Looking at the Patriots 2023

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While I don't have a lot of faith in Andrew Callahan, I don't like to read stuff like that.

Jones and Judge yelling and swearing at each other?

What makes me believe that his sources were on point was the part how Patricia called the
first Buffalo game "scared" of a blowout.

I can buy that really happened and it wasn't the only time. The tail end of that Cincy game showed that the OC was going
to ride or die on the back of Mondre when the situation was ripe to bust somebody open off a play-action and
the Bengals knew who would get the ball and were waiting. Bang, fumble. He was afraid to throw the ball and it
arguably led to a crushing loss. Stevenson's usage was excessive down the stretch. Not his fault, though. Kid showed a
ton of heart unlike his OC.
 
Hawg73 said:
While I don't have a lot of faith in Andrew Callahan, I don't like to read stuff like that.

Jones and Judge yelling and swearing at each other?

What makes me believe that his sources were on point was the part how Patricia called the
first Buffalo game "scared" of a blowout.

I can buy that really happened and it wasn't the only time. The tail end of that Cincy game showed that the OC was going
to ride or die on the back of Mondre when the situation was ripe to bust somebody open off a play-action and
the Bengals knew who would get the ball and were waiting. Bang, fumble. He was afraid to throw the ball and it
arguably led to a crushing loss. Stevenson's usage was excessive down the stretch. Not his fault, though. Kid showed a
ton of heart unlike his OC.
Click to expand...
Jerry Glanville said once that a Prevent Defense "prevents" you from winning. Evidently so does a Prevent Offense.
 
HSanders said:
and they were still in the playoff hunt at the end of the season...pretty amazing.
Click to expand...

This. Which is a point that often gets lost in the shuffle and it doesn't hurt to be reminded of it.

When our "most dysfunctional season" in the last two decades plus was close to .500 and the playoffs then things could
have been a lot worse.

I don't think the Head Nurse at Shady Acres should bother waiting for the van from Foxboro to drop Bill off
anytime soon. He'll get this sorted out by the start of next season by being the best ever at what he does and
we aren't nearly as far away as some people think.

It was a shitty year in many ways, but that's in the past and dwelling on it is useless.

We're on to 2023.
 
chevss454 said:
Scathing article by Andrew and Karen about Patricia and Judge. It seems the team was in lockstep with Jones' feelings about them.
:fire::fire::fire::fire::fire::fire:


View: https://twitter.com/_AndrewCallahan/status/1618601650448486400
Click to expand...

Saw this posted on Facebook - hope I'm not overstepping in case the author is on here. If I am, I apologize. Here's the reader's digest version:

