. just texted and wants to see you in his office and, no, you have no idea what its about. That’s called teamwork, and the New England Patriots used to do it better than anyone else in the league.
Dark Horse: Brian Flores. He was as successful as he could have been in Miami, is as tough a coach as Vrabel, and is familiar with the Patriots culture and system. Plus, Kraft would probably love any opportunity to stick it to the league.
4. There are two parts to this one:
A) Bring back Dante Scarnecchia to fix this offensive line once and for all. Build a portable hyperbaric oxygen chamber for him with a comfortable cushion, some drink cups, and a set of wheels on the bottom so that he can just sit inside all the time and his assistant can simply pull him around everywhere he needs to go. This will keep his cells well oxygenated and fresh so that he can last as long as possible. Scar is getting really old and we don’t know how long this is going to take, so we should assume that he is going to be setting up shop in there for a while. Part of his job will be training his successor to be exactly like him, so hitting up Mass General or MIT for some cloning tech should not be out of the question at this point. We know Robert Kraft has the connections.
B) They also have to start drafting linemen for excellence at their specific positions, rather than trying to identify “versatile” all-rounders with “athleticism” and then shifting them around constantly hoping to hit on some magical “combination” that works. There isn’t one. This strategy doesn’t work. It wasn’t working before Brady left, it hasn’t been working for the last five years, but Belichick kept doing it anyway. All it has gotten them is a line full of guys who are okay at a couple of positions but not great at any of them. When one of them goes down, they slot in another guy who is kind of okay at that position, which opens up another spot that needs to be filled…by yet another guy who is also only just okay at that position, which opens up another spot that needs to be filled…you get the idea.
How about just draft for positional excellence and fill the depth chart the same way, instead of constantly creating holes and filling them by shifting around guys who can only kind of play those positions, and are never able to gel as a unit?
Dark Horse: There isn’t one, save for the Detroit Lions’ entire front office. Draft and build the line differently and hope for the best.
If Kraft is willing to address these problems within the next year, maybe two, he should be able to save his team. If not, he risks wasting the rookie contract of a quarterback who is beginning to look like he might really be a generational talent, and runs the risk of Drake Maye seeking a deal elsewhere once his contract is up. Kraft should recognize how unbelievably lucky he is that Maye is demonstrating this kind of potential. He can not afford to ride the coattails of past glory, compare Maye condescendingly to Brady, or to presume that any players – present or future – should consider themselves lucky to play here. He can not allow himself to become Jerry Jones. The glory of the Brady-Belichick era will always be a part of the Patriots legacy and history, but it no longer influences the fortunes of their present in any meaningful way.
[Photo of Robert Kraft available courtesy of: Samoliv213, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]