Hurley: The Patriots' "plan" at backup quarterback is simply chaotic
BOSTON -- With the Patriots in the tank at 1-5, nothing about anything they do right now "matters" too much. There's just not a whole lot on the line anymore.
Still, the Patriots are an NFL football team playing NFL football games on a weekly basis, so it shouldn't go unnoticed or unreported when they make some truly head-scratching decisions.
That's currently the case with the backup quarterback spot. More accurately, that's been the case with the backup quarterback spot since the summer. But the decisions and moves made in recent days, along with the perplexing explanations accompanying those moves, have not made tremendous sense.
Start, very quickly, with the background. At the end of the summer, the Patriots cut Bailey Zappe, and they cut Malik Cunningham, the undrafted college quarterback that the Patriots only saw as a receiver and special teamer. Both Zappe and Cunningham signed to the practice squad when the rest of the league didn't pick them up off waivers.
The team then added Matt Corral, but dumped him after a week and a half. The team then signed Ian Book ... but dumped him after five days. Then they signed Will Grier, who's still around for now. If you were to combine all of the NFL stats of Corral, Book, and Grier, you'd see 363 yards, zero touchdowns, and six interceptions. Why the Patriots have spent so much time and energy with them is anyone's guess.
But it also seemed irrelevant, with Zappe signing to the 53-man roster before Week 1.
The picture changed over this past weekend, when Cunningham was signed off the practice squad to the Patriots' 53-man roster and inserted as the lone backup to Mac Jones. Zappe was relegated to emergency third quarterback status, meaning if Jones got hurt, Cunningham would have had to step in and lead the entire offense. Considering he has spent more time at receiver and running scout teams as mobile quarterbacks, that would have been an awful spot to put the rookie into if it came to that.
When asked after Sunday's loss why the team made that signing, Bill Belichick said, "We have a lot of people that are hurt."
On Monday morning, Belichick was asked again about Cunningham, and the head coach's response started with Cunningham's progress at positions that aren't quarterback.
"Yeah Malik's improved a lot during the course of the year both at receiver and in the kicking game and some of the snaps he's taken at quarterback," Belichick said. "So, yeah, didn't really get too much of a chance to see him [Sunday]. It was a tough situation, they hit us on a perimeter blitz there. But he's been good to work with, he's made a lot of improvement, and we'll see where it goes."
That performance saw Cunningham take six total snaps. He lined up as a quarterback just three times but received just two snaps, motioning out wide as a decoy on Ezekiel Elliott's touchdown. He took a sack on his lone potential pass attempt.
Cunningham is certainly an athletic football player. But he didn't quite look like someone prepared to play quarterback in the NFL on Sunday.
So on Tuesday, offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien was asked about Cunningham. His answers only brought more confusion. Here's how the exchanges went.
Q: What type of role do you envision Cunningham having?
O'BRIEN: I think that will be week to week. That'll be week to week, depending on different things that go on. You could see him at different spots throughout the offense -- obviously, other than offensive line. He can play in a lot of different places. So, it'll be week to week based on the game plan, and we're pretty early in this week, so I would say, I don't think we have any idea where that would be this week. So it'll be week to week.
Q: How do you balance wanting to use him in a variety of ways without overloading his plate?
O'BRIEN: Yeah you put together a package of plays and you try not to overload him, and they're plays within our system. So you're not, these aren't brand new plays. They're plays within our system and we try to do a good job. He's a very bright guy. He does a good job. He knows the plays and he's gotten better ever week.
Q: What have you seen from Cunningham that made you want to make that decision to sign him to the 53-man roster?
O'BRIEN: Look, Malik's an improved guy. I think [Belichick] said it the other day, we had some injuries, things like that, and Malik's done a lot of different things, he can do a lot of different things. And so I think that was the decision that Bill and Matt [Groh] made. I don't make those decisions to bring him up. They make all those decisions in the best interests of the team, where the team's at at the moment. And that's why they made the decision.
Q: With Cunningham as the backup, that suggests you have confidence in him to run the offense if something happened to Mac. Is it a fair assessment to say you're comfortable with him running the offense?
O'BRIEN: Yeah, I mean, for that week, for that game, that's what we decided to do in that game. I think it's week to week. Doesn't mean we haven't -- I think what maybe you're asking is have we lost confidence in Bailey? We haven't lost any confidnece in Bailey. We felt like that was the best way to go about it for the Raider game based on where we were from an injury standpoint and things like that. How do we get Malik Cunningham into the game? And that was the best way to get him into the game. So that'll be from week to week, and we have a lot of confidence in the players that we have on game day and the guys that are inactive. Maybe they're inactive because of injury or whatever. We've got a lot of confidence in the guys that we're working with.
Q: With QB reps being limited at practice, do you have to make a choice on who you'd like the No. 2 quarterback to be moving forward?
O'BRIEN: Yeah, the reps, they are limited in a way. But we have a lot of reps here. We have post-practice things, we have ways to get three, four quarterbacks reps. So we do that on a weekly basis and we'll do that today, tomorrow, and for the rest of the time that we're here. These guys get a lot of reps. So I don't think that's as big of an issue as how we're going to use these guys in a game plan, whatever that game plan might be.
The "injuries" explanation came up again, meaning the Patriots are saying they liked the idea of Cunningham filling a void left by Demario Douglas and JuJu Smith-Schuster. That's despite Cunningham looking woefully out of place during his extended run at receiver in the preseason, and despite the team actually drafting a receiver in Kayshon Boutte but leaving him inactive for Sunday.
O'Brien also said that the coaching staff put together "a package of plays" for Cunningham, indicating that no, Cunnigham was not in a position to run the offense as the primary quarterback if Jones was out -- either due to a benching or injury.
O'Brien also reiterated that the Patriots haven't lost confidence in Zappe, despite cutting him at the end of the summer, despite seeing him complete 38.9 percent of his passes after twice entering games to replace Jones, and despite making him the emergency quarterback behind a player who's spent more time at receiver and on special teams than he has at quarterback this spring, summer and fall.
Bringing it all back around, it is apparent that the Patriots are not going to accomplish too many positive things this season. Yet this situation remains puzzling. The Patriots signed Cunningham to the active roster, apparently liking him at receiver more than Boutte and apparently liking him at quarterback more than Zappe, all without even seemingly having a plan for the rookie to take warmups before his first NFL game.
It's just not how a team with a firm and well-established plan operates. All of the signings, releases, activations, promotions and demotions paint a picture of instability at a significant position. And the more that the team tries to explain, the less direct sense it makes.
