FOXBOROUGH — You saw it. I saw it.
It doesn't take a full Bedard Breakdown to know The Kid can play, and he's got "it."
No one is going to say "it" means special in the ballpark of the last guy — make sure Chris Gasper understands this, before he goes on another radio/Twitter rant about TB12 comparisons; we get it, you love the guy — but Jones has serious intangibles that should allow him to be special to some degree. We'll see in what category of special in 10 or 20 years, if he's not beaten to a pulp before Week 3.
When all is said and done this weekend, Mac Jones will have played better than any other rookie quarterback. He outplayed Tua Tagovailoa, and Jones was probably the best QB in the division on Sunday (so sorry, Bills Mafia, that Josh Allen looked like pre-2020 Josh Allen in a home loss to the Steelers ... oops ... that's a shame).
All of the above is significant, and a big accomplishment. It should mean the franchise is set up for years to come, and the Patriots should — again on some yet-to-be-determined level — be the Patriots to a certain extent again. Great for you. Great for me. Happy times are here again.
Wonderful.
So why don't I feel better about this team and where it's going after Sunday's 17-16 loss to the Dolphins?
Why do I have the same exact feeling as last year after the Patriots blew a similar matchup with a late-game fumble at Buffalo?
Why aren't I happy with an early, tough loss like I was last year with the Seattle game when the Patriots also got promising play from its quarterback?
Maybe it's this ... so the Patriots now have their quarterback of the future, spent a crap-ton of money seemingly well in the offseason, drafted better than they have in years ... and the Patriots still lost that game to the Dolphins on Sunday? Former Patriots assistants Brian Flores, Josh Boyer and George Godsey all came to The Razor and out-coached their former colleagues and Bill Belichick?
Wait, what?
The Patriots did all that work seemingly well, and they're still in the same spot as last year without Cam Newton?
How is that possible? And what does that say about the next 16 games and where this team is going?
Look, I get it. Never judge a team off of Week 1, especially after two weeks off prior and three preseason games (the football, as a whole, was really, really sloppy this weekend ... worse than previous opening weekends).
Nobody knows better than me, that the first month really doesn't mean all that much if you're Belichick, and it's more about November/December than it is September.
Totally agree.
This team is very talented and, similar to 2014 when the Patriots bottomed out at 2-2 after a blowout loss to the Chiefs, or even 2018 when they started 1-2 to losses to the Jaguars and Lions — has any team lost to both of those teams in the last 10 years?! — I'm not overly panicked, I'm more disappointed than anything else as to why they're not better to this point. Both those teams won Super Bowls.
So, yeah, no one's panicking.
But why the heck couldn't they win that game yesterday? It was right there for them.
The Patriots:
- Had more first downs, 24-18;
- Converted third downs at double the rate, 68.8 percent to 36.4 percent;
- Put up nearly 400 yards to Miami's 259;
- Completed 74.4 percent of passes to Miami's 59.3 percent;
- Had the ball 13 minutes more than the Dolphins
Every other Patriots team wins that game by 30 points. And this team lost, at home, to the Dolphins.
Put it another way: Tom Brady's Bucs got dominated in every statistical category at home by the Cowboys — even got walloped in the all-important turnover category — and still won the game, and you never thought the outcome was going to be anything different.
I don't mention that to turn this into a Brady thing because it's not. That's a whole separate topic and I'm not engaging with the people who watch every Patriots game in their TB12 pajamas and cry themselves to sleep every time Brady pops up in a Bucs uniform while screaming, 'Why?!!!!!!!'
It's just ... I don't know ... Sunday should not have happened, and it doesn't really matter what week it happened. You can say it's just Week 1, but, as Belichick would point out in his monotone voice, "The schedule is the same for every team, so we're all in the same boat." The Patriots might have played like a Week 1 team, but the Dolphins were on the same schedule.
I know Jones is only going to get better, and Josh McDaniels will learn which plays he needs to call for Jones the more games they play. I know the penalties are going to get cleaned up. I hope Trent Brown returns from his calf injury that only kept him out of seemingly every other Raiders game because Justin Herron, yeesh. The defense will probably get better because there are so many new parts that need time to figure things out.
And I need to remember what I learned long ago in this league ... teams that make a lot of changes in the offseason take time to gel, at least until the second half of the season.
Here's where I think I'm most disappointed, and maybe this relates to something we wrote a week ago about the man in charge:
Why didn't the Patriots coaches have this team ready to win this game on Sunday? Because clearly they were not, especially on the defensive side of the ball where they let the Dolphins — with co-offensive coordinators, mind you — go right through them on drives to open each half.
We've mentioned previously that Steve Belichick and Jerod Mayo have a ton of pressure on them this season. They were at least partially in charge when a talented defense fell on its face down the stretch in 2019. It's their job to figure out how an even more talented group can play winning football, and Sunday was not it. Don't even give me the stats, the Patriots got pushed around with a chance to get a stop — and that's the ultimate indictment on a defensive team, and often times, their heart and mental toughness.
Not a good start there.
And I don't want to hear anything about Stephon Gilmore, either. The Patriots have made and won Super Bowls with a lot less talent at cornerback than they had out there on Sunday. You just have to have coaches that can fit the puzzle pieces together right. Can Steve Belichick and Mayo? No idea. They have yet to show that ability.
And McDaniels is going to have to do a better job at balancing the need to protect The Kid, but also to make plays down the field. McDaniels coordinated the game against the Dolphins like Newton was his QB. I mean, three 14-plays drives that totaled nine points? Every drive can't be 10-plus plays that chew up time. You're increasing the percentages that the team needs to be perfect, and you increase the odds that something bad is going to happen (stupid penalties, punch-out fumbles), just like when Newton was here.
I'm sure that will all get better as McDaniels learns more about Jones and how he reacts on the fly. If Jones is smart, McDaniels is brilliant and they'll get it figured out.
Maybe this is the type of game we get with Bill Belichick, more CEO coach than The Hoodie. Everyone wants to know why the Patriots weren't the Patriots on Sunday, well, is the coach still the coach, especially when Matt Patricia is up in the box playing the role of Ernie Adams? At least I know Belichick, when it comes down to it, will take over what he needs to take over and figure things out.
Well, at least I think he still will.
Put it all together and, no, I don't feel great about what happened in front of actual Patriots fans at Gillette Stadium on Sunday despite all the good that came with Mac Jones playing like a franchise quarterback.
That's a game the Patriots, with months to gameplan, normally win easily and, instead, gave up 10 straight points and never led again despite the Dolphins literally giving them the ball and the game at the 50-yard line.
Maybe it's just Week 1. Maybe they just had a bad day. Maybe I expected too much too soon and this is way things organically have to happen.
Hope so, but it doesn't feel like it.