New England Patriots: 5 observations from soaring victory over NY Jets

New England Patriots have an offensive tackle problem

Let’s start with one of the glaring weaknesses from Sunday’s win.

With mammoth right tackle Trent Brown out, the Patriots offensive line struggled.  Mac Jones was sacked often in early as Yasir Durant didn’t look like he belonged in the NFL.  The Jets defense is fast, but often Durant was left in the dust as Jones didn’t have much time to throw.

Left tackle Isaiah Wynn wasn’t as bad as Durant, but he had some key mistakes in the game as well.  Things eventually settled down as the team made some adjustments in the second half, but as Belichick pointed out, communication was the biggest adjustment.

"“I feel like there’s a lot of challenging things in this league,” the coach said.  “You’ve got to step up and meet those challenges.  We’ve all got to do a better job.  We’ve got to coach better, play better and handle the crowd noise.  There’s going to be crowd noise in every game on the road this year, won’t be the last time we deal with it.”"

Was it communication issues or did the Patriots just not have the right players out there in absence of Brown?

If the team was to have their best five out there, they would’ve and should’ve moved Michael Owenu to right tackle and utilized Ted Karras at guard.  That would’ve been the team’s best five, at least at critical times in the game. The Patriots also had Yodny Cajuste active for the first time in his NFL career.

There were other options besides sticking with Yasir Durant as long as they did.  But, with the team in control of the game, perhaps Belichick and the coaching staff felt it best to let the offensive line work through the communication issues.

The key takeaway from the game is just how important Trent Brown is to the success of the offensive line.  They will get things together as the season moves forward.