Offensive line still an Achilles heel and other leftover Patriots thoughts

BOSTON -- So, what is the story of the 2022 New England Patriots?

While there has been an unanticipated twist or two -- namely, an impromptu quarterback controversy and a stunning home loss to the Bears on Monday Night Football -- the Patriots have more or less stuck to the script that was written by many in the summer.

This was a team that figured to be ... OK. Whether they shot a little above or a little below .500 was a matter of healthy debate, but the overriding feeling was that Bill Belichick's team would mostly beat the teams that it should beat while losing to the NFL's top dogs. Sure enough, they're 5-4, with their five wins coming against teams with a combined record of 16-25-1 and with their four losses coming against teams with a combined record of 17-18.

They are ... OK.

And considering the reports out of training camp about the new offense under Matt Patricia, "OK" isn't so bad. That offense certainly isn't lighting it up, ranking 26th in yards and 16th in points. Mac Jones isn't really progressing the way many people would have liked. Skill players not named Jakobi or Rhamondre have struggled to consistently get involved. It's not great, and Sunday's showing -- 203 total yards, one touchdown (on a drive that began at the 2-yard line) -- was evident of the struggle.

But, well, they also won. And they're above .500. 

We're obviously supposed to say much more about them, but it's genuinely hard to say more than that.

The Patriots are past the halfway point of the season. They're OK. They're 5-4. They're in last place. They're just outside of the playoff picture. They've done little to convince anyone that they'll be contending for a Super Bowl, but nobody is doubting their viability as a playoff team, either.

The Patriots are OK. And they just played their most OK game of the season, against a quarterback and an offense that is very much not OK. So let's touch on the leftover thoughts from Sunday's 26-3 Patriots victory.

--Heading into the season, I wanted to be consistent, and I wanted to grade the players on a curve of sorts, considering the upheaval of the offensive system and coaching staff. And in that prism, I'd further add this: We can't really judge Mac Jones and the offensive players all that fairly with the way the offensive line is looking this season, and in particular on Sunday.

The absence of David Andrews was evident. The "rookie wall" has come for Cole Strange. Isaiah Wynn is going through it. Yodny Cajuste is Yodny Cajuste. Trent Brown and Mike Onwenu haven't stood out individually in a negative fashion, but the line as a whole is not working well together. And that's putting it lightly.

Why that may be the case can be discussed. It is worth noting that the Patriots went from having Dante Scarnecchia, widely considered one of if not the single best O-line coach in football, to having Cole Popovich and Carmen Bricillo in 2020, to just having Bricillo in 2021, to now having Patricia, who's also calling the plays and running the whole offense. We know there's a whole lot of talent on that line, yet the coaching is not bringing that out of them. As a result, the entire offense is sagging.

If there's one thing that needs some serious critical evaluation during this bye week, it's the coaching approach to the offensive line.

--Case/point on that: The Patriots had a chance to pick up a first down for the first time of the game midway through the first quarter, on the third play of their third drive. It was a third-and-1. They just needed a yard. And to get that yard, they ran a trick play, with Jakobi Meyers motioning under center and running a WR-as-QB sneak. It worked. Barely. It required Mac Jones to turn himself into a battering ram to shove Meyers over the line to gain.

That's not really a play that a highly functioning offense utilizes in such a situation, but it's where the Patriots are.

--But hey, it could be worse:

Yikes. Nine sacks, plus three more QB hits, plus a ground game that averaged 2.5 yards per carry out of the running backs. That's a real disaster. 

--The best play by a Patriots offensive player on Sunday came from J.J. Taylor. It was a fumble recovery.

Where'd you learn that move -- ninja school???

"Yes! I told him, I was like, 'Man, I don't know where you came from,'" said Kendrick Bourne, the fumbler of the fumble. "That was scary. I gotta take care of the ball."

