If you're wondering how much New England Patriots football Rex Ryan has watched this season, just listen to the take he delivered Monday morning.
Following the Patriots' 23-21 win over Teddy Bridgewater, Skylar Thompson and the reeling Miami Dolphins -- which moved New England to 8-8 and kept its slim playoff hopes alive -- Ryan submitted that this might be Bill Belichick's best coaching season.
Not his worst. His best. Here's Ryan's explanation on ESPN's "Get Up!"
"The current New England roster, compared to what it used to be when I coached against him, there's one player on that team that would have started for those teams, and that's Matt Judon. Everything else, none of these guys would have started. That's why I call it a JV team.
"The roster may be JV, but the coaching's not. This dude (Belichick) has done an amazing job. Might be his best year coaching that I've ever seen. What he does is, he plays to the strength of his team. You have a great defense. And here's the thing about that defense: It doesn't just stop you or make you punt or whatever. It forces turnovers, but that's not it -- they score with those turnovers."
There's a lot to unpack here.
New England Patriots
First, while this Patriots roster has less talent than those of the mid-2010s Tom Brady years, we could absolutely see players like Rhamondre Stevenson, Mike Onwenu, Kyle Dugger and Christian Barmore (to name a few) starting for those squads.
But that's a minor detail. The larger point is that, if you view penalties and situational football as a reflection of coaching, the Patriots are one of the NFL's worst-coached teams in 2022.
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New England is tied for sixth in the NFL with 102 penalties taken and has negative-142 penalty yards on the season, fourth-worst in the NFL. The Patriots rank dead last in red zone touchdown percentage (41.5 percent) even after scoring a pair of red zone TDs on Sunday and rank 26th in third-down success rate (35.2 percent). They've made some mind-boggling mistakes this season, from getting a punt blocked because the ball was snapped prematurely to one of the worst final plays in league history that cost them the game against the Las Vegas Raiders.
Ryan's point is that the Patriots should be much worse than their 8-8 record based on their lack of overall talent, and that Belichick deserves credit for polishing the turd to get his team one win away from a playoff berth. Then again, you could argue Belichick put New England in this situation in the first place by replacing Josh McDaniels -- who helped a very similar Patriots roster go 10-7 last season by leading a competent offense -- with first-time offensive play-caller Matt Patricia.
We suppose we should praise Ryan for complimenting his former AFC East rival, but anyone who's watched the Patriots on a regular basis this season knows this is very far from Belichick's finest work.