3 Patriots Most to Blame For Sunday Night’s Loss to Dolphins

2. DeVante Parker

If you didn’t watch the game, DeVante Parker’s stat-line might seem like he had a fine night. And heck, if you have him in fantasy football the 10-plus points you got from a 6-reception, 57-yard night aren’t going to be at blame for your loss.

But make no mistake about it, Parker had a really rough showing.

One of the simplest ways to encapsulate this is his entire rep on the interception Mac Jones threw to Xavien Howard.

This is obviously a designed timing route gone wrong — it looks on the surface like it’s just Mac Jones making a bad choice by throwing to a covered receiver, but this is situation where it’s Parker’s job to be there at the right time.

Parker is 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds. He’s our big-bodied X receiver on the outside. He’s supposed to be capable of using his physical tools to be there at the right time.

And on this rep? It’s hard to tell if it’s a lazy rep or he just such a poor job that it looks lazy, but either way it’s awful.

He lets Howard force him all the way to the sideline on his release without putting up any kind of a fight. So already he’s made this play about as difficult as it can be.

And from there Parker gets totally manhandled. Even though he sees the ball coming before Howard does, he’s not able to make anything resembling progress toward getting free and working back to it for the reception.

Whether this was Parker being soft or Parker being lazy, either one is unacceptable — especially when you’re not making any big plays and contributions to make up for it.