Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 17: Patriots vs Chargers
Things to consider while asking if losing by 33 points at home meets anyone's definition of "calamity":
--Before we begin, here's a little perspective. Because this is one of those times where simply losing by almost five touchdowns doesn't really tell the story. This was:
-The Patriots second biggest home loss of the 21st century, exceeded only by the 34-0 blowout vs the Saints last year.
-Their third biggest home loss in franchise history, exceeded only by a 35-pointer to Buffalo when they were still playing in Harvard Stadium
-The sixth time this season they've given up 30-plus points
-Their 44th straight game without scoring 30 points
-The fourth time they've allowed the most points an opponent has scored all season
-Enough to clinch a sub-.300 record over the past two seasons, which hasn't happened since the Moon Landings
-And by no small coincidence, the first time in Gillette history we've heard chants of, "Fire Mayo!" and "Vra-bel! Vra-bel!" Whether they were coming from the owners' box remains to be seen.
--On the day, they were outgained 428-to-181, a ratio of almost 2.4-to-1. The Chargers had 29 1st downs to the Pats 11. The 3rd down efficiency as 10-of-17 to 2-of-10. On 4th downs, it was 2-for-2 vs 0-for-3. In the red zone, it was 2-for-4 to 0-for-0. The Chargers had the ball for more than two-thirds of the game. Three times the Chargers started drives inside their own 10, and finished two of them with touchdowns. Last season the Patriots held LA to 6 points (and still lost). This year, Jim Harbaugh's troops invaded, killed all the men, took all the women and children captive, burned the city to the ground and salted the fields so no one will ever live here again.
--I witnessed this ... let's call it a debacle, so you didn't have to. And I struggle to describe it. Or to come up with a proper analogy. The best I can do is call it a Lovecraftian horror. I'm the guy in the short story Dagon, trying to describe the surreal terrors I have witnessed in the depths of the ocean during WWI. When the Chargers lead 17-0, it was the Germans capturing the cargo ship he was on. When Drake Maye hit Pop Douglas in the end zone, it was him escaping in a lifeboat. The 3rd quarter was him finding himself walking on "a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about [him] in monotonous undulations as far as [he] could see.... putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish and less describable things which [he] saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain." The 4th was him finding an obelisk guarded by a "Fish-God" creature "Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith." By the end, he finds himself back in San Francisco, high as a lab rat on morphine and unable to make anyone believe the horrific things he bore witness to in the slimy depths of the sea. Now I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning, rewatching this monstrosity, and I can totally relate to his plight. Just with 100% less morphine. But I'll do my best.
--You know that debate we spent 20 years having, about whether all the success was due more to Brady or Belichick? Well the beauty of the current situation is there is no arguing whether Jerod Mayo or Eliot Wolf is to blame. They're sharing this. It's been a collaboration. You can say they inherited a bad situation, and be entirely correct. But no one can point to a single area of improvement in the coaching or the roster since they were put in charge, other than Maye, who was the no-braineriest of no-brainers with the 3rd pick in the draft. If I was a member of the Kraft family (and it's only by an accident of birth I am not) and was doing Mayo and Wolf's employee evaluations, I'd skip the "What are your areas of weakness?" part of the interview and skip right to "Tell me what accomplishment you're most proud of." Because I'd be a busy man and want to keep it short.
--This Knee Jerk will be a little shorter than most when it comes to the Xs and Os. Because if you watched this one, you already know the Xs were dreadful and the Os were gruesome. This one is less about where the chess pieces were moved around the board. The 2024 Patriots are more like a game of Stratego where Mayo puts his Flag in the front row and all his other pieces are Scouts. (You kids can either move on from that obscure reference or ask a Boomer to explain.) There's no strategy to speak of, and not enough talent to make one work if they had one.
