Yeah the Texans didn't have a fast turnaround at all. Stroud got really good really quick, but in the 4+ years since Brady left, the Pats have more wins (30) than the Texans (25).
Are the Pats the worst team in the NFL?
- Thread starter ShaneTrot
- Start date
Four wins as their ceiling is interesting given Washington - similarly inept with arguably a worse roster in 2023 - already has 4
Then again, they went out and did a real GM and coaching search and turned over a staggering 65% of the roster.
Seems like a big argument for why this rebuild will take time is centered around “Mayo is a rookie coach, he didn’t have a network and nobody wanted to play for him”.
That means that he needs to be really really good to be worth the disadvantages of not landing good coaches or good players. And he hasn’t been anything approaching good so far.
Let’s not forget that they have been particularly devastated by injuries, starting with their best defensive player and adding their MLB. Then their best all around safety imploded. That’s a lot to lose.
On top of that they lost David Andrews, and their best 2 OLs after him (granted that is not saying much) have been in and out of the lineup due to injuries. That hasn’t helped them.
On top of that they lost David Andrews, and their best 2 OLs after him (granted that is not saying much) have been in and out of the lineup due to injuries. That hasn’t helped them.
I'd take more comfort in this if I thought Andrews was a lock to be back and good next year and I believed Peppers is innocent. I agree it's important context for evaluating this year's team, but it's potentially 2 more 2025 holes to fill unfortunately. I don't think you're suggesting otherwise, but given that this year is about next year in a lot of ways, it's probably (unfortunately) relevant.
It's going to take a while. They will have draft capital (#1 picks are always good currency), but they will need to be almost perfect in nailing the picks.
Andrews was Bruce Armstrong compared to the rest of the line as composed, but he was still bad. He'll cost the Pats $4M off the cap for '25 whether he plays or retires, so that's a sunk cost.
I think Mapu is on his way to mitigating the loss of Peppers.
I think the line being a huge collective mess has been part of the problem. It is one thing if you have one problem spot or one injury, but they have problems at every spot and multiple injuries.
I think it's tricky to judge much of the offense generally b/c line play is so essential and massively impactful to any kind of production on that side of the ball. If there's anyone who does deserve judgment to that end it's without question Wolfe and Mayo. AVP, maybe, but not really. I don't even blame the OL coach. This collection of linemen is pathetic and was CLEARLY so from the jump.
It’s not wrongly. The original post said “The gamethread tone strongly suggests folks are surprised by their record and performance.”
Game threads are game threads. People emote in real time. No one who’s still watching this wreck of a team had any illusion that we would be a good team this season. We’re sick diehards and very eyes wide open. We’re also reacting to OL breakdowns, dropped passes, missed tackles and lousy ref calls. It’s called being a fan.
The non-weeds take is that this team was lousy before the first game kicked off and is even worse now due to injuries and absences.
Aside from developing Maye, no one is sure what exactly the rebuild plan is. Particularly since Wolf was eager to bring back so many guys from last years team.
I don’t know if we’re the very worst team in the NFL. But we’re close to it. We have a handful of guys to dream on for future seasons. Not sure if that’s any better than the other dregs teams.
I think right now what we can say is that Maye performed respectably, maybe even a little better than that, against a good D with a pathetic line and not many weapons on offense. If, and granted at this stage it is ridiculously early and a big, giant IF, they have a guy who can be a Top 10 QB in the league that gives them a huge leg up over some of the other dregs. At least we have something to watch for the rest of the season, which is better than things looked last week.
But obviously they are a long way away from being a playoff contender at this point, and they need help all over the roster.
They do indeed. But - and this is way too early to tell but I'm more hopeful today than I was yesterday - if they've got the right guy at QB, it makes the rest of it so, so much easier.
Maye does not make us better than those teams right now. I watched both of those teams yesterday and the last few weeks. Both are better teams than the Patriots.
In the future, sure. But right now The Patriots are the worst team in the league, with Jax on their heels. London game will certainly be telling.
I was recently in London. They don't deserve the disaster that's coming their way next weekend.
But maybe Lawrence and Maye can put on a show. Who knows.
