Had a similar thought watching the Bengals on Saturday - while the Pats almost have to take a shot at a QB if they are top 3, great surrounding skill position (and OL) talent can elevate an offense to mediocre even with a backup QB.
This is now: BB and the direction of the Patriots
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Now explain this, if that's your entire theory?
Meanwhile, teams worse than the Pats running the ball include the Chargers, Jags, Seahawks and Bengals, and their quarterbacks seem pretty capable of moving the ball downfield?
And the Patriots did neither with regards to skill position players or OL with a QB on a rookie contract.
I believe that everyone on offense is the problem. Sure the QBs are awful and cannot create anything on their own under pressure. There is no threat of running for the first down by our QBs. The running backs are capable but slow. The guards are young, the tackles are inconsistent or atrocious. The WRs scare no one. Henry can get open and make a catch in traffic but he provides no YAC and is not a good blocker. In the TV copy, you can see all the 11 defenders close to the line of scrimmage when teams play NE. If they had a Diggs or Chase that would not be the case.
We're kinda skipping past that there are OLs that are good at one type of protection and not the other. I believe that our OL is crap at both, but some OLs can run block ok but not pass block. I think that a couple of teams that you mentioned are that way.
I think one key in Zappe's quick start yesterday was that the line was very good.... right up until Strange got hurt, pretty soon after that the offense collapsed.
Our skill position players are mediocre and there is no top end threat, our RBs are above average.... the line was on track for average, maybe better coming off last year... it was decimated by injuries and illness, plus lack of practice that brings, and it's continued all year.
As to some of the backups versus Zappe....
Minshew shouldn't be in the conversation he's a 5 year vet who was an NFL starter for multiple years
Browning is another guy who has been in the league 5 years
But also, regardless of surrounding talent, sometimes backup QBs go on a run of good games, I mean DeVito's run this year isn't any better than Zappe's last year.
Our skill position players are mediocre and there is no top end threat, our RBs are above average.... the line was on track for average, maybe better coming off last year... it was decimated by injuries and illness, plus lack of practice that brings, and it's continued all year.
As to some of the backups versus Zappe....
Minshew shouldn't be in the conversation he's a 5 year vet who was an NFL starter for multiple years
Browning is another guy who has been in the league 5 years
But also, regardless of surrounding talent, sometimes backup QBs go on a run of good games, I mean DeVito's run this year isn't any better than Zappe's last year.
Strange went down near the end of the TD drive which threw the line back into chaos and they never really recovered from there.
Yep, then McDermott got hurt later which made it worse.
Mafi is a good downhill runblocker... he's not ready yet on pass protection
No, we're skipping passed the fact that someone said we have two above average tackles, an above average tight end and above average running backs. Shit, a week or two ago, PFF said Trent Brown is fucking better than Trent Williams.
So if the above is true, my question was simple, why can't we run the fucking ball?
That was met with, because our QB's sucks.
I then posted 8 teams in the top 17 running the ball, whose quarterbacks also suck (some are on their third or fourth ones this year).
The response "their QB's are better and they can run" or something.
So I then put in 4 teams who are WORSE at running the ball, with much better quarterbacks than what we have.
If we have to dive down a rabbit hole of excuses this far, maybe, just maybe, we don't have above average tackles, running backs or tight ends. It's just a thought.
Not signing Thuney was such a mistake. I know it seems small but having a rock solid guard next to Andrews for the last 3 years and only now is his cap number getting up there, a time when the Pats have a ton of cap room coming up. A core of Thuney, Andrews and Onwenu (assuming they drafted him, butterfly effect etc.) and use the Strange pick on a skill position may have made a world of difference. Not that I trust them to pick the right one, but the next offensive players were Christian Watson and Breece Hall. I know you can play that game all day, but letting Thuney walk was a big mistake.
Barmore, Peppers, Gonzalez, Judon are elite. Wise, Jennings, Tavai, Dugger all have their moments. White and Mapu show promise.
If our running backs are above average, I would love someone to show their work.
Name the 17 other teams with worse running backs. If we were in the NFC, I'd argue that we'd be tied for the worst group of running backs with Carolina and Minnesota, and now that Ty Chandler has inherited Mattison's role in Minny, it might just be the Pats and Carolina.
Name the 17 other teams with worse running backs. If we were in the NFC, I'd argue that we'd be tied for the worst group of running backs with Carolina and Minnesota, and now that Ty Chandler has inherited Mattison's role in Minny, it might just be the Pats and Carolina.
