Bedard: With Patriots' talent disparity on display again, Belichick must change his formula

FOXBOROUGH — The Patriots gained a moral victory of sorts two weeks ago when they went toe to toe with Tom Brady and the defending champion Buccaneers in a close loss.

Moral victories are ok once in a while — if said team uses it as a springboard and continues to make progress.

Two weeks later, after barely escaping Houston and Davis Mills with a three-point victory, and allowing the Dallas Cowboys to leave Gillette with an overtime victory Sunday night despite Dallas firing multiple rounds into their own feet all night, you can take that moral victory and shove it where the sun doesn't ...

Well, I think you know.

You don't get two chances at moral victories. You get one. And the Patriots blew it.

Now, at this very moment after six games, they are just losers.

0-for-4 at home losers ... make sure you go patronize Patriot Place!

Losers that have lost 11 one-score games in their last 28 games.

Losers that have gone 11-17 since Thanksgiving of 2019. That means 65 percent of their losses in nearly two full seasons (four games shy under old schedule) have come in one-score games.

The Patriots.

The New England Patriots.

Coached by William Stephen Belichick.

This is not a fluke. You can say Brady didn't care at the end of 2019 to explain that down-the-stretch debacle away. You can blame Cam and Covid for '20.

What are you blaming this year?

Well, Mac Jones is a rookie and he's the future so you knew there were going to be ...

And also, All the coaches suck and can't call plays!

Just stop. You're embarrassing yourself, and quite possibly delusional.

You could say that if Jones was clearly struggling as almost every rookie QB does, and the Patriots just didn't appear ready to compete. Maybe more than a few double-digit losses, especially early, and they were still losing but getting incrementally better.

That's not what has happened in the first six games. Not at all.

If you think this is about growing pains with a rookie quarterback (he's been better than anyone could have expected) and coaching underlings, you are willfully ignoring the obvious, perhaps as a defense mechanism because your sports orbit revolves around one credo: Belichick, even at 69, is a gridiron god and he is never wrong.

Psst ... He's mortal, and he's fallible. That 11-17 record should tell you that.

Three different QBs, and it's been the same thing over and over.

Joe Gibbs changed QBs three times and won Super Bowl titles. You want to know why? Want to know why the Patriots don't look like they'll be challenging that racing guy anytime soon (besides The Hogs because, well, even at their current age they might fare better than some of these line combinations)?

The Gridiron Artists Formerly Known As The Redskins were talented, year after year (yes, I'm aware there was no salary cap, thanks in advance for your Tweets that will gloss over the main point that has nothing to do with Washington...).

Psst again ... The Patriots are not that talented, and haven't been for a while.

There aren't any excuses when you've won 11 times in your last 28 games — with three Ws coming against the Jets, and another against the expansion-redux Texans.

It just means you aren't that good. You can bitch and moan about the coaching and playcalling all you want, but you are also ignoring the obvious.

Do you think Belichick would have played the type of defense that allowed 567 yards on Sunday — the most ever for a Belichick team, surpassing the 538 in Super Bowl 52 — if he knew he could go toe to toe with Dallas?

Hell no. (Are we sure that wasn't Jordan Richards that easily allowed 24 yards against CeeDee Lamb on 3rd and 25, and that game-winning TD? Could have sworn it was.)

Do you think Josh McDaniels would call runs for Brandon Bolden on 3rd and 1 if he had any confidence his players would, a) prevent Jones from being Petey The Parakeet from Dumb & Dumber thanks to his offensive line (We ain't got no running game. We ain't got pass protection ... our QB's head is falling off!!) ...

.. or b) some of the new and expensive receivers and tight ends would run the right routes, catch the ball and not tip it to the other team for pick-sixes (have Nelson Agholor and Jonnu Smith actually been playing)?

Hell no.

They are coaching this way because they know this team, right now, is not good enough to compete.

Look at it this way. The Bucs came in here and you got exactly what you needed: the Bucs were coming off a tough loss and trip to the Rams, Brady was off, Tampa was losing defensive backs by the bushel, and it was pouring rain ... and you lost.

