New England Patriots 2021 offensive playbook: Who stays, who goes

The New England Patriots need an overhaul on the offensive side of the football.  Who stays and who goes?

Looking way up at the well-coached Division-leading Buffalo Bills and the emerging Miami Dolphins are the 6-9 New England Patriots.

The 2020 season is mercifully all-but-over for some, gleefully over for millions upon millions of others around the globe. The Tom Brady-less Patriots bit the dust in 2020 and proved those who thought the reason for success was Brady rather than Bill Belichick all along absolutely correct. It clearly was.

Even with a former MVP quarterback Cam Newton leading the offense, the coaching staff demonstrably showed that they were just a mediocre bunch without No. 12 at the helm.

The poor showing by the New England Patriots in 2020 leaves many questions as to how this down-in-the-dumpster team must reshape itself to arise from its current status as irrelevant, to again challenge in the AFC East, the AFC, and maybe someday for another Super Bowl title.

This series will explore who should go and who should stay on this poorly built team. There will be some surprises here. Changes are necessary, whether they will be carried out is another story. First up: the 2020 new England Patriots offense.

The offense was ineffective for most of the season and underperformed with Newton at the helm.

Misguided critics will scapegoat Newton who admittedly didn’t have his best of seasons yet that blame would be misplaced. Much more was wrong elsewhere with this offense that really resulted in Newton’s less than totally inspiring but better than perceived performance. Instead, it’s quite clear that his season was largely dictated by the team around him that was anything but top-grade.

Quite the opposite. Much of this commentary was cited during the season but it requires restating here in summation of all that went right (not much) and wrong with the New England Patriots offense in its first year of the post-Brady era.