The Patriots’ Matt Patricia-led offense is an absolute disaster so far, which is not a surprise.
It was all anybody was talking about in the preseason in Foxboro and the area: Would the Patriots’ 2022 offense, “led” by the “brain trust” of Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, work its way out of all the struggles we saw in training camp and in the preseason?
In New England’s opener against the Dolphins, the initial answer appears to be… NO.
It was reported earlier today that Patricia, the former New England defensive coordinator and disgraced Lions head coach, would be the official offensive play-caller.
Well, against the Dolphins, there was this interception by safety Jevon Holland on a Mac Jones attempt to DeVante Parker…
The offense was the primary question I posed when looking at the Patriots coming into the 2022 season, and I was most certainly not alone. Based on early returns, Bill Belichick will have to turn this car around sooner than later.
Skip Bayless believes Tom Brady is somewhere out there laughing at the Patriots’ “comical” offensive situation.
New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick is trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat with the dual offensive play-calling roles of Matt Patricia and Joe Judge.
Some are already dubbing it a train wreck in the making, while others are willing to step back and let the process play out before rushing to judgement. However, FOX Sports analyst Skip Bayless believes the current situation in New England right now is “comical.”
According to Bayless, it’s so funny that Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, the former longtime Patriot, is somewhere out there laughing at the entire situation.
During a recent episode of Undisputed, Bayless said, “I pity this kid [Mac Jones] when he’s got Matt Patricia and Joe Judge in his ear, and he’s not even sure who’s who, right? …They lost a playoff game in which Bill Belichick’s defense gave up 47 points [to the Buffalo Bills]. You sure about this genius label? Somewhere, Tom Brady is chuckling. He’s chuckling over this whole scenario because this is comical.”
Things aren’t necessarily ideal for the Patriots right now trying out two different play-callers in the second week of preseason football.
Of course, it could be a situation where Belichick already has a No. 1 guy in mind, and he’s ensuring that his second option gets experience as well as a possible backup in an emergency situation. The coach’s lips are sealed tighter than Fort Knox when it comes to reasoning for anything he does for the most part.
All we can go on is the eye test.
The Patriots offense looked fine in the preseason opener against the New York Giants with backups Bailey Zappe and Brian Hoyer playing quarterback.
And the first-team offense finally started to find a rhythm this week at joint practices with the Carolina Panthers.
Who knows? Bayless could be right. Maybe Brady is somewhere out there laughing and hoping for the downfall of his former team. Or, maybe the seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback has moved on to bigger and better things, like trying to lead the Buccaneers to another championship.
Patriots rookie receiver Tyquan Thornton came out of the gate hot in his NFL debut — both as a target, and as a blocker.
Baylor receiver Tyquan Thornton ran a 4.28-second 40-yard dash at the 2022 scouting combine, and that — plus Thornton’s tape — intrigued the Patriots enough to select him with the 50th overall pick in the second round of the draft. No mere speedster, Thornton totaled 143 catches for 2,242 yards and 19 touchdowns over four seasons for the Bears, and if his preseason debut is any indication, Thornton may have a transformative effect on New England’s offense.
There was this shake-and-bake of Giants cornerback Andrew Adams, which would have been a deep completion from backup quarterback Brian Hoyer were it not for Adams’ illegal contact…
Of course, if you want to get more playing time, it also helps if you prove to be a willing blocker. Thornton, all 6-foot-3 and 189 pounds of him, proved early on to be just such a player.
Patriots getting 2nd round pick #11 Tyquan Thornton involved in the run game early. Bringing him inside to fit up on the Duo run. pic.twitter.com/MeA1i7bNlq
“Number one thing is, you’ve got to consider what the player does and how the player is going to help you,” Patriots Director of Player Personnel Matt Groh said of Thornton just after he was drafted. “You want to get faster. Just like if you want to get tougher, you’d better get tough guys. You want to get faster, you’d better get fast guys. I don’t know how many guys out there are faster than Tyquan. So, we’re really excited to be able to add him and his explosive playmaking.”
The Patriots’ offense looked awful for the most part in early training camp, and there are still things to be worked out with the Matt Patricia/Joe Judge “brain trust,” but Thornton seems to have the knack for transcending such things.
Seven months after they fired him, the Giants will come face-to-face with Joe Judge when they take on the Patriots this Thursday night.
The New York Giants just can’t seem to shale their recent past.
This week, in their first preseason game against the New England Patriots up in Foxborough, the Giants will be facing former head coach Joe Judge.
“I’m excited to see him. He’s the reason why I’m in this building,” cornerback Darnay Holmes told reporters. “Salute to that guy. Salute to (former Giants general manager Dave) Gettleman, salute to those who came before me. At the end of the day, it’s another opponent, another match, and we’re just excited to see where we’re at as a team and as coaches.”
