After waiting an hour to show his face following yet another disheartening yet inevitable loss, Bill Belichick began Sunday's trite recap with a sentence that didn't register at the moment but did when I listed back late last night.
"We moved the ball but were on a long field. Just really didn't do a good job of field position. Couldn't play the complementary game that we needed to play."
Indeed, the Patriots did face one long field after another, but is a 6-0 loss really about the two-thirds of his team that mostly did their job, especially the defense, which has been the only reason this team is in games of late? What planet is Belichick inhabiting these days? If there are fingers to point - and trust me, there's a ton - the first would be at the head coach for treating offensive football with such disdain. Disagree? Consider all this:
- The Patriots have been shut out twice during the 2023 season.
- First time being shut out twice in one season since 1992 (3 times in 1992).
- The first time in franchise history that it has been shut out twice at home in a single season.
- The Pats have scored 12.3 PPG in 2023 (worst in the NFL and worst under Belichick).
- 12.3 PPG would be the fewest in a season for NE since 1990 (11.3 PPG).
So the defense that somehow came into question by the head coach is responsible; how, exactly? All they've done the last three weeks is limit opponents to 10, 10, and six points and end up on the losing end all three times (that hasn't happened since 1938). Meanwhile, the rest of the league is 53-0 this season when holding teams to 10 or less. But yeah, let's divert attention from this train wreck of an offense you "built" while privately allowing your minions (see Lombardi, Mike) to hammer Mac Jones like he is singlehandedly responsible for the decline of the Patriot Way and Western civilization (probably).
The Pats, despite switching from Jones to Bailey Zappe, never once found its way into the red zone (or inside the 30, for that matter) and finished the game with a paltry 13 first downs. Yet Belichick thinks this is 2003, operating like his team still wins games in the margins, which stopped happening with any consistency when Tom Brady was allowed to walk out that door.
Think about one of those stats I referenced above - the lowest point total since 1990. The NFL was a different league then. Only two teams passed for over 4,000 yards, Joe Montana's 49ers and the run-and-shoot Oilers with Warren Moon. The average completion percentage in 1990 was 56%. It's not quite three yards and a cloud of dust football, but not all that far removed from it either. Flash forward to 33 years later, and that's where you are. If that doesn't make you want to slam your head through a plate glass window, you've become numb to the mess created and the abyss this offense has slipped into. Rod Rust was canned after that '90 season. Organizationally, the Pats haven't approached the hell of that 1-15 season until now. You know what has to happen next. Forget about an elegant solution. The time is now. To go on with this charade is insulting to the fan base, and if Bill wants to hold a grudge, that's on him. He's gotten enough time to rebuild post-Brady, and it hasn't improved. In fact, it's gotten worse. Way worse. Enough is enough.