I agree. We likely have more reason to have hope than our fellow dregs mates. But obviously that doesn't change the awfulness of the here and now.
Between our lousiness and the throwback uniforms, yesterday I was thinking a lot about those early 90s Pats teams. We had cromulent RBs like John Stephens and Leonard Russell. Productive receivers like Irving Fryar and Marv Cook. Good pieces on D like Vincent Brown and Maurice Hurst. And yet those teams were atrocious. Certainly because our QBing was abysmal. But also because aside from the handful of decent players, the rest of the roster was hot garbage.
That's what this 2024 roster looks like to me, save for (hopefully!) the new QB. This roster has a handful of pieces but is mostly garbage. I genuinely think we'll need to turn over 80% of the roster, at the minimum, to field a playoff caliber team in the next couple of seasons.
We also have a much better cap situation than the Panthers or Jaguars, which doesn't make us a better team right now but gives us considerably more upside.
We have to actually use that money and use it well, which is another matter. But hopefully if Maye shows good signs the rest of the season it might give the better free agents a reason to give us a longer look than they seemingly did last offseason.
This is the main key right here. If Maye takes over the rest of the season, the team looks improved even wins some games then real free agents will start to look at New England. No one was looking at them with Brissett starting and the team looking pathetic with him under center.
Yep, I said the same thing yesterday. We need Maye to be good not only for what it means on the field, but also to have something to sell to FAs this coming offseason. The last couple times we went through this exercise we had Bledsoe/Parcells and Bledsoe/Belichick to sell. Not sure Mayo's going to be much of a selling point so we need Maye to be that primary attraction.
You know it's funny that so many people here are ripping Wolf for basically running it back by resigning our own free agents when the talk here in the offseason was that last season this team could have contended for a playoff spot if they hadn't been burdened by atrocious QB play.
I think that was largely a function of the BB effect and how shitty #6/7 playoff teams are. It doesn't take that much to win 8 or 9 games. I think Wolf has been underwhelming, but he really needs a few years to build before we can issue any kind of verdict.
Vastly superior coaching last season compared to this and fewer (although still many) injuries.
While the adage is true that most games in the NFL are one score games, the NYG, IND, and LAC games stand out as winnable contests had Mac and Zappe been anything but total dogshit those days. An Andy Dalton/Davis Mills/Baker Mayfield type (whom BB apparently wanted to sign after trading Mac) likely makes those wins. It's pretty easy to squint and see that despite the team's flaws last year, getting anything but historically poor QB play likely leads to a semi-successful season.
Wolf has run it back with our own FAs but doesn't seem to have taken into account the need to actually improve the talent, especially given that Mayo has been a terrible coach so far. Additionally, all offseason we were told that essentially BB was holding the team back, and now with Wolf making the final calls the team would get additional talent. That very clearly has not happened. We can certainly argue why, and in some cases I can understand how hard it is to bring in good talent to a bad team, but it's still disappointing.
Emotionally it's just rather shocking that the team is demonstrably worse than last year. Firing BB and bringing in a new staff and drafting a new QB was supposed to be the ripping-it-down-to-the-studs part. Instead they've gotten even worse, and Mayo looks to be completely over his head. That's incredibly disheartening.
The good news is that Mac is gone, Maye is going to get his chance, and hopefully things will get better going forward. But goddamn this has absolutely sucked over the past couple of years. Some days it's fun to wish I was back in college, but since that was 1989-1993, I didn't mean college days-era Patriots football either. There's likely a master's thesis-level dissertation to be written making the Tommy Hodson - Bailey Zappe comparison.
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Well when you rip a house down to the studs, it's going to take a while for the house to look better than it was before you started the deconstruction.
Anecdote: I had a wall separating my kitchen from the dining room. Demo'd the wall, allowing light to stream in from the sliding glass door from the dining room to the deck. That light came into the kitchen wonderfully. Ripped out the old cabinets, the works. My wife comes to the house (we were staying at a friend's for a few days while this project was underway) and even though there's tons of crap everywhere as we demo'd, she said, oh I love it.
Love it? It's a disaster.
Yes, I love it, because of the light. The light coming into the kitchen is amazing, and I can SEE what this is going to be.
