Image courtesy of Houston Chronicle
Folks deserve to be excited about Drake Maye after his good but far from perfect first NFL start.
However, those that sat in the seats at Gillette Stadium on Sunday watched the defense let the rookie down against the Texans in a 41-21 loss. This is a team game and Drake Maye would never say that – not should he as a first year player – but we can say it for him.
Sure, Maye had two picks – one of them really bad and one not his fault – but given the situation he’s been poorly put in, he was pretty damn good.
It’s worth acknowledging the fact that Christian Barmore, Matthew Judon, Ja’Whaun Bentley and Jabrill Peppers are all gone. This isn’t nearly the ‘Top 10′ unit we all thought it was coming out of training camp. But, there’s enough talent at each level where it shouldn’t be giving up two runs of 50+ yards, 368 yards of offense and 41 points. The Texans are good, but this was still a bad performance and it’s a pattern since the Seattle loss.
“We’ve got to get better. We need to look in the mirror and really digest this because there was just such a lack of complementary football,” Jahlani Tavai said during a chat in the locker room postgame. “I thought (Drake) fought his butt off. I think he fought his butt off. I’m proud of him.”
The message and routine will stay the same. It’s film on Monday and then onto Jacknsonville. It’s also important to acknowledge that this defense kept the Pats in the game until the offense finally figured it out prior to the end of the half. Turnovers and brutal field position backed up in their own end certainly wasn’t fair either.
But, there was no bend-but-don’t break squad on Sunday. Houston was 3-3 in the red zone with two TD’s and a field goal and had five touchdowns overall.
“Regardless of the situations, the defense has the offense’s back, the offense has the defense’s back, special teams got both sides. It doesn’t matter if we’re put in bad situations,” Tavai said. “We’ve got to force teams…if we get put in a position where they’re in the red area off the rip, then we’ve got to hold them to a field goal.
“There’s no excuses.”
The lack of execution from the staff during important situations has been alarming too. Maye bailed Jerod Mayo and Alex Van Pelt out before the half with the dime to Kayshon Boutte after they opened the drive with a run. Then, at the end of the game, not trying to score a touchdown when every single live rep is valuable to Maye right now is mind blowing. It happened in New York too. Was it meaningless on the scoreboard? Of course, but if this is a developmental year, wasting a live game opportunity is a bad decision.
Mayo knows it too.
“From a team-wide perspective right now, we let him down,” he said during his postgame press conference. “It was his first game, and I feel like I let him down. I’m sure all the coaches feel like we let everyone down. We’ve just got to be better.”
So of course, while trying to pull themselves out of a spiral on and off the field lately, the Pats are off to another country on Thursday night to (hopefully) beat a Jaguars team with the same 1-5 record. This will be the Jaguars’ second straight game in London after getting throttled by the Bears on Sunday.
Could this type of trip help actually help this team right now?
The radio airwaves, podcasts and TV shows will be merciless the next few days and the media won’t have a ton of access to the team this week for obvious reasons. Newspapers and sites like this one will simply state facts and observations that every fan can see as well.
The odd schedule between Monday and Thursday will force guys to quickly move past Houston and it will serve as an opportunity to hit the reset button. The organization has also seen what a Maye Day experience is like on game day, you’d like to think there’s a ‘now the season can really begin’ feeling when they come back to work on Monday.
But, this will only get better if it’s a full team effort. The 2024 Patriots aren’t good enough to have the offense and defense going in opposite directions.
“It doesn’t really matter. Regardless if we’re home, away, this is football. It’s a grown man game and we’ve got to treat this like professionals,” Tavai added.