Judge reunited with the Patriots and his old boss, Bill Belichick, after he was fired by the Giants in January. In two years as the head coach of Big Blue, Judge went 10-23 and rather than continue down what was seen as a murky path, the Giants decided to let Judge go.
Before Judge took the Giants job in 2020, he was the Pats’ special teams coordinator among other assignments for eight years under Belichick.
Judge will not be running special teams this time around, however. He is listed as an offensive assistant/quarterbacks coach.
Belichick has not named an offensive coordinator to replace Josh MacDaniels, who left Foxborough to become the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Matt Patricia will serve as both offensive line coach and play caller to start the season for New England.
The Patriots’ offense, now led by Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, looks awful. Will it matter when the regular season starts?
Well, we could have guessed that when the New England Patriots went from Josh McDaniels running their offense to some odd combination of Matt Patricia and Joe Judge doing it, things would get a bit weird. McDaniels, one of the brightest offensive minds in the NFL, is now the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, and Bill Belichick brought Patricia and Judge back into the fold to replace him.
We last remember Patricia (Belichick’s defensive coordinator from 2012-2017) as the Lions’ head coach, and the guy who tore apart Detroit’s defense by telling everyone to get off his lawn. Judge, who worked with Belichick on special teams and with receivers from 2012-2019, is best remembered for his time as the New York Giants’ head coach, and the wonderful quarterback surrenders (we won’t call them “sneaks”) that resulted from that decision.
Through training camp, the bad news from Foxboro is that the offense, led by second-year quarterback Mac Jones, looks entirely out of sorts.
A play reflective of a tough day for the Patriots’ offense: To finish 1-on-1s on a “got to have it” play, Mac Jones tries to connect with DeVante Parker in windy conditions — and Joejuan Williams picks it off.
“Every day is a challenge,” Belichick said on Tuesday about the challenges of installing a new offense. “We just try to build on yesterday, and do what we can do today to get better, and build on it tomorrow. At different points in time, we take stock of where we are and decide whether we add more in this area, or add more in that area, or whatever it happens to be. We try to do things we think are most important and most necessary that will help us win. That’s just kind of what we do.
“You can get everything in and not execute it very well, or you can get in less and hopefully do it better. That’s usually the way it works, or there’s somewhere in between. I’d say usually, we fall somewhere in between: don’t get in everything we want, but feel like the things that we can do, at least we’re doing it at a competitive level. Not saying it’s great, but at least we can go out there and do it. So, we’ll see.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, and Belichick went into more detail on Tuesday.
Belichick: “Look…We all have things we can improve in. There’s some plays the quarterback could play better. There’s some plays the quarterback is right and there’s a breakdown in protection. There’s some plays the quarterback is right and there’s a breakdown in the route.”(2/2)
But will any of this matter when it’s time to play the games for real on *checks calendar* Sunday, September 11? That’s when the Patriots play the Dolphins at Hard Rock Stadium on the first Sunday of the regular season. More imperatively, the Patriots play the Giants in their first preseason game on Thursday night.
Legendary offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia, who coached with Belichick in New England from 2000-2013 and from 2016-2019 before his retirement, recently said that it’s too early to put a pin in how this offense will look.
Nov 27, 2011; Philadelphia, PA, USA; New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick (L) shakes hands with assistant head coach Dante Scarnecchia (R) after defeating the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field. The Patriots defeated the Eagles 38-20. (Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports)
“I would say this, in fairness to everyone, I just think this is the wrong time to evaluate it.,” Scarnecchia told Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald on Monday. “The pads have come on, but they’re not playing real football yet. Whenever they play the Giants, we’ll have a better idea where this thing is. Even at that point, it’s not totally fair to say they can’t [do it].
“I think there’s a [three-game preseason] process at hand, where we’ll have a better idea where this thing is going… What doesn’t look good in training camp early, has no bearing on anything.”
One thing that’s different (at least reportedly) is that the Patriots’ new offensive brain trust wants to implement more wide zone running concepts with pre-snap motion as a big part of things. That would ostensibly put the Pats in the same boat as Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay as architects of some of the more complex run games you’ll see in the NFL.
Scarnecchia shot down the idea that the Patriots weren’t doing this already.
“I can tell you without a doubt, we ran the outside zone play,” he told Guregian. “What we didn’t run off that action are the bootlegs off that, which is what you’re seeing from San Francisco, the Rams, all those teams where that came from. And why didn’t we do that?”