Weird cherry pick of my post. My next sentence mentioned Gonzalez and Judon. Agree that Barmore and Peppers have been great this year too. But the point is they don't make big plays. The Pats are 29th in sacks and tied for 20-23rd in picks. They are 29th in turnovers. They don't make big plays.
God, am I happy not to see Myles Bryant on this list.
That said, I'm not sure outside of Judon, that all of these guys are elite/very good, but I also think that's the beauty of BB's coaching from a defensive standpoint. He knows how to get the most out of guys on that side of the ball.
Pats finish 1-7 at home... Rough year for season ticket-holders.
A guy I work with is a super-fan, though not season ticket holder. Took his kid (8 years old) to see his first game in person - Pats/Bills. A coworker practically couldn't sell the tickets, finally gave them to him as a 'pay it forward' move. The kid saw the game of his life and no matter what the final standings are he will remember being there for that win. That's a little silver lining I am taking away from the season.
Mike Gesicki Go-Ahead TD vs. Bills (youtube.com)
A guy I work with is a super-fan, though not season ticket holder. Took his kid (8 years old) to see his first game in person - Pats/Bills. A coworker practically couldn't sell the tickets, finally gave them to him as a 'pay it forward' move. The kid saw the game of his life and no matter what the final standings are he will remember being there for that win. That's a little silver lining I am taking away from the season.
Mike Gesicki Go-Ahead TD vs. Bills (youtube.com)
To be fair, it's a lot harder to make big plays when your opponent is generally playing with a lead and can take the air out of the ball for three quarters every weekend up two touchdowns.
Yeah. If the other team can run and throw short passes--but maintains the option of throwing deep passes--it's pretty hard to be super disruptive on D.
That's the chance to say goodbye (potentially) to BB. Idk. I have a feeling folks may want to show up.
I'm on the move on from Bill side, but it's not a results-oriented opinion. I don't expect Bill or whoever replaces him to win a Super Bowl. I think whoever coaches the team next year - Bill or otherwise - will be a .500+ team probably due to low-hanging fruit re: the roster and the schedule being a lot easier. Improvement over 3 wins is basically guaranteed.
My issue is that even if we had an average QB getting us to a 9-8 record this year, the process around the whole organization kinda sucks. The coaching and personnel staffs have been hollowed out and re-filled with nepotism hires and croneys. BB could be as good as he ever was, but no one - not even the greatest coach of all-time - is going to succeed if he's forced to micro manage. Maybe he isn't, we're not inside those doors, but I know I'm wondering how much special attention he has to spend on the defense to support his kid, and how much he has to be focused on helping Al Groh's kid when it comes to running the personnel side, or last year how much he had to help the offense with Patricia and Judge. That to me is the biggest red flag, because there's no new blood, no outside opinions coming in - how is this team in a position to evolve with the league if everyone on staff comes from the same POV? Hiring is probably the most important part of his job - is he any good at it now?
If Bill goes out this offseason and bolsters the staff with new, interesting hires from other orgs, then I'll happily eat crow and see how it plays out. I just don't think that's going to happen, and I don't think any organization could be this homogenous and stay ahead of the pack.
For all the talk of how bad BB has been as a GM since 2018 or so, it surprises me how infrequently this move gets called out as especially noteworthy. For me, it's probably top 3 in terms of impact, and the main reason the Agholor and Jonnu signings actually bug me. I don't look at the last few years of free agency and see a ton of moves I wish they made - some of the 2021 pickups sucked, but unlike N'Keal over AJB/Deebo there aren't really obvious moves I wish they made instead, especially not at WR/TE. But that was the Thuney walk year and I can't help but think THAT is the big miss of all the money they spent that offseason.
Now that it's clear Mac blows, it might not have made a huge difference anyways, I guess. But letting Thuney go, having to take Strange, and the Folk trade feel like the most impactful misses on wins and losses in the non-QB post-N'Keal Harry division of bad decisions to me.
Especially with Scarnecchia retiring, it's a complete miss. They value guard so highly they reach for Strange in the first the next year, instead of signing Thuney. Strange isn't Mankins. I know Mankins was widely shit on as an awful 1st round pick but he was worth it, Strange has not been. Getting rid of Folk and wasting a 4th on Ryland is awful.
Outside of putting Patricia and Judge in charge of the offense, this is one of their biggest blunders.
