Conducting the 2024 Patriots Autopsy

How it began:

Maddie Meyer. Getty Images.

How it's going:

It's been 48 hours since what's left of this season's New England Patriots were found in the sand, crawling with crabs. Which means it's time to examine partial remains. 

May I have a glass of water, please?  

I can tell you right away  - Do not smoke in here, thank you very much! - that this was not a boat accident. It wasn't any propeller, it wasn't any coral reef, and it wasn't Jack the Ripper. This 4-13 was a systemic failure at every level of the organization. And if we're going to prevent a feeding frenzy that put us on welfare the whole winter, we've got to be willing to find all the causes of death and keep this from ever happening again. That will bring back the tourists. And put this business on a payin' basis. (Pardon the mixed Hooper and Quint references, but I'd painted myself into rhetorical corner.) Anyway, enough of the preliminaries. Let's take a brutally honest look at where everything went tits up:

Ownership

By no means am I listing the Krafts first because I see them as the source of all the troubles of our world. Or because I think they're not among the best owners in all of sports. They are. If you need a vision of what terrible ownership looks like, look no further than the Jets, where Woody Johnson has his son Brick:

… running around empowered to make player evaluations based on Madden ratings and give out game balls. Mr. Kraft's mistake was putting too much faith in Jerod Mayo's ability to skip most of the necessary steps that normally qualify one to be a head coach. By all accounts of everyone I've ever met who knows Mayo personally, he's an impressive guy. Intelligent. Thoughtful. Perceptive. Convivial. Authentic. Clearly knowledgeable about the game. All the traits that made him a team captain, convinced Bill Belichick to draft him and add him to his coaching staff. And which had teams requesting interviews over a year ago. But clearly with too few years on the job to suddenly take on the 25 hours a day, eight days a week duties of the head guy. The Krafts pulled the cork on this bottle when it should've been left in the cellar a few more years, and it turned once the air hit it. To Mr. Kraft's undying credit, he took full responsibility, owned up to it, and made the tough decision that is in the best interests of his team and his fan base. (Try to imagine for one hot second John Henry doing the same under any circumstances.) Let's just try not to lose faith in the wisdom of choosing a coach based on a trip you took with him to the Holy Land. 

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Mayo

I'll continue to be Blogger Obvious and stick with Mayo. We saw his struggles with in-game decision making, clock management, when to try for a field goal (sending Joey Slye out for a 68 bloody yard attempt at the end of the Colts game), punting on 4th & short across midfield down by two scores and such. But those are correctable. The kinds of decisions you get better at with experience. Where he was clearly in over is head was on much bigger issues. The sort of thing that are not an easy fix. There were very few games where you can honestly say Mayo's team came out of the locker room prepared to win a game. The Cincinnati win in Week 1 qualifies. As does the Indy game, when they scored on their first four possessions. And both Buffalo games. Unfortunately, since the last one cost them a cargo ship filled with draft value. But for the most part, the early parts of games were maggoty with false starts, illegal formations, too many men, delay of games and assorted other bullets to the foot. Then above all else, it was him stepping on rakes every other time he took to the podium, sat down for a radio hit, or talked to a network broadcast team. Calling his team "soft" was one, but at least they won the next game. The others included (but were not limited to) saying he won't talk about individual players and then in the very next breath calling out Kayshon Boutte. Telling CBS he was doing to bench Rhamondre Stevenson for his casual interest in hanging onto the ball, only to run him out for every down of the 1st quarter. But if there's one unpardonable sin of all, it was sending a banged up Drake Maye - the single most valuable asset the Krafts have and one I would trade a 100 giant scoreboards and 1,000 lighthouses to protect - out onto the field of a 33-point blowout long after Justin Herbert was safely on the sidelines. Which brings us to:

Source - One vet told me, "I lost faith we were headed in the right direction." When? "In the spring." Why? "Felt like he - they - were making it up as they went along. It was amazing how one day it would be this and then the next, something completely different."

Another added, "It became more about looking myself in the mirror and the guys in my room and huddle and saying 'I'm leaving it out here for you.' Because I never believed we had an edge (in coaching)."