--There have been very few moments all season long when the Pats weren't thoroughly dominated on both sides of the line of scrimmage. And this one was arguably the worst example to date. Consider the 4th & 2 when they ran this overloaded blitz with Derwin James shooting the B-gap. Antonio Gibson released into the flat leaving Vederian Lowe to block two:
Yes, Maye would've been better off throwing it into the middle of the Chargers' secondary than taking a 20-yard sack. But what's much more troubling is that LA showed blitz, made no effort to disguise the blitz, and did blitz, and no one on the New England side of the ball had the first clue what to do about it. And even if, say, Gibson picked up James, both tackles - stop me if you've heard this before - were beaten off the edge anyway.
--Which is precisely what happened when LA only rushed three. I think Ross Tucker was right on the broadcast when he put this on Cole Strange for snapping the ball early. But you can freeze this clip at the 0:10 mark and see that Layden Robinson still hasn't moved off his spot, other than to turn his head to see if Maye was still breathing:
--And even when they did manage to pick up the extra rusher and get a hat on all the hats, James dwarf-tossed Gibson into the Quabbin for the sack anyway:
--That's coaching. It's lack of preparation. But it's also the neglect of a front office that's 17 weeks into a season, on it's 10th starting offensive line combination, and putting a guy at center who's seeing his first snaps of the season and never played the position before. Besides, long before Cole Strange was activated and put in an unfamiliar position, total breakdowns on the O-line stopped being a bug, and became a feature.
--The trenches were no better on the defensive side of the ball. On a typical drop back, Justin Herbert had enough time to hear the entire Final Jeopardy theme while going through his progressions:
Officially Keion White, Deatrich Wise, Anfernee Jennings and Yannick Ngakoue got credit for one QB Hit apiece, but I defy anyone to point them out to me. Unless they bumped into Jacoby Brissett on the sidelines and the official scorer was just being generous, this defies explanation. You know how at hotels now they're running that scam where they encourage you to keep reusing your same towel in order to >ahem< help the environment? Legitimately, the Chargers support staff should do that with Herbert's uniform. Just hang it up and wear it next week because washing it would just be a waste of water and electricity.
--It was more of the same in the run game. Jahlani Tavai has arguably been the closest thing this team has had to a gap-filling, run-stuffing, professional inside linebacker. But that didn't stop him from getting snowplowed by center Bradley Bozeman at the goal line when JK Dobbins punched in the merciful final touchdown of the game:
--Which brings us to the most damning, disturbing, and destructive element of all. The talk that some of the players straight up quit in this one. That's not coming from me, who's never done an honest day's work in my life. That's coming from the postgame locker room, where Daniel Ekuale said, "It feels like a lot of guys start giving up when things get hard." And, "at the end of the 4th quarter, some of the guys just give up, and some guys play to the end of the whistle." One thing Jerod Mayo's defenders have been able to point to - and I have as well, just to be fair - is the fact his roster has played hard for him. Not well, but hard. We've yet to hear any of his players badmouthing him, either in public or anonymously. Which you typically get on a three win team. But once it starts, there's usually no coming back from talk about "giving up."
--And Keion White's not one to suffer quietly, either. After making cryptic references to his future earlier in the week, he talked about his frustration after this one:
To me this is carbon monoxide detector going off and telling us to get out of the house. Through six games, White had 4.0 sacks and 11 QB hits. In 10 games since, he's got 1.0 sacks and 5 Hits. That might very well be on White. But when a second year player of his caliber and potential disappears over the last two-thirds of a season, the situation needs to be addressed hard questions need to get answered. It's someone's job to get the best out of the few young, talented players on the roster. And in his case, it's not getting done.
--Yet the most glaring failure by Mayo yesterday was the one they talked about on the broadcast, and that was him going back on his word to sit Rhamondre Stevenson for the start of the game as punishment for him being all Slippy McFumblefingers last week in Buffalo. Only to give him every rep until deep into the 2nd quarter. (It should be noted they only had 15 offensive snaps in the whole first half, tied for the fewest by any team in the last five years, but still.) What's even more telling than the fact it seems there's nothing Rhadropsy Stevensdrop can do to get benched is that Mayo changed his mind without telling any of the parties directly involved:
Gibson may have had his problems in pass protection, but any man wearing a Brad Marchand jersey deserves better.
