The New England Patriots made the Detroit Lions look like a good team with a 26-10 loss Sunday night at Ford Field.
Coming off a loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, Sunday night’s matchup against the Detroit Lions was supposed to be a beatdown. That is was, except it happened to the New England Patriots.
That’s right. Matt Patricia, Matt Stafford and the Lions stepped all over Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the Patriots in a game that was supposed to be a spot where the team bounced back. They weren’t supposed to fall to 1-2 on the season and they certainly weren’t supposed to look like the Patriots of the 80s.
What’s scary is even those teams looked more talented than the team that took the field in front of a national audience, a large perception of which celebrating the New England Patriots demise.
Another week, another loss, another overreaction. Okay, it’s only Week 3, but its more how this team looks that is concerning. The first concern is offensively.
With Josh Gordon standing on the sidelines and Julian Edelman serving a suspension, the greatest quarterback in team history just didn’t have anyone to throw to. And yet, the team was close to trading Rob Gronkowski to those same Lions prior to the season. Imagine the lack of weapons if that would’ve happened?
More concerning is the play calling. That’s on both Josh McDaniels and Tom Brady. Getting behind in the last two games due to a lack of offensive execution is something we are not used to seeing. Yes, there is a lack of talent due to the current wide receiver depth situation, but the team is helping defenses by just not executing.
"“Yeah, two weeks where you get behind and just not making enough plays early in the game and we’re behind and we’re just fighting all day,” Brady said following the game. “So, it’s no way to play football, it’s no way to execute at a very high level and we’re just not doing anything well enough.”"
With his type of anemic offense, the Patriots are starving for some kind of spark from somewhere. It just may be Josh Gordon. One thing is for sure, with how the defense is not performing, Brady will have to someone triple the 133 yards he passed for Sunday night on a game-by-game basis for this team to even be competitive.
Speaking of the defense, here is concern No. 2.
No defensive urgency at all
Once again, the New England Patriots defense just let a team go up and down the field and do whatever they want, especially on third down.
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Usually, when an offense struggles, the defense can pick up the team. That is not the case with these Patriots. With Tom Brady and his lack of playmakers struggling, the defensive unit led by Devin McCourty, Stephon Gilmore and Dont’a Hightower have to step up and show some kind of urgency.
McCourty, Hightower and Duron Harmon have been on this team long enough to know how to respond to losing games as badly as they did in Jacksonville and again last night. The concern here, is they just may not have the players to do anything about it this season.
The underneath stuff, the lack of pass rush, the lack of athleticism in the linebacker group. Shall we go on?
Add to that Bill Belichick getting out-coached the last two games and it feels hopeless right now. Players like Harmon aren’t totally concerned yet, but he knows his unit has to get their acts together.
"“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m worried, because we feel like the reason why we’re in this situation is because of ourselves,” Harmon said. “I mean, we have to tip our hats to the Lions, because obviously they played better than us. But we know we obviously can play a lot better. We have to get ourselves out of this mess and nobody’s going to help us, we have to do it ourselves.”"
Like the offense, the defense needs a spark from one of their veterans. That spark needs to come from Dont’a Hightower.
Bill Belichick has finally loss his way
A lot of the issues we are seeing is a direct result of the personnel decisions Bill Belichick has made.
The New England Patriots head coach traded away Brandin Cooks, allowed Danny Amendola to walk away and tried to trade Rob Gronkowski.
We won’t even talk about his decisions (or lack thereof) on the defensive side of the football. It seems like we’ve been talking about that lack of talent for the last few seasons, but the last two games, it has been ever so apparent.
In Bill we trust. We did. But, right now it doesn’t seem like his magic is reaching out to the players in that locker room. They are saying the right things, but it is not translating on the field. Losing to the Jacksonville Jaguars…OK. But getting stomped by the Detroit Lions the very next week is a problem.
It’s a coaching problem. If Bill Belichick is the coach we think he is, he will find a way to get his team to play better. That of course, will happen when he coaches better.
Do your job Belichick.
The New England Patriots are on to Miami. Either this team will have a revival, or it will truly show the engine is fueling out.