FOXBOROUGH — Sorry if you didn't get enough fantasy points out of your Patriots players.
Bummer you didn't come close to hitting the over of 38 points.
As my kids would say, "Too bad. So sad."
The Patriots won a game on Sunday scoring three offensive points — generated after Bill Belichick declined to go for a 4th and 1 at the Jets' 6-yard line — and they don't need to apologize for that.
And, yes, that includes offensive coordinator Matt Patricia, and quarterback Mac Jones.
When you win, it's OK sometimes to score only three points. As Dave Wannstedt once said, sometimes "it's not a sin to punt."
Football happens. Football happened on Sunday.
I know in this day and age of fantasy points and lots of offense, people take it personally if their team doesn't score 40 points in every game. They think there is something broken. People need to be fired. It's an abomination.
That's not the way it looked from my press box seat. Obviously, the Patriots would have liked to put up more points, and their execution inside the Jets' 40-yard line was disappointing — personally, I want to dropkick Patricia's shotgun packages into Cape Cod Bay — but sometimes it's a slog and you just need to take care of the ball and win field position.
Sunday, with the wind a huge problem for much of the game and a damn-good Jets defense on the other side, was one of those days for the Patriots' offense.
The Patriots showed some signs of offensive progress against the Jets out of the bye ... and had three points to show for it. Both things can be true. Pending a review of the film, that's the way I feel.
"We moved the ball," Bill Belichick said. "We just didn't have enough points. So we've got to do a better job of scoring more points when we get down there, and when we get close to scoring points, 30, 35-yard line, get the ball closer to get some points on the board. It wasn't like we couldn't move the ball. We had several good opportunities, but we just – penalties, negative plays, dropped the ball, missed opportunities. Just have to do a better job there. And again, give the Jets credit. Coach Saleh and his staff and their players, they have a really good defense. We all know that. But we're going to see good defenses for the rest of the year, as well, so we've just got to coach and play better."
I know most people around here think offense was never a problem with the former quarterback here, but here are some history lessons from early in his career:
2001: Patriots 12, Jets 9
2003: Patriots 9, Browns 3
2003: Patriots 12, Dolphins 0 (offensive had one FG, rest from defense).
There were also five losses when Tom Brady and the offense didn't produce a touchdown, and the Super Bowl win over the Rams in 2018 when they didn't score a touchdown until there were 7 minutes left in the game — in a dome.
It didn't mean the sky was falling then, and it doesn't mean it is now.
If the Patriots produced like the Jets did — 103 total yards, 2 yards after halftime, one 20-yard play and six first downs — then, yes, you could react like Robert Saleh did:
Q: Can you talk about the second half, especially the offense, seven possessions, only two total yards.
RS: It was dog sh*t.
Q; This isn't another game where – the passing yards, it's under 200, the completion percentage, it's under 60. This one is 40. Is he a quarterback that's holding the offense back right now?
RS: I don't know, we couldn't run the ball either, so there's a lot of things that we got to look at to see if we can find some efficiency in the offense. Obviously in the second half we just couldn't get – I don't feel like we had a first down. I don't know if we did. But either way it just wasn't good enough. It's not about pointing fingers at any one individual or one unit or one anything. It's just finding a way to, finding the answers so we can start moving the ball because we did it against Buffalo, we've done it against other teams. It's just the consistency needs to get found.
Q: Was there any point where you thought you sensed some offensive spark, that something might get going?
RS: In the second half?
Q: Anytime?
RS: At any point? No.
Now that's a bad offense. Zach Wilson didn't turn the ball over for once, but he couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat for most of the game. Then there were drop passes, poor run blocking and sacks.
If the Patriots played like that ... bring out the pitchforks. Have at it.
(Adam Richins for BSJ)
But despite bad weather conditions and a great Jets defense, losing 1.5 offensive line starters to injury during the game (David Andrews ... and Isaiah Wynn), the Patriots managed almost 300 yards, 5.0 yards per play, rushed for 99 yards, completed 85.2 percent of passes for 9.1 yards per attempt, had drives of 7, 11 and 14 plays, and five plays over 20 yards or more.
"Yeah, I mean, we won the game," Jones said. "I think obviously we moved the ball pretty well today, so that's a fact. We've got to be able to move it through that fringe area better, and we've got to watch the tape and see what we can do better, but I thought we stayed together as a unit, didn't lose our cool and worked together to try to win."
By the way, the vaunted Bills on a great weather day before the bye saw their offense limited to 317 yards, 5.2 yards per play, two plays of 20-plus yards, Josh Allen had a 52.9 completion percentage (2 INTs) and was sacked five times by this same Jets defense.
It's all about context.
The Patriots made some progress in this game. Patricia showed some improvement marrying Jones' dropback and routes. He protected Jones well at times (another six sacks) to give him a chance to hit a few downfield plays. The tight ends in the backfield were a nice wrinkle. Their short passing game looked to be better called and timed.
Once they got to the Jets' 40-yard line, the Patriots were a bit of a trainwreck, but unless you expected the Patriots to look like the Greatest Show on Turf after the bye, that was progress for them.
And now we'll see, in a dome on Thanksgiving night against a Vikings team coming off a 40-3 home loss to the Cowboys, if they can continue their progress to being an average offense. It's a short week for both teams that will both be shuffling their lines (Vikings lost great young LT Christian Darrisaw), but the train needs to keep moving forward.
Three points on offense won't be enough or good enough to win games going forward. But for this Sunday, it was just fine and a sign of progress for a unit that needed to get going in the right direction.
Even if you didn't like it.