We all know why they didn’t do that. Tom Brady and boot-action really don’t go together, and what works for Tom Brady is what you’re going to run. But Mac Jones is no more a threat to bedevil a defense with boot-action than Brady ever was. Jones is not a mobile quarterback at all. He didn’t leave the pocket at Alabama unless he was pressured by the defense to do so, and in his first season with the Patriots, Jones had just 21 dropbacks that resulted in him leaving the pocket to make a throw from play-action. Per Sports Info Solutions, he was pressured on 13 of those dropbacks. Overall, he completed 10 of 21 boot-action attempts for 120 yards, 78 air yards, and a touchdown. Those 21 dropbacks ranked 29th in the NFL.
There is a reason that Mac Jones’ coaches have never tried to make him a boot quarterback. That’s not what he does!
“Yeah, I think we have a lot of room to grow here,” Jones said on August 2. “The goal for me is to not run the ball and throw it so, I think our offensive line is doing a good job, and we just have to get on the same page.”
As to the entire structure of this “new offense,” which includes more tight splits for the receivers (a Sean McVay staple), Jones did not sound entirely convinced.
“I try to just get us in the best play with the tools I’ve been given. Right now we’re just trying to run our base plays I think and just kind of see it on film. That’s the biggest part, like I said, every offense has a system where they can change the play and we have that too. So when we get there, we’ll get there but right now, it’s more about the fundamentals.”
In the end, Scarnecchia said (and he would certainly know), Belichick is not the type to stick to what does not work. Which means that if this particular playbook needs to be set on fire, he’ll be the first to do it. Scarnecchia also said that the Patriots tried rolling Brady out years ago, realized it didn’t work, and moved on.
“I’d say we were as good a team at running the outside zone to the open side, the non-tight end side, as anybody in football,” Scarnecchia. “And we were good at running it to the tight end side when we had a good enough tight end to block it – Rob Gronkowski. So we ran it.
“We ran it out of two-back sets a lot with Sony Michel [in 2018] … We ran toss-crack, we ran outside zone, we ran the gap runs inside, whatever we felt like we could do, we did.”
The Patriots were one of the NFL’s most effective two-back teams in 2021, with halfbacks Damien Harris and Rhamondre Stevenson, and fullback Jakob Johnson. Now, Johnson is with McDaniel in Las Vegas, and the Patriots don’t have a fullback at all.
That’s a lot of change — perhaps unnecessary and counter-productive change — for an offense that didn’t really need it. Is this anything more than a couple of coaches being allowed to goof around with concepts at the expense of their players?
Very soon, Belichick will have to take inventory of the offense he’s allowed his underlings to promote. And it seems quite likely that he’ll have to take the whole thing out of their hands, and have them adapt to what actually works, sooner than later.
New England is likely to push more responsibility onto Matt Patricia’s plate.
Matt Patricia is expected to serve as the New England Patriots’ de facto offensive coordinator and play-caller, according to The Athletic’s Jeff Howe.
Patricia, the team’s offensive line coach, has served as the play-caller for most of the team’s 11-on-11 drills, with quarterbacks coach Joe Judge relaying plays in 7-on-7 drills. Head coach Bill Belichick has lent a hand in both settings — and has sometimes even relayed the plays himself.
Patricia said the plays have mostly been scripted ahead of time as the team installs a new offense this offseason. The entire offensive staff has worked together to formulate that script. And though New England is working through a unique offensive coaching structure to start training camp, the Patriots are likely to lean more and more on Patricia as their de facto offensive coordinator.
As Matt Patricia has called the vast majority of Patriots offensive plays in training camp — with Joe Judge and Bill Belichick occasionally working in — the continued expectation is for Patricia to be the play caller/de facto OC once the season starts, according to a source.
Patricia was a senior adviser for the Patriots in 2021 after serving as the Detroit Lions coach from 2018 to 2020. Before that, he was New England’s defensive coordinator and play-caller from 2012 to 2017.
Day 2 of New York Giants training camp practice has come and gone, so here are 10 quick takeaways.
After a successful first day of training camp practice on Wednesday, the New York Giants were back at it again on Thursday. This time, they focused on areas outside of the red zone (although red zone drills were again included).
Head coach Brian Daboll met with reporters before practice started and then it was off to the races.
Here’s a look at 10 quick takeaways from Day 2 of training camp practice.
The New York Giants lost 13 games in 2021, including seven games in which Joe Judge’s squad held the lead at some point.
The New York Giants finished the 2021 regular season with a record of 4-13 and hardly seemed competitive in most of those games. The 13 losses were also the most in franchise history.
But would it surprise you to know that in addition to their four wins, the Giants also held a lead in seven of the 13 games they lost?
