To most, the way the Patriots' season ended, with four losses in their final five games topped off by an embarrassing 47-17 loss to the AFC East-rival Bills on Saturday night, was shocking.
The Patriots, coached by Bill Belichick getting blown out on the road ... by the Bills? No way. Fluke. Just a bad day.
To others, myself included, this wasn't all that surprising if you were willing to read the road signs this season, especially in the last month.
Many will point to the bye week and insist something must have happened. If so, we haven't seen a bye week sink a season like this since Odell Beckham and the Giants in 2017.
Maybe, just maybe there's another explanation: These Patriots were never that good, were propped up by a seven-game winning streak that, which you really stepped back and looked at it, didn't really mean much.
Remember when the Patriots were saying they weren't a 2-4 team? Well...
The Patriots started 2-4, finished 1-4. That's 3-8 compared to 7-0.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, which "half" of the season was closer to who these Patriots really were?
(And if you really wanted to lay it on, there was the 2-4 close to 2019 and 7-9 record last year. That would make the Patriots 12-21 outside the seven-game winning streak included two "playoff" teams — the Titans were decimated by injuries, and weather leveled the playing field in Buffalo the first time around. Thank goodness for that hurricane or else the Bills might have gone 12 quarters without punting against the Patriots ... they were almost to 10 as it is).
That's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people because, with the QB in Tampa, that leaves only one person to look at when it comes to the downturn of the Patriots: Bill Belichick. Oh, sure, you'll hear those scorned about Tom Brady blame Mac Jones. Those that want to believe in Jones and will never doubt Belichick (understandable considering the previous 20 years), will go after Josh McDaniels and other coaches. Some of it's fair, some not.
And if you really think this was just Josh Allen being the greatest player ever — twice in a month, mind you — then you're delusional and you're willingly letting the Patriots off the hook because you can't face the alternative. The same QB barely survived and completed 51.4 percent in games against the Falcons, Panthers and Jets in between.
No, this was all about the Patriots. You don't allow NINE consecutive touchdown drives and not force one punt in two games against the same opponent without there being something significantly wrong with your own team.
And that's where you need to start with this debacle. And Belichick was trying to tell you this was coming, if you wanted to read the signs.
It started, as always when you get blasted four times in five games (the Patriots fell behind a combined 84-14 in those losses ... it wasn't a fluke), with personnel.
When the Patriots entered the season with a cornerback depth chart of Stephon Gilmore, JC Jackson and Jonathan Jones, they were cooking with gase. That's where the belief started. With those three at full health (and Gilmore was coming back from quad surgery, but surely he'd be back at full strength at some point), the Patriots had elite man corners at the top three cornerback slots. The abilities of those three players would allow the Patriots to do so much on defense. It would free up other players to double selected targets. By playing tight man, it buys time for the rush to get there — that's how the Patriots were able to win their final three times, finally, after Belichick realized he could no longer play zone against today's QBs. There was literally nothing the Patriots' couldn't do defensively with those three.
(Adam Richins for BSJ in Buffalo)
The Patriots started 1-3 without Gilmore, but they'd be fine once he returned. It would time well with rookie QB Mac Jones and all the new weapons getting on the same page. That was going to take time. The Patriots would hit their stride around midseason and close strong.
Then Belichick traded Gilmore to the Panthers for a sixth-round pick. Gilmore, irked about his contract, may very well have stubbed a toe and never played this season for the Patriots. Belichick may have been right thinking Gilmore would never be fully healthy this season and would not play to the remainder of his contract.
The decision to trade Gilmore wasn't terrible. The timing was (it should have been done the previous season for a larger haul), and so was the Patriots' only backup play: Jalen Mills ... who was more of a safety at this point, and definitely could NOT play man coverage. The Patriots did not give themselves any options by drafting a cornerback. They did take two players (Cam McGrone, Joshuah Bledsoe) who were hurt all season and never sniffed a game field. By the time Belichick seemed to realize he was in a no-win situation with Gilmore and had limited options should he never play for the team this season, every team was hoarding cornerbacks (there aren't enough good ones) and he sent a fifth-round pick to the Ravens for rookie Shaun Wade, at the very end of camp when it was realistically too late for him to be trained to help this season (it was).
So if Gilmore was never going to play for the Patriots, and the team needed to cut bait, they were leaving themselves very thin with man corners. Any injury to Jackson or Jones would do serious damage to this team.
In mid-October, Jones was lost for the season.
Uh-oh.
That meant the Patriots were down to one man corner (Jackson). Myles Bryant, a solid all-around DB, could fill the slot. But now Mills was the full-time No. 2 corner, since Joejuan Williams was a bust that could not be counted on.
