There was a time, not way back, when it might have been piling on to recommend the 2024 New England Patriots appeared headed for a 1-16 season. However now? After Sunday’s 32-16 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium in London, and after Pats coach Jerod Mayo walked into the interview room and made the gorgeous acknowledgment that “we’re a smooth soccer staff throughout the board,” the query now’s: How may they not end 1-16?
Each the Patriots and Jaguars got here into Sunday with bookend 1-5 information. That made this a so-called “winnable” recreation for each groups, besides solely the Jaguars appeared to understand the that means of that phrase. So breezily and giddily did the Jaguars run the ball that by the tip of the day they’d outmuscled the smooth (© Jerod Mayo 2024) Patriots in floor yards 171-38.
GO DEEPER
Patriots’ Jerod Mayo calls staff ‘smooth,’ appears out of solutions as shedding streak continues
The Pats dedicated their traditional array of head-scratching penalties.
The Jags’ Parker Washington returned a punt 96 yards, stagily falling backward into the tip zone for a landing and with nary a New England fingerprint on his clothes.
Rookie quarterback Drake Maye was spectacular within the early going, resembling when he linked with JaMycal Hasty for a 16-yard landing on the opening drive, serving to New England to a 7-0 lead, and he wound up 26-for-37 for 276 yards and two touchdowns. However it might be a attain to state he was a standout in a shedding trigger. A minimum of the Patriots don’t have “a quarterback downside.” They’ve their man. What additionally they have is an “every little thing else downside.”
A bit Hasty! @Patriots rating on their opening drive.
📺: #NEvsJAX on NFL Community
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/EwA4kDhIoK— NFL (@NFL) October 20, 2024
So let’s return for a second to these 1-15 Patriots from 1990. To go by the mathematics, and solely the mathematics, they’re atop the leaderboard as Worst Patriots Workforce in Historical past. And I assume if the 2024 Patriots stored shedding and wound up at 1-16, they’d transfer into the highest spot, 1-16 being yet one more loss than 1-15. So there.
However maintain on. Some context is required right here. The 1990 Pats weren’t in a rebuild. They had been destined for a teardown, which is totally different. They didn’t have a take-us-to-the-Tremendous Bowl quarterback within the making. (Sorry, Tommy Hodson.) They didn’t have star gamers. That they had a coach, the late Rod Rust, a terrific man who, alas, was a 62-year-old profession assistant who served kind of as a stopgap. When the locker room fell aside, largely due to an unsightly sexual harassment incident involving a feminine sportswriter, Rust was powerless to place all of it again collectively.
However regardless of the well-known Invoice Parcells view that “you’re what your document says you’re,” some harsh truths must be laid out about these 2024 Patriots. And right here’s the harshest reality of all: It will doubtless be remembered because the worst version of the Pats because the NFL/AFL merger, even worse than what occurred in 1990, no matter document.
Whether or not New England winds up going 1-16, or 2-15, or 3-14, or even when this assortment of softies (© Jerod Mayo 2024) rises to the event within the type of matching the 4-13 marketing campaign of 2023 that led to for-sure future Corridor of Fame coach Invoice Belichick being fired by possibly-but-who-knows future Corridor of Fame proprietor Robert Kraft, it’s nonetheless going to be the bottom of the low.
I do know what a few of you old-timers are saying: Nothing can beat the 1990 Patriots for lousiness. You lived it. And once more, you could have the mathematics sitting there in your super-fan utility belt. It’s simply that no person even cared in regards to the 1990 Patriots. They drew 26,280 followers to Foxboro Stadium for a 34-14 loss to the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs, and solely 22,286 turned out for a 25-10 loss to Washington. Foxboro Stadium was packed for the season finale, however that’s solely as a result of their opponents that day had been the New York Giants, whose followers purchased up each ticket at Foxboro Stadium after which turned the journey house on Interstate 95 right into a 207-mile pre-Tremendous Bowl rolling rally after the Jints’ 13-10 victory.
No person anticipated the 2024 Patriots to win loads of video games. What most individuals did anticipate was renewed power. They anticipated the brand new coach, Mayo, a former participant, to alter the vibe, the perspective, the ambiance, round Gillette Stadium. The 2024 Pats had been presupposed to be the staff that grinds out the additional yard, that reaches slightly increased, that does daring issues (resembling Maye going deep extra usually), as a result of that’s how underdog groups steal victories.
Drake to KJ, a factor of magnificence.@KJ_Osborn | @DrakeMaye2
📺: NFLN pic.twitter.com/NyRUx8TPgJ
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) October 20, 2024
And contemplating it was apparently a number of years in the past that Kraft ticketed Mayo to be the coach-in-waiting, there was loads of optimism when the transfer was made. Possibly Kraft had “seen one thing” in Mayo. It was Papa Kraft, in any case, who did the maneuvering in 2000 to wrest Belichick from the New York Jets to be his subsequent head coach. The transfer was mocked on the time, particularly in New York. Would possibly Kraft be proper once more?
He nonetheless is perhaps. And that is the half the place it’s essential to level out {that a} rebuild is a rebuild, and that issues occur. Plus, the Pats are with out defensive sort out Christian Barmore (blood clots), linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley (torn pec) and security Jabrill Peppers (home violence allegations) for many who want to fly that flag. However, and that is one thing Amos Alonzo Stagg was most likely saying 100 years in the past, accidents occur in soccer. Apart from, accidents aren’t presupposed to make the wholesome gamers “smooth,” which is now an official declaration proper out of the Mayo playbook.
It’s scary when the coach says that.
What’s even scarier is when the gamers log off on it.
“He stated it effectively,” veteran linebacker Jahlani Tavai stated. “We gotta look within the mirror and we have now to know what he’s saying and ask if we’re OK being smooth. Some folks will fall off and the remainder of us who need to show that fallacious will step up and guarantee that this doesn’t occur.”
On the 2024 Patriots, that’s an optimistic outlook.
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(Picture of Parker Washington on his strategy to a landing: Richard Heathcote / Getty Photographs)