  • This morning, a bombshell report dropped. And it paints a pretty damning picture of why things were so bad this last season.
  • Since this article is behind a paywall, I'll break it down for you because I think it's pretty crucial information. It also explains why we saw players like Mac and Bourne lose their cool throughout the year.
  • Quite a few Patriots players & staffers shared insights into what went on behind the scenes for this story. In their words: The offense was worse than numbers could capture. It was broken. Dysfunctional. Riddled with distrust.
  • Basically, from the spring practices, the distrust started to brew. There was no cohesion between the offensive coaching staff and players started to worry that they didn't know what they were doing. Even before training camp started.
  • In the offseason, the Patriots decided to change the offense entirely to have more condensed formations, outside zone runs, and bootleg play action passes. A big departure from what they had run the previous 23 seasons.
  • It went horribly right from the get go. And they were forced to scrap most of the play action passes because they couldn't get them in sync. Which caused even more doubt in the coaching staff.
  • Under McDaniels in training camp, the Patriots would install 25 pages of run plays, 25 pages of passing plays, and upwards of 40 pages of offensive line protection schemes. At every practice.
  • Under Judge & Patricia, that was cut in half.
  • “A lot of guys were getting worried because when we were in the middle of camp, we were wondering what the plan was for our offense. Because we hadn’t put enough install in,” a source said. “We had a couple protections, a couple core run plays, but our pass game didn’t have much in it.”
  • The idea was to play faster. Reduce the amount of concepts & reads and just make it ultra simple for everyone. But the coaches had never coached this type of offense before.
  • And when some of the current players, who have experience in this offense type, started to ask questions, it led to even more distrust. The coaches couldn't explain it, and when pressed to do so, would push the players aside by saying "We'll get to that when we get to that"
  • The result of trying to do this simplification was that the coaching staff was constantly chasing their tail and making 1,000 adjustments a week. Instead of being prepared and tackling everything head on, they were constantly having to fix problems (I alluded to this at one point last season)
  • On August 8th, David Andrews had to pull the offense aside in training camp and rally the players to have patience with the coaching staff. In that practice, Mac had dropped back to pass 23 times. He was sacked 4 times and only completed 10 passes. Frustrations were boiling over repeatedly. And they knew back then that they were going to have to overcome A LOT in order to get through the season.
  • For some unknown reason, Patricia decided to change their pass protection system from a numbers based system to a word based system. And it confused the hell out of everyone. The offensive line was unable to figure out who to block, especially on blitzes, and it left Mac constantly dealing with free rushers.
  • Eventually, it wore him down. He started to expect to get hit on every play. He lost confidence in their ability to block for him and he was ducking constantly, anticipating the next sack.
  • Another fatal flaw that deteriorated Mac's trust was they never schemed up contingency plays as a way to navigate when the defense generated pressure.
  • In most offensive schemes, when a QB diagnoses pressure before the snap, he can alert the offense to alter the play. This will create a receiver who will alter his route from the play call to a "hot route"
  • The hot route is designed for the receiver to get off the line of scrimmage and immediately look for the ball. This gives the QB an outlet to dump the football if the defense gets free rushers.
  • And this is something the Patriots rarely, if ever, schemed up properly throughout the year. Contributing to Mac looking like he was completely lost and overmatched. If there was pressure, you saw him constantly trying to dump the ball to receivers who were never even looking for it.
  • Another issue with the offense was the lack of cohesion between the pass & run games, as well as the play calling between the two.
  • Play calling is an art. You call certain plays to set up future plays... you try to get the defense guessing what you're doing next, and then do the opposite. The Patriots never did this. They were constantly just plucking random plays out of the call sheet and seeing if something would stick.
  • One thing they whiffed on terribly for most of the year was play action. Play action is everything to a passing game. If you never run play action, it makes life immensenly easier for an opposing defense. They can just sit in their schemes and assignments and wait for you.
  • But because of the ineptitude of the coaching staff, they couldn't block play action correctly when trying to implement the Shanahan system.
  • Eventually they switched back to the gap/man blocking schemes of years past. And when they did, they averaged 5.7 yards per carry (7th best in NFL).
  • But they were scrambling to get the gap blocking scheme implemented, which left them no time to integrate play action blocking back into the scheme as well.
  • They didn't get back to that until damn near the end of the season. But when they finally did, Mac went 9 of 9 for 92 yards and a TD off play action in the Buffalo game.
  • For the season, the Patriots ranked:
    27th in quick passing game concepts
    24th in play action passes
    31st in bootleg passes
    22nd in RPO concepts
  • But they ranked 2nd in just dropping back and looking for open receivers and 3rd in throwing screen passes. Just a horrible way to run your offense.
  • FWIW, the teams left in the postseason rank highly in something other than drop back or screen passing concepts.
    Bengals are 1st in quick game %
    49ers are 7th in quick game %
    Eagles are 1st in RPO %
    Chiefs are 5th in RPO %
  • One person who seemed to duck the bulk of the criticism was Joe Judge. Most of the blame fell on Patricia when it came to the media and fan base. But internally, things were much different. Judge was a problem.
  • The players couldn't stand him, especially Mac. The coaches were in the same boat. Judge would constantly overstep his bounds and try to coach other positions in practice, leaving the other assistant coaches to have to correct his (incorrect) talking points to the players.
  • Belichick would constantly blast Judge in practice and it was common for Judge and Mac to trade profanity laced outbursts. Eventually leading to the deterioration of their relationship entirely. By the time Mac returned from his sprained ankle, Judge was seen less and less in the QB meeting room. Eventually being phased out entirely.
  • “(Judge) would speak extra loudly in meetings, trying to project like he was the guy,” another source said. “And I think that kind of rubbed people the wrong way.”
  • Eventually things came to a head after the Vikings game. The general sentiment in the locker room was that they should have won that game if it wasn't for Patricia's "scared" and conservative play calling. "That game was bullshit", one source said.
  • Jakobi Meyers and Rhamondre Stevenson were playing hurt throughout the season, and constantly overworked. Meyers played through a tear in his knee that happened midseason, and Stevenson "was more hurt than he let on".
  • Both players tried to gut it out for the sake of their teammates, but they were run into the ground by Patricia and Judge. Which contributed heavily to their late game mental lapses that cost the Patriots more than one game.
  • The players all backed Meyers and Stevenson in those moments though, feeling like they were put in the impossible situation (just like everyone else) of having to overcome their opponent every week AND their inept coaching staff.
  • So why did Belichick do this? The general sentiment from the people quoted in the article is that he just completely underestimated how difficult this would be. He believed Patricia and Judge were better coaches than they are, and that they would be able to pick it up and run with it.
  • One source said: I love coach, but he fu*ked us
  • After reading this article, so many things make more sense now. Mac's outbursts throughout the season. The players constantly making uncharacteristic mistakes. The consistent ineptitude. The ineffectiveness of pretty much everything. The players speaking out in the media and behind the scenes.
  • This is why the hire of Bill O'Brien was so important. Not just from an X's & O's standpoint... but in righting this ship and getting it back on course. He's someone who understands the Patriot Way and will understand what things need to look like going forward.
  • It's crazy that a lot of us knew this was a horrible idea when it happened... not many could have predicted just how bad it would be though.
 
