The text came in early in the morning on Wednesday. The source had finished watching the Patriots' film from their opening loss to the Dolphins, in which New England's offense failed to do much of anything.
A year earlier, against the same opponent in the first Patriots game for Mac Jones, Hunter Henry, Jonnu Smith, Nelson Agholor and Kendrick Bourne, New England mounted four scoring drives, scored 16 points — and a fifth ended with a Damien Harris fumble at the Miami 9-yard line that cost the Patriots a victory.
"He's doing it again. Same early mistakes as Detroit," the text read from a source that was close to the Lions' situation when Patricia was there for his three abbreviated seasons as head coach. "Hope he can recover this time. Or Bill saves him from himself."
Since it's difficult to keep track of coaches and players while the Patriots are busy themselves, I checked back with some Detroit sources and reports at the time to figure out what exactly the source was referring.
Oh boy. It's like déjà vu all over again.
Let's see if this sounds familiar to anyone:
- Decided that the previous regime, despite promising results, was doing things the wrong way and foundational changes needed to be made immediately. That turned some players off.
- Called out a proud veteran player in a team meeting. That player never got back on the plan and was later traded.
- Benched a veteran player, later traded him (Joe Judge also did this with Giants WR Golden Tate).
The season is only a week old with Patricia as the Patriots' offensive coordinator and so far:
- He decided that what seemed to work well for Jones and the rest of the offense under Josh McDaniels (not to mention 21 previous Patriots seasons) needed to be severely revamped. Several players were grumbling about this in the offseason, wondering why things needed to change so dramatically.
- Trent Brown was called out in a training camp film session for lack of effort and benched for the Panthers game. He had one of his worst games as a Patriot in the opener as he allowed two sacks on free rushers, including a strip-sack touchdown.
- Bourne was late for a team meeting, according to Tom E. Curran, and was also benched for the Panthers game. He played two snaps in the opener while practice squad callup Lil'Jordan Humphrey played three.
What happened in Detroit, and what could that mean for New England?
(Getty Images)
Patricia's predecessor, Jim Caldwell, was fired after his fourth season despite posting three winning seasons and going to the playoffs twice. Patricia thought there was zero to build on, and the Lions needed to change everything, which turned off the players, according to mlive.com:
He came in believing the Lions were kind of trash under Jim Caldwell. He had personal respect for Caldwell as a man and leader, but also believed those teams were too soft to play real football. Where many people saw a Lions team coming off three winning seasons in four years and believed they were close, Matt Patricia believed they just kind of sucked, eked out some meaningless games with smoke and mirrors, and that he basically had to start over with teaching the game of football.
He told players as much that first offseason too.
Imagine coming off three winning seasons in four years, the best four-year stretch in the modern history of your franchise, and doing so while playing for a coach you loved -- Jim Caldwell was absolutely adored by his players -- then hearing a first-time coach walk through the door and tell you to your face that you suck and have no idea what the bleep you’re doing.
That’s bad.
Another report from Bleacher Report after Patricia was fired was similar and illustrated the impact on the players:
A recent quote from Patricia showed how little progress the Lions and he have made since that 2018 season.
After a 35-29 loss to the Saints in Week 4, Patricia was asked to defend his position as Lions head coach. "Certainly, I think when I came to Detroit, there was a lot of work to do," he said.
ESPN NFL analyst Dan Orlovsky, who backed up Stafford for three of previous coach Jim Caldwell's four seasons in Detroit, took serious issue with Patricia's characterization.
"To come in and say you had a lot of work to do is completely false," Orlovsky said in a radio appearance. "It's a bunch of trash. Because that wasn't the case in Detroit. We were a good football team. Matthew Stafford was playing as good as he has in his career. That was because of Coach Caldwell. And we were an organization that was ascending."
"We really weren't that bad!" says Zenner, who played for Caldwell and Patricia. "We had a good thing going. We had … made the playoffs [in 2016]. It wasn't like he was starting from scratch."
Patricia had another favorite saying in regular rotation over his first two seasons: I'm on a crusade to eliminate bad football. By bad football, he meant penalties, missed assignments and poor fundamentals. The former offensive player says even though Patricia wasn't specifically referencing what the Lions had been doing before as "bad football," some players interpreted it that way.
"It was like everything in Detroit, what we were doing, how things work, everything was just not good, was wrong, was bad," says the now-retired Quin, who in 2018 was in his 10th NFL season, and his sixth in Detroit. "We felt like we had started changing the culture and changing the way that Detroit was viewed. And then for you to come in and just be like, 'I am going to tear everything down'—I don't know if we need it to be all torn down, we just need you to get us over the hump."