The Cowboys looked like they decided before the game to start every first-half possession at 1st and 20, fumbled on the goal line, had 12 penalties for 115 yards, threw a bad pick in the end zone and Mike McCarthy making terrible choices all over the place ... and you lost.

Not too long ago, the Patriots would have taken those gifts from any and all visitors to The Razor, won by double digits and played Josie and Livin' on a Prayer on repeat out the building.

Yes, because they had talent.

This 28-game version of the Patriots refunds those gifts because even when they get most of the breaks in their own building, they are at a serious talent deficiency. Even Belichick knows it.

"They have very good skill players," he said.

Uh, yeah. And the Patriots return fire from Tony Pollard and Cedric Wilson with Bolden and Jakobi Meyers (good players, happy to have them, but come on ...).

Devin McCourty seemed to acknowledge it.

"We played our heart out there, guys fought ... We played well enough, we just didn't make enough plays at the end to win it. That's just disappointing," he said.

That's code for not having the horses, like McCourty's defenses of yore (or with Stephon Gilmore in coverage on Lamb instead of Jalen Mills).

Maybe there's a defensive coaching deficit going on as well, especially after hearing some of McCourty's remarks after the game.

"We were in a tough call for the route they ran. They dialed up a good play for what we tried to do," he said of the final touchdown.

Translation: Their coaches were better than our coaches.

"We’re banged up, it’s tough. You would want more DBs in but you guys could see, it was tough," he said of the 3rd and 25 play.

Translation: We had a DB here in Steph that could lock that guy down but he's no longer here, you can see it too. Where the hell is Steph?!!!

Look, through six games — 35 percent of the season — this is what we know about the Patriots:

The team's well-laid plans to rely on the offensive line and defense to buy the offense enough time to gel, and to win the team games has utterly failed.

When your only wins are against the Jets and Texans — a combined 2-9 and minus-134 point differential (one of their losses is to Miami, which is now 1-4, minus-78) — that is a complete and utter collapse of the plans you had prior to this season.

Bend-but-don't-break won when you had Brady, and you had talent. You have neither, and that doesn't just come back if you throw cash at the problem. Brady used to wallpaper Belichick's personnel missteps. Without TB12, Belichick tried to use Kraft's checkbook as his cloak of infallibility.

Advantage, Brady. Again.

When you have an offense with as many problems as this one — and Jones is NOT one of those problems (again, you're projecting) — the defense has to carry the team for a while. We all knew this.

You think the defense did great against the Cowboys? You must love participation trophies.

Dallas' drives, despite them being dead-set on taking a dagger and stabbing themselves repeatedly: 6, 7, 13, 9, 7, 3 (yay!), 8, 9, 8, 9, 7 plays.

When your team is built around an expensive and experienced (old when you're 2-4) defense, that unit has to get three-and-outs, turnovers, short fields and extra possessions for a green offense. That's the deal. Do you know how many 3-and-outs the Patriots had combined against Tampa and Dallas? 3 out of 21 drives, or 14 percent (Patriots have only had 4 three-and-outs against the Jets and Saints).

That is called a talent disparity.

Belichick can't keep coaching this team this way. The old formula no longer applies. There are the makings of a good team here, but we all knew it was going to take time to come together — including Belichick. That's why he has taken this maddeningly conservative (three kneel-downs with 1:30 left before halftime after you used your last timeout to stop the clock!) approach in every area.

Tampa and Dallas tried to vomit on themselves and give you the game like good opponents of yesteryear, but you're no longer good enough to capitalize. Getting the game to within a score in the fourth quarter no longer does you any good because when the game is on the line, your first-born defense, directed by your firstborn, can't ever get you a stop (hence all four of the losses ... at home).

The season is quickly fading away, again. It's time for Belichick to change the formula, rewrite the script.

Stop taking field goals and punting on 4th and short and go for it. If there's time before halftime, at least try for some points. Take the shackles off Jones, let him go up tempo. Put some young legs on defense that could actually give your lone playmaker, Matt Judon, some real help and not just hold the edge and two-gap.

The Patriots have fundamentally changed because the talent fell off and checks don't change that overnight. If they want to really compete at all this season, Belichick has to fundamentally change.

Time has run out.