Andy Hart explains why not being all-in on Mac Jones could cause more problems for Bill Belichick.
Do you have to get bad to get good? As in really bad?
Right now, the Patriots aren’t a good team. But their record is 7-7 which says they aren’t a bad team either. Last year, their finishing record of 10-7 said they weren’t a bad team. But their performance down the stretch wasn’t so good.
Keep going? In 2020, sporadic good -- surprisingly. But also bad and 7-9. In 2019? Really good against the bad to get to 10-1. Not good enough against the good to finish 12-5.
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As I’ve said before, the post-Brady Patriots are bobbing on the sea of mediocrity, clinging to the buoy that is Bill Belichick’s coaching acumen. They’re in the drink mainly because, well, the pleasure cruise of excellence couldn’t go on forever. Great, once-in-a-lifetime players got older and left for various reasons. Great coaches aged out too.
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There were a slew of missed draft picks and free agent misses and I’ve spent a lot of time since the tail-end of 2017 chronicling it and trying to explain why it was happening.
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But when you really, REALLY get down to it, the Patriots are "meh" because a run that was incomprehensibly long fizzled when the combination of humans making it happen went away. In short, life.
How does Billy get his team off the buoy and into a lifeboat? The initial plan -- take your financial licks for a season (2020), spend and draft like maniacs (2021) -- has fallen apart because the outflow of coaches and brainpower following the outflow of players has been too much to withstand.
It’s been kind of a one-two punch of adversity. First the players went. Now the coaches. The players have kind of been re-stocked relative to 2020. The coaches haven’t.
So you end up in 2022 with a team of perhaps better-than-average talent that is as undisciplined and poorly guided as any Patriots team has been since Pete Carroll’s 1999 lame-duck season.
I’m noodling on this because the defending AFC Champion Bengals are rampaging at 10-4 and most likely ready to steamroll the Patriots on an ice-cold Christmas Eve afternoon in front of maybe one of the smallest Gillette crowds we’ve ever seen.
So how do the Patriots become more like the (gulp) Bengals? I’m sorry to type that so close to the holidays. We all know that the Patriots have chunks of franchises like Cincinnati in their stool and it will be ever thus. But who’s on the buoy and who’s in the boat?
So let’s return to the original question. Can the post-Brady-Gronk-Edelman-Hightower-James White-Ernie Adams-Dante Scarnecchia-Patrick Chung-Josh McDaniels-Joe Thuney-James Develin-Patriots get really good without bottoming out like the Bengals did for most of their existence?
How’d they get Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase? Sucking. Burrow was the first overall pick in 2020. Chase was No. 5 in 2021. Starting left tackle Jonah Williams was the 11th overall pick out of Alabama in 2019. The team won 12 games COMBINED from 2018 through 2020. Their combined point-differential was minus-341 over 36 games. LOL.
Sucking like that is anathema to the Patriots since Robert Kraft bought the team. In 30 seasons, the Patriots have finished more than two games under .500 three times (5-11 in ’93, 6-10 in ’95, 5-11 in 2000).
But sucking was how the Patriots got good. They used the No. 1 overall pick in 1993 on Drew Bledsoe. He got them to the Super Bowl in 1996. They used the fourth-overall pick in 1994 on Willie McGinest. They used the seventh overall pick in 1996 on Terry Glenn.
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The first first-round pick Belichick ever made for the Patriots came after a 5-11 season in 2000 and was the sixth pick overall. Richard Seymour is in the Hall of Fame now. When the Patriots needed another infusion they got it in 2008 when a deft trade with the Ravens landed them the 10th overall pick. They took Jerod Mayo, great player for a time and an even better culture warrior for the team.
Matthew wrote in the Bible, that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. Wonder what his take on getting to the Super Bowl without paying your dues as a bottom-feeder would be.
That’s what the Patriots are trying to do. With Belichick at 70 and 20 wins from the all-time coaching record and Kraft at 81, there’s no way they’re even thinking about what 3-14 might do for the future. So they’ll never suck enough with Bill in charge to get into the top 10 unless they find a trade. And to make a trade you need coveted players or coveted draft picks. The Patriots can afford to spare neither.
Meanwhile, five of the top seven AFC teams currently have quarterbacks taken in the top 10. All seven have first-round quarterbacks. The Patriots have a first-round quarterback in Mac Jones who might be really average, could be really good. The only thing we all know for sure about Mac is that he’s not transcendent and he’s going to need high-end help.
The higher you draft, the better the selection of players available. The Patriots first selection since they drafted Mayo have been: 29, 15, 37, 32, 23, 83, 60, 32, 29, 52, 21, 17, 27, 34. A lot of those guys missed. And a lot of the guys taken with the selection after them missed too.
For a span from 2014 through 2019, N’Keal Harry, Joejuan Williams, Chase Winovich, Isaiah Wynn, Sony Michel, Duke Dawson, Derek Rivers, Antonio Garcia, Cyrus Jones, Malcom Brown, Jordan Richards, Geneo Grissom and Dominique Easley were the first few selections in their respective years.
The Patriots were so well-coached, had such great leadership and had so many players they drafted and developed that they could -- for a while -- withstand going year after year with near-empty harvests. Also, because they were so brilliant they were a destination for free agent ring-chasers.
That’s all gone now. And the days of looking down their nose at tanking teams are too.
Suck? No way. Top 10 pick? Well ...
Way back, on the night the Patriots drafted Jimmy Garoppolo back in 2014, Belichick did make his feelings known on being a bottom-feeder.
“I think organizationally, in our organization I don’t think we would put together a team the way Indianapolis did it when they lost Manning and they go 0-16, 1-15 or whatever it was,” Belichick said. “I don’t think that’s really what we’re looking for. ...
“I think depth is always important. You never know when you’re going to need it. But I don’t think we’d be happy going 1-15 if we had an injury at one position. But other people have different philosophies. I’m just saying that the contrast to that example. I don’t think that’s really what we’re trying to do.”
It’s easy to scoff at people buying Powerball tickets if you think you’re set for life. But even the Patriots didn’t rise to the top without reaping the benefits of some time spent at the bottom. It’s the nature of things.