It’s true. Joe Judge’s squad blew seven leads, which was tied for third-most in the league alongside the Minnesota Vikings, Detroit Lions, Seattle Seahawks and Chicago Bears.
# of games a team lost or tied in 2021 despite holding a lead a some point:
10 – CAR 9 8 – BAL 7 – MIN, DET, NYG, SEA, CHI 6 – IND, CLE, HOU 5 – SF, PHI, MIA, LAC, ATL, WAS 4 – KC, ARI, JAX, DEN, LV, PIT 3 – NO, LAR, NE, NYJ, CIN 2 – GB, TEN 1 – DAL, TB
Ironically, one lead that wasn’t blown by the Bears came during their 29-3 dismantling of the Giants in Week 17.
The only two teams who blew more leads than the Giants in 2021 were the Baltimore Ravens, who choked eight times, and the Carolina Panthers, who squandered a remarkable 10 leads throughout the regular season.
Following the season, both general manager Dave Gettleman and head coach Joe Judge were relieved of their duties. Gettleman’s exit was disguised as a quiet retirement.
New York Giants safety Xavier McKinney admits there were several “disagreements” with the previous regime.
Things have not gone well for the New York Giants over the past decade but under the watch of general manager Dave Gettleman and head coach Joe Judge, they bottomed out. Literally.
The Giants hit low-water marks in both 2020 and 2021, including a franchise-worst 13 losses a season ago.
Understandably, that prompted yet another regime change. Gone are both Gettleman and Judge, and in are Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll. That’s been refreshing for the players, including safety Xavier McKinney.
Although McKinney publicly supported Judge and his staff at the time, he recently acknowledged “disagreements” with the previous regime. That includes defensive coordinator Patrick Graham.
“I think a lot of times we weren’t seeing eye to eye on certain things,” McKinney told the New York Post. “Last year, my first three or four games, I was barely playing. There were some games where I didn’t even play the whole first half. I think people forget that, too. It was a lot of different things, we had our disagreements time to time. I’m happy with our new staff, man, I’m happy with what they’re doing with us and how they’re communicating with us.”
Judge prided himself on his ability to communicate with players but since his departure, we’ve learned that wasn’t exactly his strong suit. And all of those “teachers” he hired? They struggled with communication as well.
In McKinney’s eyes, things have already changed drastically under Schoen, Daboll and the new staff.
“They’ve done a great job of taking care of us. Dabes has done a great job of communicating with us,” McKinney said. “Some coaches, they’ll ask you like, ‘Are you good?’ And then you say, ‘Nah, not really,’ and then we’ll do the same thing. So all right, why did you ask me if you weren’t gonna change anything? So like with him, he’ll ask, and he’ll actually stand true to that. When you give everybody your word and you actually live by it, that means a whole lot more when you don’t.”
As for the new-look Giants, McKinney is optimistic. And he shared that optimism in a message to Big Blue fans.
“I know it hasn’t been the best the last couple of years or so. But I think we’re really gonna change things around. Just be prepared, and we’re gonna make you guys proud. I appreciate you all for sticking with us, I know it’s been rough, but we’re gonna turn this thing around,” McKinney said.
Bleacher Report does not have high expectations for Kadarius Toney in 2022, suggesting he will be the New York Giants’ biggest bust.
Bleacher Report released a list of the one player most likely to be a bust in 2022 for each NFL team. 32 players were chosen for this list, and, for the New York Giants, they selected Kadarius Toney.
Those bouts of immaturity and nagging injuries ultimately derailed what could have been a promising first season for the 23-year-old.
Toney may be one of the more athletic wideouts in the league, but until he is able to become more consistent and avoid injuries, he’ll remain one of the more frustrating players on Big Blue’s roster.
Now, everyone can agree that Toney had a disappointing rookie season. He only appeared in 10 games and was ejected from the Giants’ game against the Dallas Cowboys for throwing a punch.
Here’s more of what Bleacher Report led with regarding Toney:
The New York Giants should be disappointed with Kadarius Toney’s rookie year. After expending the No. 20 overall pick on the Florida receiver, Toney failed to meet expectations despite ample opportunity to thrive with the club.
Disappointed? Sure. Everyone wants their top pick in the draft to make an immediate impact. But let’s also consider the state of the Giants last season. Even if Toney doesn’t get injured, he’s still young. He was indoctrinated into the NFL under Dave Gettleman and Joe Judge. Judge may have spent seven years under Bill Belichick, but he had zero head coaching experience and clearly did not pick up what Belichick has done consistently for decades.
It’s absolutely possible that Toney has a bust of a season, but it’s also entirely plausible that he doesn’t. In fact, as long as he keeps his attitude in check, it’s more likely we see Toney have the season everyone wanted him to have last year.