That meant it was smoke and mirrors time. The Patriots morphed into their pre-dynasty selves with a veteran defense playing a lot of zone. They did it well, and benefitted from tremendous individual pass rush from Matthew Judon and rookie Christian Barmore. As long as QBs were under the gun from those two, it had a similar effect to the man coverage. The Patriots flourished.
(Adam Richins for BSJ in Buffalo)
But there's a reason why those defenses post-2004, from 2005-13, couldn't get the job done. Offenses and talent has evolved.
What would happen if the Patriots ran into an offense that could spread them out with multiple weapons, had a good QB, and the pass rush was not as good?
(We won't even get into all the aging veterans, leading men in the '19 demise of the Boogeymen, that looked overmatched in the final month, guys like Dont'a Hightower, Jamie Collins, Kyle Van Noy, Lawrence Guy and Devin McCourty because Belichick just kept running them out there all year while refusing to mix in younger players who the team drafted highly in recent years.)
Meet the Bills and Allen. The Patriots simply could not match up with the Bills unless they got a superhuman effort from Judon (whose disappearance in the final games at $13.5 million per season culminated in him coming off the bench for limited snaps in the season's biggest game when he had one tackle), the best coverage nights ever for that group (minus even Mills, who was in Covid protocols), and a bad night for Allen in frigid temps.
Absolutely none of that happened.
"We couldn't keep up with them tonight," Belichick said. "They were too much for us tonight."
Too much? The Bills scored seven touchdowns on seven possessions, totaled 482 yards and averaged 8.9 yards per play. Buffalo became the first team since at least 1950 to not have a punt, field goal attempt or a turnover.
Too much?! That would be insinuating the Patriots actually were an impediment at times to the Bills. No, they were roadkill. From start to finish. It was almost a carbon copy of the last matchup, if Emmanuel Sanders didn't drop a TD and Allen didn't miss a wide-open Jake Kumerow.
But personnel would only a explain a loss. Not getting trampled in the playoffs against a team you know well, and spotting every decent team a 20-0 lead in the final five weeks.
You also have to look at the coaching.
(Adam Richins for BSJ in Buffalo)
I've seen a lot less talented versions of this Patriots defense play a hell of a lot better than this group to close the season, namely the 2011 version that needed Julian Edelman to play slot corner against Anquan Boldin in the AFC Championship Game. A group that included Brandon Deaderick, Ron Brace, Shaun Ellis, James Ihedigbo, Kyle Arrington, Sterling Moore and Antwaun Molden nearly helped win a Super Bowl (yes, the Patriots were pretty damn good on offense ... no so great vs. the Ravens and Giants, and the defense still executed well).
What that group lacked in talent, they made up for by being assignment-sure. They did their job on each and every play, from setting the edge and holding the point of attack, to actually playing the coverage scheme. You could tell they were coached well and hard. Well, they should have been. This was that staff:
Defensive coordinator: Bill Belichick
Defensive line: Pepper Johnson
Linebackers: Patrick Graham (now Giants assistant HC & DC)
Defensive backs: Josh Boyer (Dolphins DC)
Safeties: Matt Patricia
Defensive assistant: Brian Flores
This year's Patriots couldn't contain a toddler at child care. Just in this game they couldn't set an edge, got run all over in the middle, waved as Allen ran by when he wanted to, and blew more than a few coverages.
The staff responsible for that:
Defensive coordinator: Belichick/Steve Belichick/Jerod Mayo
Defensive line: Demarcus Covington
Inside linebackers: Mayo
Outside linebackers: Steve Belichick
Cornerbacks: Mike Pellegrino
Safeties: Brian Belichick
As Bill Parcells used to say, "If they're not getting it, you're not coaching it well enough."
Let's just put it this way: the 2011 Patriots were WAY better coached than the '21 version.
You throw in the unpredictability of free agents that you're making your best guess on, and you have the makings of an unprecedented debacle.
And that's what happened at Highmark Field on Saturday night.
No, I'm not even touching the offense. If you want to after that, then you're not getting it.
I know Belichick does. He told us all year he didn't have the horses by the way he continued to play in the secondary — and the Patriots barely had a counter in this rematch with the Bills in any facet — but many were fooled into thinking the Patriots had just figured out a way to play zone coverage better than anybody else.
Wrong.
They just hadn't faced anybody good, and Judon was playing out of his mind.
Once that changed, the Patriots were toast.
It did, and now Belichick faces a serious rebuild of the defense in the offseason with many guys, if McCourty and Hightower walk away as free agents or retire, that have little idea what it's like to win games The Patriot Way.
They better get there quick. Saturday night was no fluke if you've been reading the signs since 2019.
(Adam Richins for BSJ in Buffalo)