Tom Brady's Team Flirting With Rock Bottom And Other Leftover Patriots Thoughts
BOSTON (CBS) -- "They just basically destroyed us."
Those were the words of Vince Wilfork, a man who has taken part in enough football games to know that words needn't be minced after the events of Monday night in Kansas City. The Patriots got beaten, embarrassed, demolished, and a whole host of other descriptive verbs on national TV, and you can bet that six days of full-on panic will fill the radio airwaves, TV screens and print outlets in New England. And if the Patriots can't beat the 3-0 Bengals on Sunday night? Oh boy, you might as well seclude yourself in a cave for the following seven days. And unlike in most cases, it's for good reason this time.
The Patriots were outscored, obviously, 41-14. They were outgained 443-290, allowing 207 yards on the ground. They lost the turnover battle 3-0. They couldn't accomplish anything really, and the result was one of the two or three worst losses of the entire 15-year Bill Belichick era.
"This is probably the most embarrassing game I've been a part of," Devin McCourty succinctly put it. "We lost in every aspect."
It's shocking because it doesn't happen very often, but it's not surprising considering what we've seen so far this season. This Patriots team has a lot of warts, and there was no silver lining that could even come close to covering all of them in this game.
So let's dive into the leftover thoughts from the Chiefs' 41-14 palindromic beatdown of the Patriots, shall we?
--Prepare yourself now, OK? The Patriots are going to be 2-3 after next week. All right? The Bengals are undefeated, they're coming off a bye, and they're getting the Patriots on a short week after one of the worst showings of the Brady-Belichick era. So wrap your head around it early so that there's no shock and panic next Monday morning: The Patriots will be 2-3, and then the season will really begin.
--Make no mistake: Tom Brady played poorly in this game. In fact, it was as bad a game from Brady as I can remember, and the stats back that up. It was just the second time in his entire career that he's been held to under 160 yards passing while also throwing two interceptions. The other game? That would be the unforgettable 31-0 loss to the Bills in Week 1 of the 2003 season. So yes, Brady was bad, and he made a handful of mistakes that were obvious.
At the same time, anyone who watched that game and immediately pointed the finger at the quarterback is a football simpleton. Plain and simple. If you want to trust people for football analysis, you can immediately weed out the folks who blamed the quarterback last night. Just cut 'em out.
--I suppose I'm saying that at least in part because I personally was subjected to far too many "Put in Garoppolo!" comments. You could create a combination of 1987 Joe Montana/2004 Peyton Manning/2007 Tom Brady, and that mutant quarterback would still struggle in this offense, and this 2014 Patriots team would still be in a whole heapload of trouble. But yeah, play the rookie quarterback from Eastern Illinois University. Then the team will be great. That's the answer.
--I do take solace in the fact that Bill Belichick agrees with me. When asked if the quarterback position will be evaluated this week, the future Hall of Famer answered with a derisive glare and a scoffing laugh -- with an incredulous eye roll to boot! On a night when there wasn't much to celebrate in New England, at least there was this Vintage Bill Moment.
--Without doing the research, let's work out the worst losses of the past 15 years of Belichick. There's the Bills in Week 1 of '03, obviously. There's the Saints on Monday Night Football in '09, as well as the playoff loss to the Ravens that year. There was the easily forgotten 41-17 loss to San Diego in 2005, as well as the 30-10 Chargers victory in 2008. The Steelers also smoked the Patriots in the Matt Cassel season of 2008.
There might be one or two more in there, but when you can distinctly remember every single bad loss from the past 15 years, that means they don't come around too often. That's a good thing ... the real question now is whether another one (or two ... or three) is on the horizon this season.
--What stood out to me after the game was that Bill Belichick really seemed to have the demeanor of a man who knew his team was going to lose the game. That's obviously just a read on a man's outward disposition, but it reminded me of the coach's comment during the 2009 mic'd up season of a "A Football Life," when he told Tom Brady on the sideline, "I just can't get this team to play the way we need to play." It's clear that five years later, that's the case once again.
That doesn't have to be a grand statement against Belichick, or a damning of his football brain. It's just a statement of reality. The Patriots need answers, and Bill does not have them right now.
(For what it's worth, Bill never found those answers in '09, finishing the season on a 3-3 run and then getting blown out at home in the lone postseason game of the year.)
--Here's something: Through 25 percent of the season, Danny Amendola has 16 receiving yards and 15 penalty yards. You can also add in that Amendola has just three receptions that count, and he has three receptions that were wiped out by penalties (two due to offensive pass interference, one on Monday due to defensive hands to the face). I'm no NFL general manager, so help me out -- is that good? (Mind you, the Patriots gave him $10 million guaranteed and he counts for about $4.6 million against the cap.)
--I wasn't opposed to the Logan Mankins trade, because he was part of the problem on the O-line last year and he cost a lot of money ... but ... is Tim Wright on the Patriots or ... did I miss something? Has anybody seen Mr. Wright lately? I'm starting to get worried. Should I call the authorities?
