The bye week was fun while it lasted, but now it is time to get back to football. Just like the previous two-quarters of the season, the New England Patriots were able to pull off an impressive upset victory, but then lose their remaining few games in incredibly humiliating fashion. Getting stomped in Miami was one thing because that curse will never end, but losing two winnable games to the Los Angeles Rams and Indianapolis Colts at home were red flags that this team has not learned to get out of their own way. Now that New England is officially eliminated from playoff contention, let’s take a look at some of the positives and negatives from the third quarter of the season, and see what they can do to try to finish the season strong.
Patriots Third Quarterly Report
1. Beating the Bears Was the One Shining Moment
It feels like ages since the last time the Patriots won a football game. On November 10, they entered Soldier Field and not only beat the Chicago Bears but flat-out humiliated them with a final score of 19-3. The New England defense, who entered that game with just sixteen sacks for the season, finished the week with twenty-five. That is right. Caleb Williams, the number one overall pick in this year’s NFL draft, got sacked nine times by a Patriots defense that had been ineffective and limited all season long. Drake Maye was not that much better with just one touchdown on five trips inside the red zone, but he at least had more energy and life than Williams did that day.
The Bears were a pathetic one for fourteen on third down, the best receiver that day was Keenan Allen with forty-four yards on five catches, and it says a lot when two backup safeties (Dell Pettus and Brenden Schooler) were able to sack Caleb Williams on unblocked blitzes. It was so bad that Chicago fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron after the game, and a few weeks later, they let go of their head coach Matt Eberflus. That victory allowed New England to improve to 3-7, but it apparently turned into a mirage as they pathetically lost their next three games.
2. Turnovers Cost the Pats Against the Rams
The Patriots were not expected to do much when they welcomed the Los Angeles Rams to Gillette Stadium, but this matchup between these two teams on November 17 turned into a surprisingly competitive ballgame. Unfortunately, there were two big reasons why New England fell short. The first was that their defense had next to no answers for the high-powered Rams offense. Matthew Stafford threw for 295 yards and four touchdown passes. Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua totaled 229 of those yards, while also being responsible for three of those scores. Those were the two players that the Patriots needed to slow down and the defense failed to complete the mission, but that was not even the worst part.
The second biggest reason why they lost 28-22 was because their offense was responsible for two costly turnovers that gave the Rams all of the momentum. In the middle of the second quarter, when the game was tied at seven, Drake Maye got strip-sacked on an unblocked rush by Byron Young, and the ball was recovered by defensive tackle Kobie Turner. On the next play, Stafford found Nacua open on an out route for a go-ahead touchdown pass, and it allowed the Rams to take a four-point lead at halftime. The other turnover occurred on the final drive of the game when the Patriots were trying to drive down the field to win the game. Before the two-minute warning, Maye took another by Young, which forced third and thirteen at their own twenty-five-yard line. On that particular play, the rookie quarterback looked for Demario Douglas over the middle. However, not only did the receiver fail to look for the football, but the pass was poorly overthrown and intercepted by Kamren Kitchens to seal the deal. There were plenty of opportunities for New England to win that football game, but they got in their own way and cost themselves with self-inflicted mistakes. But that was not even the worst loss they had in this third quarter of the season.
3. The Curse in Miami is Still Alive
The minute that this matchup was announced, every Patriots fan in America knew that November 24 was not going to be a date they wanted to circle in their calendars. Whenever New England is forced to play the Dolphins on the road, they look flat, to say the least, and lose the game in agonizing fashion. It does not matter how good or bad Miami is that season, nor does it depend on the score differential of the game, because they will always find a way to win the game at the end. AJ Feeley, Joey Harrington, Ryan Tannehill, Jay Cutler, and Tua Tagovalioa have kept that tradition strong and proud for decades. Even if the Patriots were not going to win this game against a Dolphins team desperately trying to stay alive in the playoff hunt at that point, it would have been nice to see this team play with some fight and emotion.
Spoiler alert, they did not. Instead, it was 24-0 at halftime and 31-0 in the middle of the third quarter. Tua threw for over 300 yards and four touchdown passes, Jonnu Smith got vengeance against his former team with nine catches for eighty-seven yards, and the only impactful plays that New England had that day were in literal garbage time. The fact that they only lost by nineteen points was a little startling because the score should have easily been worse. If the Dolphins’ backups knew how to hold onto a football, the Patriots would not have reached the double-digit mark. This was the most pathetic loss of the season because they looked like they did not want to be there at kickoff, and when the game was over, most of the players were smiling and laughing in the locker room. The team might have hit rock bottom last year, but they just keep finding ways to go deeper. Just look at their last game against the Indianapolis Colts.