I dunno. Thuney signed the richest contract for a guard at the time. If the alternative to using a first round pick on a guard is forking over the most expensive guard contract in history, I'm saving the money and using the draft pick.
HIs cap hits have been 4.5m, 8.1m and 13.4m over the last 3 years. Dead Cap money of $11m the next 2 years if you cut him past June 1. He's well worth all that money and at least another year.
In this world I'm not sure how anyone can argue $8.6m a year in cap annually for Thuney isn't the right answer. Then they use a first round pick on a guard. That's nuts.
A guy who's close to a guaranteed stud at $8.6m average over 3 years vs a rookie on a 1st round? This is why BB is in trouble.
It's a fair point, but smack dab in the middle of the years in which Bill is getting slammed for not drafting/developing elite talent it is a glaring missed opportunity to retain one of those guys, and while I think Strange is a decent player when healthy it has been a challenge area for the team in the ensuing seasons.
We're on the same side of the Bill debate overall, at least. If I want to put an apologist lens on it, what I'm really getting at is this: during the down period, how many of Bill's mistakes had a clear better option that would lead the team away from where they are now? (ie the "Mac Jones sucks but there hasn't been a clear QB missed opportunity outside of Hurts and Purdy since Brady left" argument.) Spending a ton of money while losing one of the best free agents available, then having to replace him with a first round reach feels like a no brainer for the really painful miss list to me.
Even if this was more of a slam dunk argument when Christian Watson looked amazing for a third of a season and George Pickens seemed to be overcoming the headcase concerns.
Strange has been pretty good when not injured. I think he's been better than Zion Johnson for example who was drafted at 17, and much better than Kenyon Green who was drafted 15.
I really don't get the argument that you can't use a 1st on a guard because it isn't a valuable posiiton but also you should have paid tackle money for a guard in FA.
The Thuney move seems like it was probably a mistake, maybe the Shaq Mason move more so....but the Strange pick gets way too much flak because people really wanted a flash player or something, and because he was a small school riser who some analysts who don't know much declared him a 3rd rounder.
There were 3 guards drafted in the 1st in 2022, Cole strange was picked much later than the other two and is better. And looking back at our draft thread, a lot of the guys people were mad Bill passed on for Strange (Booth, Hill, etc.) have done nothing much in the NFL, so it isn't like the board (or analysts) evaluated better. Strange has gotten hurt... that sucks, but he's been a pretty good guard early on, it was actually a pretty good pick.
I mean, it takes two to tango here, no?
The Patriots obviously valued Thuney, they franchised him in 2020. They surely tried to negotiate a deal with him in 2020 before franchising him and couldn't agree to a deal. I'd guess they likely tried to sign him going into 2021 free agency as well.
Did they just let him walk? Isn't it possible, and probably likely, he just chose to go play with Patrick Mahomes and keep winning on a record breaking contract for a guard rather than stay here and win less on a mega contract?
Players get to make choices too.
"You are what you are."
The Pats were 8-0 on October 28th, 2019.
Since then they are 32-40, with first round losses the only 2 times they reached the playoffs. That's 5 years of mediocrity that dates back to when Brady was still here.
If the priority was building around Mac, then how on earth did Bill convince himself that giving the offense to a defensive coordinator and a special teams coach was a good idea? If the priority was building around Mac, then how on earth did Bill convince himself that letting Jakobi Meyers - Mac's go to receiver for his whole time here - walk was a good idea? Meyers did not break the bank in free agency.
At some point, Bill like everyone needs to answer for the product he puts on the field. If he committed to the wrong QB, and did not give himself a verteran alternative, that's on him, too.
It's generally said that players will always go to whoever pays them the most, but when the alternative is huge money _and_ blocking for the best QB, with the best TE, and the best slot WR...that had to matter a lot. After all, it was a rookie QB and pupu platter of receivers in New England.
In what world was Mankins shit on as an awful first round pick? I agree he was worth it. The Strange pick is bad b/c Mankins was a luxury to get WHEN YOU HAVE BRADY AS YOUR QB. Strange was a reach AND not worth it b/c you had Mac Jones as the QB. Agree, too, that Ryland and the punter were also picks the team couldn't afford, given the state of the team. The concern I have is that somehow BB and the rest of the organization didn't (don't?) recognize where the team actually was/is. That so many of us saw the Patriots as still lacking in talent and in the midst of a big rebuild while the powers-that-be didn't is a BIG concern.