"We have a long way to go; gosh, I don't know how many times I heard that," Zenner says. "It would stem from the idea that it is not the Patriot Way, so it is the wrong way."
Similar things have happened with New England since he was installed as McDaniels' replacement. Basically, Patricia told his offense: "Hey Mac, despite you having a season that made you a Pro Bowl alternate and led to a 10-7 record as a rookie, I think we need to change a lot of what you learned, and the same way Tom Brady did things."
It has gone over about as well as it did in Detroit starting this offseason, and the Patriots went through an awful offensive training camp, preseason and opening game.
The player who was infamously called out by Patricia — and it was over an Instagram post (apparently some players were chastised about liking certain posts) — was Darius Slay, and laid it all out to Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press after he was eventually traded to the Eagles for pennies on the dollar (and set back Detroit's cornerback position for years):
Darius Slay's relationship with Matt Patricia was fractured and unsalvageable, and the former Detroit Lions cornerback said that ultimately is what set the stage for his trade Thursday to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Slay, a three-time Pro Bowler, told the Free Press on Thursday that his lack of respect for Patricia stems from an incident that happened in training camp during Patricia's first season as Lions coach in 2018.
"He told me in front of the whole team, in the team meeting room, showed clips of me in practice getting a ball caught on me or so in practice," Slay said. "I posted a picture (of a wide receiver on social media), and he told me, stop sucking this man’s private. So I’m like, 'Whoa.' I’m like, 'Hold up.' Where I’m from, that don’t fly. Cause I wouldn’t say that to him. I wouldn’t say to him to stop you know what to Bill Belichick. I wouldn’t do that. That’s just not me as a man. That’s disrespectful to me and so from there on it was done with."
...
Slay said he and Patricia had a more "solid" relationship last season, but that things were past the point of repair because of the 2018 incident.
Patricia said during the season last year that he was more "self-aware" as a coach and made changes from his first season that were for the betterment of him and the team.
"Your first impression always your best impression," Slay said. "Like I said, I would never disrespect him in that way. And for him to be able to tell me I’m out here sucking another man’s crank because of a picture I post, I ain’t like that. And it took me a whole nother level."
One Lions source, who spoke to the Free Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said he considered Slay "a major cancer" last season and that "he would sit in meetings and not pay attention" then "go into the locker room and tell other players how the coaches are full of shit."
"They probably got a different side of me if he ain’t say what he said," Slay said. "How he approach me, I approach him, so I approach him different. If he wasn’t coaching me, I don’t want to hear too much on what you got to say. So if you’re not trying to help me build my game up to help me become a better player for this team, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t need you really asking me about how my family’s doing. I don’t really need you to ask me (about) my kids and stuff. I don’t want that because you done disrespected me and I ain’t really trying to hear it."
The fear here in New England is that Brown is known to be a sensitive player like Slay. The Patriots just better hope that Belichick can keep Brown on the plan or else things could get worse on an offensive line that has gotten off to a very shaky start.
Bleacher Report also laid out what happened with Quandre Diggs, who was a popular player in the locker room when Patricia arrived. He was traded with a 7th-round pick to Seattle for a fifth in the middle of Patricia's second season "for nothing because Patricia didn't like him," according to a league source.
Slay's relationship with Patricia never recovered. He was traded. So was Diggs, an outspoken personality who wasn't afraid to challenge Patricia. One Lions source says Diggs was turning the locker room against Patricia, which played into the team's decision to deal him to the Seahawks last season. Quin says there's no question that Diggs was traded because his personality didn't mesh. (Through his marketing agent, Diggs declined to talk for this story.)
"Everybody that had some kind of ties to the last regime, some kind of leadership role, every last one of those guys are gone except for Matt Stafford," Quin says.
'There were guys that weren't used to that more blue-collar, hard-work type of style, and so they had something to say about it and they didn't want to conform to that," says the former offensive player. "Those were the type of guys he was getting out of the building, and trading them or releasing them and then bringing guys that were used to hard work."
Quin was released after 2018 with one year left on his contract, and he considers himself one of those players who was purged at least partly because he was a veteran voice that Patricia and Quinn couldn't control.
Diggs was voted to the Pro Bowl in 2020 and 2021 with the Seahawks. Diggs and Glover Quin were replaced in Detroit by, among others, Tavon Wilson in 2019 and Duron Harmon in 2020 — both former Patriots players for Patricia.