Well, the Patriots ripped the wall down and put Maye in, and even though there's crap everywhere, you can see the light coming in, and it's glorious.
Anecdote: I had a wall separating my kitchen from the dining room. Demo'd the wall, allowing light to stream in from the sliding glass door from the dining room to the deck. That light came into the kitchen wonderfully. Ripped out the old cabinets, the works. My wife comes to the house (we were staying at a friend's for a few days while this project was underway) and even though there's tons of crap everywhere as we demo'd, she said, oh I love it.
Love it? It's a disaster.
Yes, I love it, because of the light. The light coming into the kitchen is amazing, and I can SEE what this is going to be.
Well, the Patriots ripped the wall down and put Maye in, and even though there's crap everywhere, you can see the light coming in, and it's glorious.
I disagree that last year the Patriots has vastly superior coaching. They're making the same mistakes this year that they made last year. Too many penalties, turnovers, bad clock management certainly has carried over from last year to this year despite the coaching change. Even with that, I'd argue that this team should be 3-3 if Mayo had started Drake Maye from Week 1. I firmly believe they'd have won both the Seattle and the Miami games if they had a QB who could throw the ball down the field.
I love the last line, because that’s exactly how I feel after yesterday. The rest of the rebuild may take time, but I can see the light so all is fine.
One of my all time favorite Pats game memories was the 39-35 loss to the Dolphins that opened the 1994 season. There wasn’t any guarantee that that year was going to be any better than the ones at that preceded it, but I came out of that game thinking that our guy was as good as the guy on the other side so things were bound to get better. I had a similar feeling yesterday. Maye may still have a ways to go, but at least we may have the most important position settled and that can only mean better days are ahead of us.
I’d argue that anointing Mayo and Wolf the successors to BB was a far cry from “ripping it to the studs”
They should have had a clean sweep, start over, legitimate GM and coach search.
BB the GOAT has to go because his personnel decisions have weakened the roster? Let’s promote his #1 and #2 guys and keep the entire front office intact
BB the coach has seen the league pass him by offensively? Let’s gift the HC job to a defensive minded guy with no network and no cache to pull in a gifted offensive assistant. Let’s run it back with a boring and inexperienced AVP who is apparently, according to Mayo, “offensive head coach”.
4-13 roster, one of the weakest in the league - so bad that BB needs to be fired? Let’s not make any major changes except at QB. Run it back with basically the same roster, just swapping out the kicker and 3rd down/rotational RB.
Washington ripped things down. Cleaned house, hired a new GM, head coach, big name OC and turned over the majority of the roster (65%). The Pats did nothing of the sort. They slapped a new coat of cheap paint on a rickety house with a cracked foundation and called it a day.
At the risk of torturing the metaphor, there are two questions here: (1) are you doing a gut rehab or tinkering around the edges/updating fixtures?; and (2) are you using the same Contractor who did you last project, or are going out to find a new guy you;ve never worked with before?
I'm neither defending or attacking Kraft/et al for what they decided-- since I kinda don't have the energy for either side of the argument-- but it seems clear they decided the answer to (1) was: gut rehab. And their answer to (2) was: they didn't like the Contractor who led the last project, but liked and decided to give a shot to some of the people that GC had on their crew.
People here obviously fall out on both sides of whether that was the right way forward. (Me, I'm kinda Switzerland on this one). But whichever side you're on, what they did at least has some internal coherence.
It's interesting to look at Wash as a comparison, but they had to blow it up. New owner, no record of recent success. They were in a perfect position for a total reset. Kraft wants to emulate Pittsburgh, where you somehow keep it rolling and have long tenured guys back to back and keep "the culture".
Chicago is another comparison. They kept their HC, OC and GM as part of the multi year rebuild.
So three different approaches. Will see where it shakes out in 3-4 years.