--It's nice that even in one of the worst losses of the Brady-Belichick era, and even when morale is at its lowest, Rob Gronkowski can still drag multiple adult human males across the goal line:
--Remember when Bill Belichick said that "stats are for losers"? I think Brandon LaFell's six-catch, 119-yard, one-touchdown performance on Monday night can serve as the perfect illustration of his message.
--Here's something that Jon Gruden said during the game: "Andy Reid came in here 0-4 against Bill Belichick, so this has to have a lot of meaning for him." Hey ... uhh ... hey, Jon. Um ... well ... the thing is ... it's Week 4. It's still September. Andy Reid lost a Super Bowl to Bill Belichick. So this game probably doesn't have much meaning to Andy Reid, and if it does, then that's an unfortunate mark on Reid's pride.
--The Patriots entered the night with the No. 3 defense in the NFL. They come away in fourth, down just one spot, but their average yards allowed jumped from 272.7 yards per game to 315.3 yards per game. In terms of points allowed, the Patriots dropped from fourth in the NFL to 14th.
And offensively? Tom Brady's offense ranks 29th in the NFL, ahead of only Tampa Bay, Jacksonville and Oakland. Even the most pessimistic of pessimists couldn't have predicted that.
--The Chiefs entered the game averaging just 278 yards per game on offense. They gained 443 yards against the Patriots.
--Ah, right, the game! There are specific plays to talk about from the game -- I almost forgot.
How about Chandler Jones working right through an illegal block in the face by Eric Fisher en route to sacking Alex Smith? That was impressive ... right? And umm ... Darrelle Revis did a nice job of closing to keep Dwayne Bowe out of the end zone just before halftime. That was neat. And ... there was the time Tom Brady refused to scoot over on the bench, thereby forcing Jimmy Garoppolo sit on a water cooler. That was a good play, I guess?
OK, so there weren't many Patriots highlights to speak of.
(And why can't Josh McDaniels get up? Let the players sit on the bench there, big guy. Go draw up some wacky triple fake reverse/fake screen left/screen right to run next week against Cincinnati.)
--On the replay of the strip sack by Tamba Hali, Jon Gruden said all that needed to be said: "Solder never touched him."
Seeing a pass rusher tomahawk chop a QB's arm in the act of throwing always looks so painful for the quarterback.
Ouch.
--Mike Tirico also had a great quote, which came after Donnie Avery's 27-yard catch and run early in the fourth quarter. "I don't know why Malcolm Butler was on the ground," Tirico said, " ... but he was."
On a night when the Patriots couldn't even stay on their feet, when Rob Ninkovich appeared to forget that left came after right, when nobody could wrap up and finish a tackle, and when the quarterback opted to force an impossible pass on third down rather than running three yards to move the chains, no quote better sums up the evening than that one.
--On the aforementioned play when Brady opted not to run, I saw a flood of people coming to Tommy Boy's defense for his bad decision. These people noted the defenders standing near the first down marker who were armed and ready to destroy the quarterback. Yet if you watch it again, one of those Chiefs was in coverage and had a responsibility that would draw him away. The other could be beaten with the simple planting of a leg and a cut in any direction other than directly at him.
It was a bad decision by Brady, one of a handful on the night, and it's OK to admit this, people. It is OK.
--In the long run, it may not matter, but when the Patriots elected to punt on their second drive on fourth-and-2 at the KC 42-yard line, I thought that such a strategy was no good in trying to win a football game on the road in a raucous environment. Sure, getting stuffed there would only make those rowdy fans go crazier, but the Chiefs to that point had already controlled the ball for roughly 12 of the game's 17 and a half minutes, and they held a 7-0 lead. The defense was clearly in a bad way, and for the first time in a few weeks, the pressure was on the offense to actually do something.
Instead, they punted ... and promptly let Knile Davis run for 48 yards on the Chiefs' very next play. It took Kansas City just three plays and 1:27 to drive 86 yards and double their lead to 14-0. The game was over.
There was once a time when Belichick would have recognized that situation and then decided to go for it without hesitation. Those days, apparently, are no more.
(The Patriots had another chance to go for it on fourth down on their following possession, again on a fourth-and-2, this time at the KC 46-yard line. They punted.)
--As the loudest drum banger in the #ReleaseTheStork campaign, I have to say that I obviously thought it was a positive that the Patriots finally decided to play their best option on the interior. Overall, the kid had a good game, as he avoided false start issues amid the world-record level crowd noise. There was the one play when he pulled right to block for Shane Vereen and got absolutely discarded by Josh Mauga, who ended up disrupting the play behind the line of scrimmage. Stork learned right there that the Kansas City Chiefs have bigger players than the Clemson Tigers.
But considering I had low expectations for Stork due to the team not setting him up to succeed in his first-ever start in the loudest building in the league, it was not a bad night for Bryan Stork. He's part of the solution on that line.
--On Knile Davis' 48-yard run, Jerod Mayo had his back to the play for the second straight week.
I don't think it was his plan to end up with his back to the ball carrier, but getting dominated by Mike McGlynn will do that to you sometimes.
--If you missed the game, don't watch it. Just look at this picture -- it just about sums up the entire night:
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here, or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
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