sg14 said:
Heard there's a story about an angry Dave Andrews in that article but I can't read the article without providing an email.
Can someone relay that Andrews story for me?
Thanks
Click to expand...

Here is the text direct from the article:

On Aug. 8, Patriots center David Andrews gathered the offense after its worst offensive practice of training camp. Temperatures had climbed close to 100 degrees on the field, and the offense completely wilted, the first sign it would be unable to withstand the heat of an NFL regular season.

Mac Jones had dropped back to pass 23 times against the first-team defense, completed 10 throws, taken four would-be sacks and scrambled once. All three quarterbacks had thrown interceptions.

Andrews was animated, hot at the center of his huddle, as he unleashed frustrations for more than a minute. In the following days, a quieter, calmer message reached the players: patience. Not with each other, but Patricia and Judge.

A new reality for the offense under their leadership had begun to sink in, inexplicable as it was. Players would practice, meet, study and play harder, even if it felt hopeless. And like any square peg jammed into a round hole, cracks in the surrounding structure became inevitable.
Click to expand...
 
HSanders said:
and they were still in the playoff hunt at the end of the season...pretty amazing.
Click to expand...

damn right. That stuff makes my blood boil. I understand BB not wanting to throw Patricia or Judge under the bus but by waiting til the end of the season to make changes, they threw themselves under the bus.

Next year, baby!
 
MaineMimi said:
Saw this posted on Facebook - hope I'm not overstepping in case the author is on here. If I am, I apologize. Here's the reader's digest version:

  • This morning, a bombshell report dropped. And it paints a pretty damning picture of why things were so bad this last season.
  • Since this article is behind a paywall, I'll break it down for you because I think it's pretty crucial information. It also explains why we saw players like Mac and Bourne lose their cool throughout the year.
  • Quite a few Patriots players & staffers shared insights into what went on behind the scenes for this story. In their words: The offense was worse than numbers could capture. It was broken. Dysfunctional. Riddled with distrust.
  • Basically, from the spring practices, the distrust started to brew. There was no cohesion between the offensive coaching staff and players started to worry that they didn't know what they were doing. Even before training camp started.
  • In the offseason, the Patriots decided to change the offense entirely to have more condensed formations, outside zone runs, and bootleg play action passes. A big departure from what they had run the previous 23 seasons.
  • It went horribly right from the get go. And they were forced to scrap most of the play action passes because they couldn't get them in sync. Which caused even more doubt in the coaching staff.
  • Under McDaniels in training camp, the Patriots would install 25 pages of run plays, 25 pages of passing plays, and upwards of 40 pages of offensive line protection schemes. At every practice.
  • Under Judge & Patricia, that was cut in half.
  • “A lot of guys were getting worried because when we were in the middle of camp, we were wondering what the plan was for our offense. Because we hadn’t put enough install in,” a source said. “We had a couple protections, a couple core run plays, but our pass game didn’t have much in it.”
  • The idea was to play faster. Reduce the amount of concepts & reads and just make it ultra simple for everyone. But the coaches had never coached this type of offense before.
  • And when some of the current players, who have experience in this offense type, started to ask questions, it led to even more distrust. The coaches couldn't explain it, and when pressed to do so, would push the players aside by saying "We'll get to that when we get to that"
  • The result of trying to do this simplification was that the coaching staff was constantly chasing their tail and making 1,000 adjustments a week. Instead of being prepared and tackling everything head on, they were constantly having to fix problems (I alluded to this at one point last season)
  • On August 8th, David Andrews had to pull the offense aside in training camp and rally the players to have patience with the coaching staff. In
Click to expand...