FTR, in my view the mistake with Thuney was franchising him in the first place. Waste of $$$. Let him go, find a decent guard. Of course, this organization has suddenkly become not that great at landing passable guards in the slots where they typically have found them - day 3. That's a Scar thing, too, yes, but you'd like to think they'd see that in the modern NFL, you need to build with weapons and find ways to draft and develop interior lineman secondarily. Tackles are one thing, guards are another.
Lots of people questioned the Mankins pick at the draft. He wasn’t very well-known. Obviously, everyone who did quickly ate their words because the dude was an absolute mauler out there.
Mike Sando, in The Athletic:
Examining NFL’s 3 coaching vacancies and 9 other teams facing decisions: Sando’s Pick Six - The Athletic
Chargers:
Mind you, this article was not about BB.
Examining NFL’s 3 coaching vacancies and 9 other teams facing decisions: Sando’s Pick Six - The Athletic
Chargers:
Commanders:
Panthers:
Mind you, this article was not about BB.
Zolak on the radio today says everybody he talks to assumes Bill to be coaching in Dallas next season.
I agree. Losing him hurts, for sure, but that's A LOT of cap space to spend on a "non-skill" position. Obviously, there's a cap - and if you spend money on some areas you don't have money to spend on others. Of course, the money they threw at TE and WR haven't worked out well - but I think reallocating money from guard to those positions was the right one, they just made the wrong choices.
I mean, maybe. But this isn't really anywhere else, so I gotta wonder who he's actually talking to.
Barring an early playoff flameout, I can't see anyway Jerry gives McCarthy the boot.
Although if he does, he needs to make a coaching splash, and if he wanted BB, he'd have to fork over some draft capital to ensure that happens lest he get stuck with a shitty retread.
I doubt Jerry Jones would fire McCarthy unless a better option was already available, meaning that BB is already free and clear from the Patriots.
Jones did give up a 4th for a known bust to be his 3rd/Emergency QB (who was on his way to cutsville) so offering up draft capital isn't far fetched at all.
I think an embarrassing loss to Philly or SF in the Divisional Round could get Jerry to move, if BB actually is interested in Dallas. CeeDee and Parsons are due mega deals soon. Dak is in his prime. Jerr can’t mess around. I think a guy like BB being available is the only way he would ditch McCarthy at this point though.
I actually think this coming week is a big game for McCarthy. The Eagles gave the Cowboys a huge gift Monday night, Dallas is technically the 2-seed at the moment and here comes a chance to take advantage of that -- while at the same time showing it can win a game on the road against a quality opponent, just the sort of scenario where McCarthy teams are known to lay eggs.
Eagles win 2 seed if they win out so might not be a major gift. But agree about the road narrative. Cowboys need a confidence win in the biggest way. So, they now need to beat the AFC’s Cowboys.
In the ‘was Strange a good pick or not’ argument where the convo pivots to ‘well he’s good when he’s not hurt’ isn’t the counter that he’s hurt a lot because he’s undersized and has developed no further girth? In the NFL if you can’t plant well you will get run over or you will overcompensate and hurt your knees with the strain which seems to be the recurring challenge with him.
So it was a calculated risk for the supposed upside from a pivot to a zone running scheme under Patricia that never manifested.
It’s one thing to miss on consensus talent but where BB leaves himself open to criticism is the big strategic misfires in the proverbial zig over zag. BB is just on a tough streak right now with his bad bets far outweighing his good ones.
So it was a calculated risk for the supposed upside from a pivot to a zone running scheme under Patricia that never manifested.
It’s one thing to miss on consensus talent but where BB leaves himself open to criticism is the big strategic misfires in the proverbial zig over zag. BB is just on a tough streak right now with his bad bets far outweighing his good ones.
He's not really undersized in any meaningful way. He's 6'4/6'5" and 310. Thats basically the prototype size that the pats have looked for a LG. Thuney is 6'5' 305-310. Mankins was 6'4' 310. Neither of them were injury prone.
Strange might be getting hurt a lot, but I dont see how its particularly linked to him being undersized in any way that the historical Pats LGs havent been.
Fair enough on Strange. Might just have been unfounded ramblings from the Patriots Unfiltered crew that I remember.
The Kraft challenge still is to discern how many of the bad bets in this rough run are bad process vs bad luck.
The Kraft challenge still is to discern how many of the bad bets in this rough run are bad process vs bad luck.
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