1. The offense. This was just a disastrous performace by the offense. There is nothing good that can be said about this performance. But some offensive players and deserve to be singled out for special attention.
2. Julian Edelman. At the decisive point in the game where one decent drive would have won it, he is open for a first down and drops the ball.
3. Shaq Mason. The most successful offensive play of the second half was the play where Brady kept a play alive by scrambling behind the line until he spotted Watson deep downfield and hit him for a huge 38 yard gain. Which was called back because Shaq Mason was illegally downfield.
4. Sony "Softer than Charmin" Michel. This guy is a system runner. He gets (most of) the yards that is blocked for him and basically nothing more. And I doubt there are many runners in the league who get caught behind the line of scrimmage more often. On Tennessee's decisive goal line stand in the first half, with the Pats 1st and goal from the 1, they ran Michel for a 1 yard loss, Burkhead for a 1 yard gain, and then Michel for a 2 yard loss before kicking the FG. Should have been 3 runs to Burkhead, or even some kind of outside thing to White if they were going to run in.
5. Josh McDaniels. This man chose, on a key 3rd-and-short, to give the ball to fucking Elandon Roberts, a fucking linebacker. Also, why does McDaniels hate the end around to N'Keal Harry? Their offense is shit, and they ran this play 5 times in the last 3 weeks, for 0, 9, 10, 12, and 18 yards. They ran it only once today, picking up 7. I get that you aren;t winning games by running those kind of trick plays, but if it is one of the few things that works consistently, why not try it a couple more times?
6. Tom Brady. I hate to say it, but in the past he has been able to step up a little bit, even when the offense is bad. Not this year. 6-15 in the second half, for about 60 yards and including a pick 6.
7. Bill Belichick. I hate to say this, too, but Mike Vrabel made an absolute fool of him. He, too, should maybe think about hanging them up, if this is the best he can do. He stood by and watched Vrabel run nearly 2 minutes off of the clock before punting from midfield - 2 minutes the Patriots badly needed, as it turned out. And then his futzing around with the punt return team in the final moments ended whatever chance that Pats might have had to drive for a FG.
The only positive sign in this whole game was the defense. Despite not being matched up well to go against Henry in personnel terms, and despite giving up a ton of yards to him, they allowed only 14 points all game and basically pitched a second half shutout, coming up with some big plays along the way. They were not absolutely perfect, allowing Tennessee to gain first downs and run clock in its final drive, but altogether they played well enough to win this even with a subpar offensive performance. Too bad the offense and the coaching weren't just subpar but disastrous.