With these year-end exercises, you don’t want to be toooooo negative. It’s the holidays. And, given that we’re taking the macro view of the past 12 months, the singular outrage and disbelief you feel in a moment is dulled when viewed in hindsight.
The "No Lateral Damage" play in Vegas? Emblematic of the year. But also amusing in a sad-sack, lovable loser kinda way.
After a season like this, it’s important to remember the words of the greatest player in franchise history, Tom Brady.
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"Things are going to be fine -- this isn’t ISIS," Brady said. "No one’s dying."
No, they aren’t. But the Patriots as we knew them when Brady was here are getting smaller and smaller in the rearview.
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There is real mourning for two decades of dominance when the Patriots were the smartest team in professional sports. Better staffed. Better coached. Better in big moments and small. So much better that, on two occasions, the league engaged in multi-million dollar, self-damaging investigations of alleged misdeeds by the franchise. The unspoken rationale for both SpyGate and DeflateGate? They can’t be this good. They can’t be this smart.
These days, the words "smart" and "Patriots" aren’t used in the same sentence very often. Despite employing the greatest coach in NFL history (and paying him more than any coach in pro sports), despite having a fairly capable quarterback and a very highly compensated group of skill position players, the Patriots offense is an unimaginative, disorganized, unproductive, dysfunctional mess of guys running around, slamming into each other and dumbing into the occasional touchdown. And that’s just the past two weeks. He obviously didn’t expect it to unfold this way, but this is the path Bill Belichick chose.
And that’s the theme of the 2022 Patriots season. Unmet expectations and regression in on-field performance and discipline. A team that after 13 games in 2021 was actually the TOP SEED IN THE AFC has gone 8-12 in the 20 games since.
In March, owner Robert Kraft shared his expectations for the season.
"After my family, there's nothing more important to me," declared Kraft, "than the New England Patriots and winning football games. I'm a Patriot fan big-time first, and it bothers me that we haven't been able to win a playoff game in the last three years. We had a period of two decades that were unbelievable. We have to find a way to sustain it, keep it going."
How soon?
"I expect it to happen," he said. "As soon as this year."
It hasn’t happened. After closing 2021 on a 1-4 skid which included the demoralizing playoff loss to Buffalo, the Patriots took another hit before the end of January. Dave Ziegler, the Patriots Director of Player Personnel, was hired by the Raiders. A day later, Vegas announced its new head coach was Josh McDaniels.
McDaniels, who forged a tight relationship with rookie quarterback Mac Jones, was open to hearing a pitch from the Patriots to stay in Foxboro. They never made one. McDaniels took three offensive coaches with him -- offensive line coach Carmen Bricillo, wide receivers coach Mick Lombardi and assistant quarterbacks coach Bo Hardegree.
Jones’ immediate support system was decimated and the offensive line was down an experienced body.
About a week later, the Patriots hired Joe Judge. Fired by the Giants, Judge presided over the two-year decline of New York’s first-round quarterback Daniel Jones. Judge was installed as Mac Jones’ new quarterbacks coach.
Matt Patricia, who’d been a coaching and personnel utility man since returning to the Patriots after being fired by the Lions during the 2020 season, was eventually installed as the new offensive line coach.
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The first and only time Patricia specifically coached offensive line was in 2005, his second NFL season. He was an assistant to legendary line coach Dante Scarnecchia. It didn’t stop there. Belichick was loathe to acknowledge it publicly but he heaped more responsibility on Patricia, making him the de facto offensive coordinator and playcaller. Patricia had never done those jobs either.
Along the way, the Patriots also decided to change their offense. More wide-zone runs. New terminology. A streamlined affair. And they’d become more aggressive downfield.
When Belichick did elaborate on the setup, he stressed it was a "collaboration" of, presumably, Patricia, Judge, Belichick and Jones.
In March, when it was clear the team wasn’t importing an experienced offensive mind to succeed McDaniels, Kraft was asked about the coaching setup.
"Bill has a unique way of doing things," Kraft answered. "It's worked out pretty well up to now. It doesn't sometimes look straight-line to our fans or to myself, but I'm results-oriented. ... We've made the commitment as an organization, we have a lot of talent ... there's a chance for them to grow and the team to come together."
Belichick’s most glib quote on making Judge and Patricia co-pilots of the Patriots offense came just before the season.
"I think they're both good coaches," Belichick told the Boston Globe. "Ultimately, it's my responsibility, like it always is. So if it doesn't go well, blame me."
It has not gone well. It seemed a dubious idea to begin with and the summer returns were so depressing even Belichick seemed to realize he’d bitten off more than he could chew.
Whether the head coach underestimated how well McDaniels did the job or overestimated how well he and "The Collaboration" would be able to master it, we’ll never know. But the offensive decline seemed easy to forecast for everyone but Belichick. And the fact it’s gotten worse as the season’s progressed is even more discouraging. "Time on task" as they like to refer to it in NFL circles has actually been bad for business.
The slide has also overshadowed some of the overall wins of 2022. The Patriots had another encouraging draft. Rookie first-rounder Cole Strange has been up-and-down but his shortcomings are linked to size and strength, not ability. He’s a modest hit. There’s upside to second-round wideout Tyquan Thornton. Third-round corner Marcus Jones is a home-run because of his versatility. Fourth-round corner Jack Jones is the ballhawk he was billed to be.
Running backs Pierre Strong and Kevin Harris have both had chances to show speed and physicality and quarterback Bailey Zappe has -- at least -- shown he can be a useful spot-starter. Others see him as much more. I don’t. C’est la vie.
More good? Matt Judon’s second season with the team was even better than his very good 2021. And Josh Uche has turned into a bookend terror off the edge opposite Judon. Kyle Dugger is approaching Pro Bowl-level play. Rhamondre Stevenson is one of the league’s best backs after contact and at making something out of nothing (although in Vegas, he made a little too much out of nothing). And Jakobi Meyers can play for my team any day. And yours, too, I’m sure.
The good times in 2022 were -- tellingly -- pockmarked by extenuating circumstances. Mac Jones' best two games as a thrower? Against the Ravens and Vikings. The Patriots lost them both and Jones had three picks against Baltimore.
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The Patriots' most stirring performances? A loss against the Packers and wins over the Lions and Browns. All three games were with Jones on the bench, feeding false hope that he was the problem and Zappe was the answer. The reality? The Patriots looked good for that stretch because of their defense, their running game, better protection and shelving the "whip it downfield" approach they’d given to Jones.
Their lone post-Thanksgiving win as 2022 wound down? A road win over Arizona in which Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray tore an ACL on the game’s third play.
Even now, lurking on the outskirts of the playoffs late in this season, there’s an understanding that a postseason berth can’t be deodorant for a stinky result.
"We really have to worry about our situation," Kraft said in March when asked about the AFC elite. "Take care of our business. We have a chance. Because without a good coach and a good quarterback, no matter how good the other players are, I don't think you can win consistently. I believe we have both -- an outstanding coach and a good, young prospect at quarterback ... This will be a good year."
It was not.