4. How Do They Lose to the Colts?
In the last game before the bye week, the Patriots were up 24-17 in the fourth quarter against the Indianapolis Colts. Although Joey Slye missed a 25-yard field goal at the end of the first half and Drake Maye threw a costly interception inside the red zone to begin the third quarter, they still outplayed the Colts in several facets. The offense crossed midfield on every single possession, they were six for eleven on third down, and reached over 400 yards of offense! Their defense gave up a couple of punches in the first thirty minutes of play, but still picked off Anthony Richardson twice and held him to just three points before the final possession of the period.
However, the biggest reason why Indianapolis still had life in this game was because New England cashed in twice on their six trips inside the twenty-yard line. When Richardson got the ball back, he had a chance to do the same thing he did two weeks prior against the New York Jets, which was to put the team on his shoulders and lead them to victory. His final possession lasted nineteen plays and included three fourth-down conversions! The last of those resulted in a touchdown pass to Alec Pierce with twelve seconds left in the game! But instead of settling for the extra point to send the game into overtime, head coach Shane Steichen kept the offense on the field to go for two, and Richardson bullied his way into the endzone to give the Colts the lead! The Patriots technically had a last-second chance to win with a 68-yard field goal, but the kick predictably fell short of the crossbar and they came up short by one point. Throughout the entire afternoon, New England had complete control and command of this football game, but they once again fell apart when it mattered most.
5. This Team Has Not Evolved
It feels like every time the Patriots lose a football game, they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. Drake Maye is the only bright spot with their offense because of three key reasons: their running game is incredibly inconsistent, the best pass catchers on this football team are tight ends, and the offensive line is overwhelmed in every single matchup. They just released KJ Osborn after being listed as a healthy scratch in several matchups, but the one silver lining is that left guard Cole Strange has finally returned to practice after recovering from a torn patellar tendon. Unfortunately, his return is not going to fix the glaring flaws of the offensive line overnight because it is a group that has next to no depth whatsoever. However, the biggest disappointment with this football team is how atrocious their defense has been all season long.
Obviously, they dealt with too many absences. They traded Matt Judon before the season started, Ja’Whaun Bentley tore his pec in the second game of the season, and they just got Christian Barmore and Jabrill Peppers back into the lineup. But the reason why they deserve the most responsibility for the team’s downfall was because this group was supposed to be the backbone and heartbeat of this football team. Even though they are ranked fourteenth in passing yards per game, they are also twentieth against the run and twenty-first in points allowed. The Patriots have the eighth-worst turnover differential at -6, they have the sixth-fewest takeaways with just eleven and have the seventh-fewest sacks. After that nine-sack performance against the Bears, the Patriots defense only came up with two more before the bye week. Christian Gonzalez is having an All-Pro caliber season as the starting cornerback and it is being wasted because of an atrocious effort from the rest of his teammates.
Obviously, the head coach cannot be blamed whenever players make errors, but it is up to Jerod Mayo to give this team a sense of pride and urgency every week. Yes, this man has had his struggles in his first year on the job, but everybody knew that this team would be in this position. There are rumors that he is fighting for his job in the final four weeks, but firing him after one season is just going to make the organization look even more incompetent. Bill Belichick is the reason why the roster is in as bad of shape as it is right now, so while it is easy to blame Mayo for everything wrong, his response is that he has nobody else to put on the football field. While every team looking for a head coach would dream of having Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, the last thing that the Patriots should do with Drake Maye is the same thing that the Bears did with the last three quarterbacks they drafted in the first round, which ruined the developmental process. If the season ended today, New England would have the most cap space in the league and the third overall pick, so Mayo and general manager Eliot Wolf should take advantage of that within the next five to six months. If things continue to fail to improve, then maybe it would be wise to clean house.
The Patriots will travel out West for a matchup with the Arizona Cardinals in the late Sunday afternoon window. Even though this team lost three games in a row and has fallen out of the playoff picture, they are still five times better than the New England Patriots. They have a more explosive offense, they have a tougher defense, and they have a more aggressive head coach. It would not be completely surprising to see New England pull off an upset because they always stumble toward victory with zero expectations, but at this point, it is no longer about wins and losses for the front office. They are now eliminated from playoff contention with a 3-10 record, so this is now the time for the team to evaluate which players can make a difference in the future while getting a head start on figuring out which positions to upgrade in the next free agency period or draft.
Main Image: Peter van den Berg-Imagn Images