Thanks for finding this and bringing it here, MM. Everybody needs to see this bombshell and make of it what they will.

This is a tricky article to process, because I don't trust it's authors, but it certainly plays into what many of us have suspected going
back to TC. I think it has the ring of truth and it wasn't difficult to identify with David Andrews trying really hard to find a way to bring
the team together even while the coaching staff was, apparently, quite divided. And incompetent.

I think about him just breaking down in tears at the post-game presser in Buffalo. At the time, I assumed that he was
upset to be seeing Slater and Dev's last time in uniform, but now I'm thinking that he might have been upset that their last season
had been disrespected and/or defiled by a coaching shitshow and it shouldn't have gone down that way. Maybe it was wasn't
them at all and he just felt incredibly frustrated to have had to live through such a season. I dunno, but one thing for sure was that
he couldn't contain his emotions and he's a man that has always shown a great deal of poise. He just walked out, too, as if he
didn't trust what he might say.

I guess that makes sense now if the article isn't leading us astray.

It also made me think about a BB quote from just a few weeks ago where he admitted that there just wasn't time to make any
changes that would do us any good. I wasn't like we could just tweak a few things. The entire thing had been built on a shaky
foundation. Still, you wonder about his thought process to have trusted it to the point of no return.

It'll be interesting to see if both Judge and Patricia will be booted out. If the article is accurate, then I would say that's a definite and
you can't just move them around. Too much damage.
 
Am I a psycho for reading all of this and feeling... almost... a sense of relief?

Obviously I am not happy because they should have made the playoffs. But I've never liked Joe Judge and I laughed my ass off when the Giants hired him. I was hoping that Patricia's year could have at least been such that he could be moved to another (off the field) position within the organization but if that cannot be, so be it.

My sense of relief (if that is even the right word) is because everything outlined is fixable. And while I would not describe myself as an "In Bill We Trust" guy, I do have some faith that he is likely the one coach who can orchestrate the necessary changes. I'll at least afford him the 2023 season to do so. Fingers crossed.
 
the article reminded me of the sh!tshow during training camp and preseason. I was guilty of "hoping" it wouldn't be this bad.... but it was.

can only get better and lets hope they flesh out the staff with some quality coaches that know how to coach this stuff.
 
Wasn't long ago that Mac was "mouthing off" and he had full support from McCourty and Slater.
 
this team had tremendous character. they dealt with all that on offense, and the defense played their asses off and never pointed fingers. meanwhile we have blubber mc pissypants in buffalo barking at his qb over a rough one game.
 
Hawg73 said:
While I don't have a lot of faith in Andrew Callahan, I don't like to read stuff like that.

Jones and Judge yelling and swearing at each other?

What makes me believe that his sources were on point was the part how Patricia called the
first Buffalo game "scared" of a blowout.

I can buy that really happened and it wasn't the only time. The tail end of that Cincy game showed that the OC was going
to ride or die on the back of Mondre when the situation was ripe to bust somebody open off a play-action and
the Bengals knew who would get the ball and were waiting. Bang, fumble. He was afraid to throw the ball and it
arguably led to a crushing loss. Stevenson's usage was excessive down the stretch. Not his fault, though. Kid showed a
ton of heart unlike his OC.
Click to expand...
It sounds like the way it looked. Matt Patricia seemed to call games like he was afraid of risking anything. In the end all he did was hold the team back from the potential that was there .
 
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