I agree. I appreciate everything BB did for the franchise but to insist the last few years the coaching was good is ludicrous. How many people were losing their minds over Judge, Patricia, and Achord? I was. This team has been poorly coached since 2021 and the results tell us that. Besides the few good games Mac Jones had last year (Philly, Buffalo game 1, and perhaps the first Miami game) the offense was a tire fire. Borderline unwatchable. Yesterday besides the turnovers is the best I felt about the offense in years. Sure, the defense was good last year but they feasted on bad QBs and had Barmore. People want to rip Mayo and his staff up after 6 games. I have been religiously watching the Pats since about 1978, this is by far the worst offensive line they have ever had. How can you install an offense that has 4 guys playing yesterday who were cut on the 2024 cutdown day? I give them a lot of credit for making bad chicken salad out of this chickenshit.
I've come around to the idea that some things that people ascribe to coaching, such as penalties, are actually much more about talent. Maybe a coach who is keen on Discipline (tm) can help around the margins -- culture of accountability and what not. But for the most part an OLman gets a false start because he's a lousy OLman and penalties are part of the lousiness, not because the head coach isn't enough of a hard ass.
So I suspect the biggest reason the Pats are making similar mistakes as last year is because the vast majority of the roster is as crappy as last year's.
I don't know about others, but I sure never talked that way. The roster has been putrid for a couple seasons running now.
Plus, the OL got worse when Wolf decided to essentially punt on improving it this offseason.
Unfortunately, I think you’re right. It’s a damn shame but age and injuries have probably taken too much of a toll.
I don’t know if they are the worst qteam in the NFL. They are in the bottom tier though. They are also decimated with injuries or NFI related issues (Peppers, Chuks). It’s really hard to survive 6 injuries on the offensive line. This team will likely be near the top of the league (if not the top!) with adjusted games lost.
Mayo and the defensive coaching has taken a big step back strategically and even hustle wise. Losing the GOAT defensive mind in the game, who was still innovating on defense in his 70s, has hurt us. Yes BB the GM and BB the HC were failing, but BB the defensive coach was still a wizard!
Wolf’s draft was questionable to me.
Let’s see what happens to the FA class if Maye looks good. Hopefully he can sign a starting LT and/or RT too. Or he keeps living in a fantasy world where Chuks and Wallace are going to be starting caliber LTs (not sure if this wasn’t just him spinning out of an awful situation or not).
I am not disappointed in the record. It's about what I expected. I would say there was some good stuff with Mayer, but it is such a small sample size. We know nothing about whether he is going to be able to protect the ball, or what he will be like in third and five-plus situations, how he will be with a good team end of a close game...and we won't for awhile. But whether it's talent or coaching they have so many units that look like a mess. More than last year, I think, as the defense seems to be regressing.
I will say that yesterday’s game was one of the most entertaining Pats games in some time. Maye looked bad on some plays and great on others, but at least he gave me a reason to watch. Outside of Maye, there’s hardly anyone on the roster with any entertainment value. Maybe he just had a bad game, but Gonzalez seemed to drop a few notches yesterday after seemingly being able to shut down the other teams’ number one option in the other weeks.
BTW, it doesn’t mean anything at all, but when they pan to Mayo on the sidelines he just sort of looks like he doesn’t know what’s going on. His natural resting face seems to be kind of vacant stare, which doesn’t mean anything at all in practice, but doesn’t make you feel good as a fan.
BTW, it doesn’t mean anything at all, but when they pan to Mayo on the sidelines he just sort of looks like he doesn’t know what’s going on. His natural resting face seems to be kind of vacant stare, which doesn’t mean anything at all in practice, but doesn’t make you feel good as a fan.
To change things up from our messes to another team's messes...
This article today in the Athletic gets into how bad the situation is between Cleveland and Deshaun Watson, points out that a team with cap space could save the Browns a lot of pain, and quotes one league expective speculating that the Patriots or Carolina should command a serious draft haul for trade for Watson and then cutting him. FWIW, as our roster is today, I'm seeing we got ~$137M in cap space next year, and Cleveland is ~$40M on the wrong side of the cap
I'm not going to guess at where this falls between 'very improbable' and 'are you outta your gawd-damned mind?!' But it gives us something to think about and kick around.
Anyway, go ahead and debate what ridiculous number of day 1 picks you'd need to get from the Browns to make their toxic QB and bloated cap sheet go away.
The Pats said they wanted to 'draft and develop' right?
