Bill O'Brien felt like you or I did watching the Patriots offense in the first half Sunday against the Chiefs. There were aspects of their game to feel good about. Hell, his quarterback, Bailey Zappe, went 17 of 19 for 141 yards and a touchdown. But then, in the snap of a finger, or in this case, one poor decision and errantly thrown ball, the carriage turned into a pumpkin.
"I think we came out - the first drive wasn't great - but we settled down and started moving the ball and made some decent plays - a little inconsistent - but made some decent plays," O'Brien said via videoconferencing Tuesday morning. "The second half, on the first play, we throw an interception. That's not a good omen for the rest of the half."
Indeed, the Pats decided to dial back their offensive approach the rest of the way - in part because of some protection issues - which was confusing when they found themselves down two scores (the Chiefs kicked a field goal on their opening drive of the third quarter, then hit paydirt two plays after the interception). Are you trying to win the game or minimize the potential damage of a lopsided loss? It felt like the latter, at least to me. For O'Brien, it goes back to taking care of the football, something both quarterbacks have failed to do.
"We've gotta be able to overcome," he said, adding, "We had to do different things, and it didn't go quite the way we wanted it to go. We can't turn the ball over. We have to continue to stress that and make the guys understand. Bailey played a solid football game, but he'd be the first to tell you he'd like that play back."
Zappe did say that after the game, clearly disappointed that he put the team in that spot. But he also emphasized that his job - and quite frankly, the entire team's (including coaching staff) - is to put that mistake behind them.
"The hardest thing about it all is to forget it and wash it," Zappe said in the postgame press conference. "Because personally, you want to be perfect. You don't want to have any turnovers. So when you have a turnover, you're mad at yourself because it's so easy to step up and throw it out of bounds. Why didn't you do that? Those are the kinds of things you ask yourself. And then, once the next series comes, you try to forget about it and move on and tell yourself when that opportunity comes again, when I'm in that situation, I'm going to do something different and not do that."
There was more put on Zappe's shoulders Sunday, which isn't ideal considering his limitations and the limitations of the players around him. But after successfully running the ball Thursday in Pittsburgh, even if the yards per rush weren't overwhelming, the Pats couldn't get anything going in the ground game versus Kansas City, except the touchdown jaunt by Kevin Harris. They averaged just 3.3 yards and had just one rushing first down.
"We struggled to run the ball," said O'Brien. "Struggled to get the run game going. There were some things we missed. There could have been some better play calls. It was all a combination of things, and we just weren't able to be nearly as productive in the second half as we were in the first half. We just have to continue to try and figure that out.
"We know this isn't the season anybody wanted, but there are still football games to be played and work to be done. We're going to have to continue to try and grind it out, try to figure it out, try to get better. It's all about showing up every day, trying to be better, trying to get better. We have to be better in the second half of these games."
There is no arguing that. The Pats were shut out during the second half of that Steelers game. It's been a season-long problem and continues to show up even after the quarterback switch. Zappe has just 83 yards passing over the second half in the last two games. In this league? Come on. That's rough.
Perhaps a way to alter that trend is to play with a little more tempo. The Pats, however, were seemingly averse to approaching Sunday's game in that fashion, even as the game had gotten away from them. I asked O'Brien if, in hindsight, they should have gone faster, which is something running back Ezekiel Elliott mentioned to us after the game.
"We got the ball with four minutes to go on our own 6-inch yard line," recalled O'Brien of the team's second to last drive, "so we decided to try to get two plays to punch it out of there - a quarterback sneak and then ran a downhill, duo-type play. Then the next play - we were into a two-minute in that third play - and we didn't complete the pass, and the fourth down play, our protection wasn't great. We were trying very hard to get into a tempo, but we weren't able to do it, and so, yeah, I would say Zeke is on the money; we didn't get it done. We didn't do a good enough job of going faster, so put that one on me."