The fear around the Patriots is that Bourne, who is known as more of a McDaniels player and didn't love the offensive changes, is falling into a similar pattern as Diggs in that Patricia just doesn't like him, and prefers to play Devante Parker — who Matt Groh specifically pointed out was identified by Patricia in the offseason — on every single snap of the opener against the Dolphins. He produced two targets, one catch for 9 yards and an end zone interception on his other target.
What's ironic about Bourne's issue of being late is that Patricia ... was chronically late for meetings his first season in Detroit.
The former offensive player remembers a routine event: He and his teammates would be waiting for a meeting to start and talking amongst themselves when Patricia would walk in—typically late—and yell, All right, everybody shut the f--k up!
On the record, Patricia explained it with "626 words ... which took nearly three minutes."
But Patricia was late by design, according to a league source.
"He wanted the room to respond to him when he walked in, not him have to respond to players as they filed in when he was standing in front of the team waiting," the source said.
The huge difference here is that Bill Belichick has final say and oversight over everything. So Patricia may fall into a bad pattern, but Belichick can set things right with Patricia and/or the player if needed.
But the fear is that Belichick has so much belief and personal stake in Patricia — the two are absurdly close — that Belichick is letting Patricia have free reign over the offense.
Will that continue if the offense struggles? Doubtful. At the end of the day, Belichick still values winning over anything else.
Patricia could have also changed. Even his detractors in Detroit said Patricia did adjust his style with the players. Perhaps that will continue here, although you worry if the damage has already been done to the offensive continuity and now they're in salvage mode (three outside zone runs in Week 1).
We've seen Patricia tilt the offensive scheme back in the other direction. Perhaps he will do the same with Brown and Bourne. They're the two biggest litmus tests, aside from Jones' buy-in, on whether or not Patricia has evolved. If not, things could get worse — like they did in Detroit.
(Adam Richins for BSJ)
NICKEL PACKAGE
1. While I think Bourne will have a larger role against the Steelers, I don't think it will have much to do with Robert Kraft reportedly flexing his muscles over Bourne's lack of playing time. For one, the player has now been punished, and you would think the doghouse would be over. But, more importantly, the Patriots' coaches aren't idiots. They know they were way too slow against the Dolphins and need to get faster on offense. Bourne has to be part of that. So I think this is the natural progression. But make no mistake, Bourne had a poor summer and fell behind Nelson Agholor and then Tyquan Thornton on the field, not because of some drama.
2. Expect to see a parade of Patriots players greet former Patriots defensive coordinator — and current Steelers assistant head coach — Brian Flores, who always had their respect but that was enhanced with his racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams.
“I have a ton of respect for him,” Devin McCourty told reporters this week. “I think him taking a stand is right down his alley. He’s always preached to us, not only as football players but as men, having character, standing up for what you believe in. I shot him a text as soon as everything came out and told him I was behind him, had his back. That will never change.”
3. Belichick surprised some this week by invoking Rob Gronkowski to describe Steelers WR Chase Claypool.
“Big, fast, really good hands. Big catch radius. He’s kind of always open, it’s like covering a guy like Gronkowski. No matter where you are on him, there’s a place where he can reach and get the ball that you can’t reach and get the ball,” Belichick said. “They use him in a variety of ways. Down the field, catch and run plays, hand him the ball.
“So he’s a big, physical player. Can block. Block at the point of attack. Run. Hard guy to tackle. Downfield receiver as well as a short and intermediate receiver. So he can get you a lot of different ways. Tough matchup.”
What Belichick means is that Claypool, who is 6-4 and 238 pounds, is an impossible matchup like Gronkowski. Like Gronk, Claypool towers over most cornerbacks (especially the Patriots' small group), can outmuscle safeties and outrun linebackers.
4. If the Steelers pull an upset in this game, it will likely be because the Steelers' defense — even without TJ Watt — made life hell for the Patriots' offense. And that will be because of Flores. He knows how to attack the Patriots' protections and did it well with the Dolphins.
5. I don't see that happening, at least not enough to deliver a Steelers win in this one. Pittsburgh is such a mess on offense — much worse than the Patriots — that as long as New England keeps the fast Mitch Trubisky in the pocket and limit his scrambles, it will be impossible for the Steelers to score enough points in this game. The Steelers had 10 possessions in regulation in the OT win over the Bengals. Just two drives went for more than 17 net yards: 59 and 32. They were 4 of 15 on third down, and averaged 4.4 yards per play. Gross.
Patriots 16, Steelers 9.