--All Mayo would say about it was "Coaching decision." Which is probably a positive step. Him learning the power of not giving the media anything. It's the fact he didn't tell his players that should bother us all. By way of example, last year NASA found that Voyager 2, which has been hurtling through space for almost 50 years, has reached interstellar space and is approaching 13 billion miles from Earth, was pointing 2% out of line. Which at a distance of 138.27 astronomical units, threw its return signal off by a massive degree, making communication impossible. So scientists blasted a message into space using the antenna array in Australia, which reached the spacecraft, and it corrected the error. The point being, if we can accomplish that, a coach can be expected to walk up to his 3rd down back and tell him if he's going to be in the starting lineup or not.
--Alex Van Pelt has been getting increasingly good press as the season has worn on. The conventional wisdom being that he's doing a quality job of developing Maye, which is the prime directive. And for sure he helped his case with two early touchdown drives at Buffalo helped his case. But then there was his decision to run a sweep to Gibson on a 3rd & 2. Then there was this little gem, which isn't going on his sizzle reel if he's out looking for a job in a couple of weeks:
AVP is not anywhere near the top of our list of complaints. But he's not off it, either.
--And let's not ignore Demarcus Covington, who chose his one true lockdown cover corner Christian Gonzalez as the one to send on a blitz on the Chargers first possession, which should be charged as a felony. Then ended up with Jonathan Jones in single coverage on Ladd McConkey. Not only on this pass:
… but on the Chargers next play from scrimmage, in which McConkey once again blew past Jones who appeared to be running like his legs just fell asleep while he was on the toilet, but Herbert overthrew his target. One time they did manage to get LA off the field, the drive was extended by Ngakoue taking two full strides and drilling Herbert into the ground. And where was he on the following down? Lined up at defensive end. Instead of on the sidelines being reminded what a stupid, selfish, costly bit of dumbassery that was.
--Then again, Mayo is not the yelling kind:
--From what the cameras showed, he didn't even be bothered to raise his voice when Maye got clocked in the head and sent to the dreaded Blue Tent. I'm not entirely sure a penalty could've been called on that one (unless the quarterback in question was Patrick Mahomes, in which case the flags are already on their way to the turf before contact is made), but when you're the head coach, you're not supposed to be objective and even-handed with your analysis. You certainly wouldn't expect Jim Harbaugh to sit that one out, and he just turned a perennial loser program around in his first season. He's an a-hole, but he's the a-hole you want.
--None of which means we're letting the GM off the hook. The Wolf needs to answer for this graphic, which I and 90% of Pats fans screenshotted:
Ja'Lynn Polk and Javon Baker did managed to impact the game with rare back-to-back drops late in the 4th quarter. While McConkey's 94 receiving yards (with 2 TDs) was more than Wolf's two rookies have on the season combined. His failure is therefore complete. That should've been your aunt in a No. 15 Patriots jersey getting a touchdown ball from him.
--On a side note, can anyone at USAA explain the premise of Gronk and Sam Elliot moving in together? Is it just for insurance reasons? Is it a scam? And what are we supposed to think happened to Camille Kostek or the film legend (Butch and Sundance, The Graduate) Sam's been married to all this time?
Still, I'll take it over the doofus suburban dad who can't back up the trailer while his wife and son look on with shame and contempt. We really are the worst!
--This Week's Applicable Movie Quote: "The world can really kick your ass. I only have a VAGUE recollection of when it wasn't kicking mine." - Roy Munson, Kingpin
--This has gotten way darker than I intended it to. But when you start off your emotional journey with HP Lovecraft, there's no pulling out of that tailspin. So let's end on a high note. Drake Maye completing yet another long touchdown throw. With Joey Bosa bearing down on him like a charging rhino after yet another blown assignment by Demontrey Jacobs and another whiff from Gibson:
This, in one 18 video, is why it's worth riding out these dark, dystopian times. Games like yesterday's are your past and present. This throw is your future. Who'll be coaching Maye or building a roster around him? That's anyone's guess. But the decision can't come soon enough.