--If you watched this game you saw a lot of punts and a lot of field goals. What you may not have seen was the wind. It was certainly breezy. Nothing crazy. But enough to impact the game. Here's what Bill Belichick said postgame when asked how the wind affected the kicking game:

"It affected a lot. It was pretty strong to their bench, so just about all the kicks went to their sideline. We had the kickoff return to their sideline, the punt return to their sideline. [Matt] Haack kicked with the wind into their bench, and so that's where we got the block from. The Colts tried to come back to the field a couple times on the kickoff returns, and it was just good strategy on their part, you know, figuring that we're going to kind of overload to the boundary side, or the wind side. But it definitely affected it. [Chase] McLaughlin had the miss before the half. You know, Nick [Folk] -- it didn't bother Nick. He bangs them right through the middle. He's amazing. But, it wasn't easy kicking out there today. Conditions were a little bit challenging. So, yeah, definitely affected the direction and it was hard to touchback. Jake [Bailey] hit the ball well. I forget how much touchbacks we had. We had a few, but it was hard to touchback the kickoffs today."

Belichick was also asked about Marcus Jones as a returner, considering he made this nifty play:

Belichick's response was a reminder that even though the Patriots may not be racking up 12-14 wins every year with annual trips to the conference title game, they're still not losing sight of the little things in their preparation. Belichick noted that Michael Palardy is a left-footed kicker on the practice squad who helped Jones prepare for Haack.

"This was kind of a big challenge for him this week with the left-footed punter," Belichick said. "It's something we really haven't seen all year. So you know, you can kind of put the JUGS in the opposite direction and all that. It's not really the same. We brought Michael in here, Palardy, and that was actually good, I think good for Marcus to be able to handle those lefty punts out in the kind of windy practice conditions all week. So I think that helped him as well. Again, it's one of those little things, but Palardy did a nice job, and I think it helped Marcus' ball handling on a left footed punter."

I'm nothing if not honest. None of that was really on my radar prior to the game.

--Frank Reich was fired in the middle of the construction of Leftover Thoughts. That may be a first. Honestly, anyone who put Sam Ehlinger under center in an NFL game probably doesn't have sound judgment. Sam was bad. There was the one sack where he just kept endlessly spinning and running backward. That was not a good football play.

This one was also a bit confounding.

The Colts also seemed to be operating their offense under the hope that like ... maybe Matt Judon wouldn't try to get to the quarterback or something. It was a disaster.

So yeah. Frank seems like a good guy and a good coach. Things just have gone sideways for him.

--Do you want to see a good sports photograph? Well then, it's your lucky day. Because here is a good sports photograph.

Who doesn't love a good sports photograph?

--The Patriots' locker room was a really jovial place. The mood was quite positive. As you'd imagine. A win like that, coming just before the bye week, had the players fired up.

Still, with the Jets having just beaten the Bills, I was a little curious how the Patriots might feel about the Jets, who are their next opponent.

"I mean, good for them," Adrian Phillips said of the Jets. "We'll cross that road when we get there."

Fair enough.

That game ought to be a good one though. The Jets -- at 6-3 and fresh off a win over the mighty Bills -- are feeling better about themselves than they have for a long, long time. They'll be looking to show that a roughing the passer call and a series of brain farts from Zach Wilson were the cause of the Patriots' victory in Week 8. The Patriots will obviously look to stifle that positivity out of New York.

What I'm trying to say is that there's a fun Patriots-Jets game on tap in two weeks. When was the last time we got to say that?

--This is a funny use of the internet:

I will say this: Aaron Rodgers had a 53.5 rating and lost to the Lions. Bailey Zappe had a 100.0 rating and beat the Lions. The evidence is fairly convincing that Zappe is twice the quarterback that Rodgers ever was. And that's all I've got to say about that.

--Last week, I said something to the effect of, "At least the Patriots are better than the Jets." This week, I think I'll add, "At least the Patriots can still thump the Colts -- with a game-wrecking special teams play factoring into the equation."

Yes, that is a weird way of saying that I'm going to embed the best play in sports history.

By golly. It's still so glorious.

You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.