This article today in the Athletic gets into how bad the situation is between Cleveland and Deshaun Watson, points out that a team with cap space could save the Browns a lot of pain, and quotes one league expective speculating that the Patriots or Carolina should command a serious draft haul for trade for Watson and then cutting him. FWIW, as our roster is today, I'm seeing we got ~$137M in cap space next year, and Cleveland is ~$40M on the wrong side of the cap
I'm not going to guess at where this falls between 'very improbable' and 'are you outta your gawd-damned mind?!' But it gives us something to think about and kick around.
Anyway, go ahead and debate what ridiculous number of day 1 picks you'd need to get from the Browns to make their toxic QB and bloated cap sheet go away.
The Pats said they wanted to 'draft and develop' right?
I think there's some merit to this. A tackle who is mediocre has such a small margin for success that they need to get off the ball as quick as possible to make it work. Sometimes to quick. A poor DB is more likely to grab a receiver as he's getting blown by, etc.
Fascinating suggestion. This feels like the sort of thing that the Krafts would not mess with.
But is there any precedent for such deals? I think I'd do it if the price was right.
That article makes it seem as though it would be difficult to align on a deal, though.
They certainly wouldn’t trade for him to be on the roster, but to accept him in a trade and immediately cut him? Doesn’t seem like a big deal if you are getting a bunch of draft capital. Of course, they’d get hammered a bit for not spending the cap on players who are actually on the field, but if no one wants your money anyway, might as well spend it on something. I thought they could have traded for Russell Wilson for similar reasons.
I’d demand their 2024 #1 pick. If they were willing to part with it, an unlikely scenario, then it starts to get a little interesting. Imagine going into next season with Travis Hunter added to the WR corp and an OT like Banks on the OL. Wouldn’t fix everything but could go a long way to jump starting the rebuild, moreso than using cap space on some mediocre vets.
Browns are really in a bad spot here if this version of Watson is here to stay. And the sample size is getting quite large. He flat out sucks. Never would have guessed he would be this bad without a major injury.
So essentially it would be the Pats (or some other team) using their cap space to "buy" a bunch of draft picks from Cleveland, which would then in turn free up a ton of cap space for the Browns in the next few years?
I'm completely unbothered being a fan of the worst team. We should all want the #1 pick. That gives this team the best chance at fetching a big haul via trade. Nail a draft or two with a good QB and you're on your way to Superbowl contender.
We're missing a top player at every level of the defense due to injury.
We're missing a top player at every level of the defense due to injury.
Sounds like it. As always, the devil is in the details, but conceptually I could get behind this.
Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a hell of an idea actually. It's not like we want him on the team. But if they can use $40 million to buy several good draft picks, why not? Right now the Pats and Browns are both 1-5 and it could mean a much faster road to rebuild.
But who knows if anything like this would actually occur.
He has a full no trade so he’d have to be on board with this scheme. Which he might, given that the contract is fully guaranteed and he’ll get paid every penny regardless.
If the Pats traded for him and immediately cut him they’d eat 92m in dead money by my calculation. I guess you could break it up over two years with a post June 1 designation. They’d also have to pay him 92m, which Kraft might not be super enthusiastic about.
It seems implausible as while we have the cap space we also have to field a full roster and the team will want to show progress on the field. You’d need ridiculous draft capital to make it worthwhile.
I agree with this. The penalties = bad coaching take probably has truth to it at lower levels of the sport, but avoiding penalties isn’t really correlated with winning in the NFL. Shula’s teams were always among the least penalized; Madden’s were always among the most; the Pats were up and down the rankings during BB’s tenure.
This is a fun transaction to speculate on but it's almost too fun for it to actually happen. Everyone ends up with egg on their face; even if they'd be better off that's a hard humility pill to swallow. Aside from the teams, not sure why Watson would want this. He basically can't be taken out of the starting job right now. If he's cut and in the wind, given how he's been playing, he's not going to get another starting opportunity.
The easy solution for the Browns is to just bench him. They are screwed by the contract. It would take way too much draft capital to get rid of him in a trade and they’ve already invested 3 first rounders to acquire him. Benching him and running out the clock on the contract is the only path forward. But the owner seems hell bent on making it work on the field.