Offensive Line

Where do we count the ways? I suppose we can say this without really casting blame on the O-linemen themselves.  I mean, Vederian Lowe and Demontrey Jacobs haven't been roaming the land like Medieval minstrels singing songs of their greatness and heroic deeds. Eliot Wolf (more on him) signed these guys. Mayo put them out there week after week. And Scott Peters coached them up. And a situation that every unqualified imbecile who talks about this franchise (raising my hand) knew back in the spring was the major problem that had to be solved or else nothing else the team did was going to amount to jack squat. And yet it was never really addressed. Never forget that they spent all summer working on it and the solution was to start Chuks Okorafor at LT. They pulled him after 12 snaps, which is 11 more blocking snaps than Joe Milton III had. And he never played another down of NFL football. Which is the football equivalent of pulling your Opening Day starter after 12 pitches and them demoting him to Single-A. Jacobs was signed from Denver, having never seen the field for them. After 12 snaps in his first game, he started at LT in his second. And was put on an island against Joey Bosa. Predictably, it was basically a crime scene, with seven pressures allowed, one sack and two QB hits. And here's the final penalty count:

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Lowe, 13

Jacobs, 11

Caeden Wallace, 7

Ben Brown, Michael Onwenu, Layden Robinson: 5 each

I lost track of how many times they shuffled this deck. But I know they started the season with seven different starting combinations in the first seven weeks, and finished with more than 11. As a result of all this negligence, they ranked 30th in Pro Football Focus' overall blocking grade, 31st in pass blocking, and dead last in run blocking. If only anyone could've seen this problem coming.

Pass rush

After Week 17, I wrote Justin Herbert had enough time to throw to play the entire Final Jeopardy theme while he went through his progressions. Add all the time they allowed during the 533 pass attempts against them over the course of the season, and you could play Wagner's Ring Cycle. Here are the numbers:

Sacks: 28, last in the league

Hurry rate: 6.8%, 23rd

QB knockdown rate: 5.8%, 31st

Pressure rate: 16.8%, 30th

This despite the fact they threw in extra rushers with the best of them. Their blitz rate of 25.4% was 13th in the league.  Fat lot of good it did. Somehow refusing to extend your best Front-7 defender in Matthew Judon and trading him in camp, then releasing your best pass rush specialist Josh Uche didn't work out. Who'd have figured? 

Overall defensive decline

Without going too deep into all the various elements like I just did with the pass rush (I have a life outside this blog too, you know), the one aspect of this season of uncertainty we thought we could rely on was the defense. And simply put, it got worse as it went along. Four times they allowed 40-plus points. Six times an opponent scored the most points they had on the season. Let's compare where Demarcus Covington's defense ranked with the one Steve Belchick had the season before:

2023: 

Points allowed: 15th fewest

Yards allowed: 7th fewest

Passing touchdowns allowed: 6th fewest

Interceptions: 23rd

Passer rating allowed: 11th lowest

Yards per pass attempt: 10th fewest

Rushing touchdowns allowed: 13th fewest

Rushing yards per attempt: THE fewest

Fumbles recovered: 23rd

Penalties: 3rd fewest

2024: 

Points allowed: 22nd fewest

Yards allowed: 22nd fewest

Passing touchdowns allowed: 20th fewest

Interceptions: 4th fewest

Passer rating allowed: 26th lowest

Yards per pass attempt: 24th fewest

Rushing touchdowns allowed: 16th fewest

Rushing yards per attempt: 14th fewest

Fumbles recovered: 29th

Penalties: 6th fewest

Pardon all those "fewest"s and "lowest"s, which gets awkward when you're describing a bottom-third of the NFL unit, but I was trying to keep it consistent. You use those adjectives when you're describing a good defense, which we went into this year expecting. Counting on, actually. All the 2024 Pats needed was to improve on the league's worst offense and do better than the least effective special teams of the Belichick Era, and the record would improve. But it regressed in every statistical area. Despite having a defensive-minded head coach and a defensive coordinator who has come up through the ranks of this system. 

Wide receiver

Eliot Wolf did not, in fact, neglect this position. In fact, he invested heavily in it in terms of draft capital. Unfortunately:

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Here are the totals on Wolf's entire wide receiver room:

Patriots: Receptions: 161. Yards: 1,718. Touchdowns: 10

Ja'Marr Chase: Receptions: 127. Yards: 1,708. Touchdowns: 17

And the rookie Wolf passed on to draft his two rookies:

Ja'Lynn Polk and Javon Baker: Receptions: 13. Yards: 99. Touchdowns: 2

Ladd McConkey: Receptions: 82. Yards: 1,149. Touchdowns: 7

And all this is how you end up with the sequel to last year nobody asked for. And desperately wanted to avoid. 4-13 Part 2: Foxboro Drift. It started with the Krafts' decision to fire the most successful coach in history for a guy who was throughly unprepared for the job, and spiraled from there. 

Time of Death: January 5th, 2025 at 4pm. Cause of Death: Every other thing that happened in the past 12 months.