FOXBOROUGH - How do you feel about your football team? With a losing streak of six games (and counting?) - the Patriots' worst stretch since 1993 - it feels like they're spiraling deeper and deeper into the abyss.
With a roster in the bottom five in the league and a coaching staff short on experience — a first-year head coach, first-year defensive coordinator, and a play-caller doing that important job for the first time since 2009 — growing pains were a lock. However, Jerod Mayo, billed as a great communicator, is having difficulty staying on message and getting his players to respond, which has only created the sense that his brief tenure is already unraveling.
Thus — and I think this is in the struggling franchise handbook — there was a team meeting Thursday morning at which the players were reminded that if there was ever a time to do more, it's now.
"We had a really great team meeting this morning where that was pointed out," said offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt. "Obviously, at 1-6, it's not good enough across the board, any of us.
"We need to be better. We need to work harder. We need to rehab harder. We have to refresh better. We have to take care of ourselves. We have to spend more time in the room."
The wide receivers, in particular, have been grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons. There have been poorly timed and selfish social media posts (Ja'Lynn Polk and K.J. Osborn), a player welcoming a change of scenery (Osborn), and a second-year receiver with minimal NFL experience acting as if he's Randy Moss in his prime.
"I get frustrated when I'm not getting thrown the ball, knowing that I've caught every ball that's thrown to me this season," said Kayshon Boutte on Wednesday. "I just feel like I would always go to the sideline and demand the ball. So, whether it was that deep ball – I asked for that. The Texans game, I asked for that. So, I feel like I shouldn't have to really ask."
Add to that some pointed comments from veteran Kendrick Bourne following Sunday's loss about players not taking care of themselves, and you had a dumpster about to be engulfed in flames. Bourne clarified those comments Thursday.
"I know the speculation was I was pointing out Pop (Douglas, who had food poisoning), and it wasn't a shot at anyone," he said. "It's just the choices we make as a team. If we want to win, if we want to be great, if we want to win Super Bowls, go to the playoffs, we have to take care of our bodies, we have to train, we have to eat right, sleep, we have to do everything it takes to be great.
"There's other teams that are doing everything. So (if) we're doing the bare minimum, then we're going to get the result we got."
"I think we all understand we're frustrated," said Van Pelt. "Nobody's going to be happy at 1-6. It's just the reality of it. But I think that room, in particular, needs to keep the focus inward. We have a big game this week, all of our focus should be on how we can get a 'W' on Sunday. This is a very good opponent coming in."
And therein lies one of the roster's flaws. The attempt to integrate a slew of first- and second-year players into more prominent roles — when, in some cases, they haven't earned it — has magnified their failures because there just aren't enough accomplished professionals across the roster to say, 'No.' As he rehabbed his knee injury, Bourne didn't carry the same sway but now, the more he's on the field, the more he's trying to wield his influence.
"I think it is just other things on certain people's minds - that we have to keep helping young guys become who they truly want to be," he said. "They just can't see it. The vision is not there. So it takes a village to raise a kid. So, as a team, that's where we are. We're helping our young guys grow, and we just have to keep fighting to help them be where they want to be."
Jonathan Jones, one of the last remaining links to championship football, is also trying to fill that leadership void. He spoke passionately to the team after the loss in London. When we spoke Thursday, the veteran cornerback agreed that there is a lack of maturity on this team and that some of the young players just don't know how to be pros yet.
"I think you could say that, nodded Jones. "As I always said, either you don't know how to do it, or you're not willing to do it. I don't think guys aren't willing to guys show up. They give effort. And I think it's just more buying in and learning what it looks like to be a successful team, to being a successful player in this league."
And if the players in question don't?
"Guys either get on it or, at some point, you find yourself not here, not in the league. That's just how this game goes. Either buy in, or the game will get rid of you."
And that's where the 2024-25 Patriots are in late October. This week and Sunday's game are a real inflection point in a season that was bound to be rough, but no one inside the building thought it would fall to these depths. So what is this team going to do about it?