New England Patriots Thread Mod Warning Post #253

I see Orlando Brown is a free agent next year. I doubt the Chiefs are in a position to tag him with over 100 million of cap hits between Mahomes, Jones and Clark. Then you've got Kelce and Thuney who must be on big cap numbers as well. I'd imagine that's at least another 40 million. That leaves about 80 max for everybody else

We should be in for him. Maybe Brown would be capable of doing a job at RT.

I think we are in decent shape at LB and I firmly believe that at corner Jack Jones is going to be a superstar.

Those two positions are well down the order of needs in my opinion although we are a little light on depth at cornerback.

There's a lot of talent at cornerback in the 2023 draft, you could easily pick up a really good one in the later rounds.

I really believe we need to spend big on a tackle. Whether that's finding a top free agent or taking two in the early rounds of the draft to try make sure we have a good starter I really don't care. I'd be happy with Trent Brown at RT but he's not good enough for the blind side, I don't like all the penalties he's giving away but I'm pretty sure that's because he's very worried about getting beat at the snap. We don't just need a starter we need depth as well. Wynn is out of contract and good riddins, Cajuste might make a decent guard but he's not a tackle.

After tackle our next biggest need for me is wide receiver. I believe Thornton will work out as the X and Meyers at flanker but we badly need a good slot guy. We don't want to waste Meyers there when he's such a good Z.

Outside of OL and a slot receiver I'm not too worried about any position. Well we need a new punter.

Clown show. What more can you say.

Don't let the pass distract everyone from the business decision by Mac Jones. Pathetic

Mac Jones needs a line to protect him and a decent slot receiver. Until he gets that you can't really gauge how good/bad he is.

I hate what happened at the end, I think it was Jakobi who threw that ball.

None of it should have mattered as the decision to let the Raiders touchdown stand was a complete con-job. You often hear about being able to piece things together from different angles. I called him out of bounds on the live shot as the play happened. It was easy to piece that together but they decided it was a touchdown which is nothing short of a con-job.

If that was a Patriots TD it wouldn't have stood.

I am in shock at the awful call. But bad calls happen, and that's football. What shouldnt happen, is bad game management by a patriots team with BB at the helm.

I jokingly put on twitter that someone will get cut on monday for that. Obviously we arent going to cut meyers but its a huge lack of football IQ. We need a competent OC, better OL, and some weapons on offense. We got lucky with Stevenson, he's really shone. That Jones (number 25) is a diamond in the rough too. Perfect BB/NE player.

This Matty P experiment has to end. I'm flip flopping on Mac at QB too. Looking at my past posts here I'm both praising him and the next week wanting Zappe in the game.

Getting Scar back would be the dream, but long term it would just be sticky-plaster. Having taken a few days to get my head together, a few things jump out at me:

(a) Why did we run a play at all? With 3 seconds on the clock, we should have taken the knee. With all the Raiders back deep to defend a Hail Mary, there was no way a draw play was going anyplace once Stevenson got to the second level. That falls on Matt P. and really smacks of trying to do too much.

(b) It's a pity our 2 most consistent players this season were the source of the issue. We know situational football is preached all the time, so to me this indicates that there's a level of anxiety or panic in the dressing room, that solid players who should know better are feeling the pressure to make things happen.

(c) The punt botchjob. It's hard to know if Peppers didn't know the play or if punter Palardy called the snap too early while they were setting assignments, but either way, as someone said earlier, that was Cleveland Browns football.

(d) I was really disappointed to hear of Trent Brown liking a Twitter post that suggested the Pats should try and get Jimmy G or TB12 back in town. Talk about a way to stab your QB in the back. Very un-Patriots like, especially considering Brown is one of the more senior players on the offensive roster. I particularly dislike it as there's a high chance Brown would be on civvy street right now if the Pats hadn't resurrected his career twice, so he should be bought in even more than the rest of the roster. Be interesting to see if he gets benched for a series this week, I think that would be very telling in terms of where this team is culturally.

(e) I think it was in the Pats mailbag that someone made the point that the coaching structure in New England has been decimated in the last few years with Flores, McDaniel, Judge and Patricia all taking staff to their head coaching gigs, along with the retirement of Scar and Ernie Adams. In addition, there just isn't the same depth of leadership core as previously. Realistically, there are only 3-4 real leaders on the team right now who are schooled in the Patriots way, Dev, Slates, Wise and Andrews. All this adds up to the point that I feel things have shifted culturally for us, and I just don't think the current culture has the same edge it once had. The Brown incident above, along with Mac's constant chirping this season on-field, is the kind of stuff that would not have been tolerated in the past no matter who you were unless you were the GOAT, BB benching Welker for the first series of an AFC championship game being an example.

(f) The most concerning thing I saw on Sunday though was Mac Jones. He was given a pretty clean pocket for most of the night, and while he didn't make any egregiously stupid decisions, his accuracy was way off. Passes in the wrong position for receivers, passes a bit too far past, etc. I can accept bad reads in the second year, but when his accuracy starts to waver, that really concerns me. I'm not sure if that's a Mac thing or an in-season coaching thing, but it's hard not to think that this season and set-up has been really damaging to Mac. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to say that this off-season is a make-or-break one for Mac. Be interesting to see how Bill will address this in the offseason. I know the rumour is Bill O'Brien, but I'm not sure he's the guy to mould Mac e.g. my feeling is he'd be better if we'd an established offensive scheme. If he did come in, I'd really like to see them get someone from outside the organisation to come in as the QB coach. The other thing is if Bill O'Brien does come back, my assumption is that he'll only be doing that if he gets some guarantees in terms of the New England head coaching gig. I'm not sure how I feel about that. He did OK in Houston until the wheels came off, and as we know from BB's coaching arc you don't always get it right in your first gig. Nonetheless, I'm not sure that he's bringing something to the table that wiill change things in the long run. I think the league has finally caught up with us in terms of roster and salary cap management which was always a big tactical advantage we had, plus the Brady hometown discount is a phenomenon that is unlikely to occur again (I know Mac is on a rookie contract but going forward he'll either renew to proper pay, or we'll have to pay someone free agent dollar). What do you guys think about a BOB-lead Patriots organisation.

(g) The Raiders touchdown. Leaving aside what appears to be the egregious miscall in New York in not overturning the call on the field, I don't understand why the NFL don't have rules around cleats and their colour at the bottom. It looked to me like there's a bit of white on the receiver's shoe at the bottom which makes it more difficult to assess. PFT have also been banging the drum about why the owners won't shell out for pylon cams, making the point that they would have been there if the game had been carried on CBS as originally scheduled. Final thing is that I've noticed in a few stadiums that they don't paint the end zone right up to the goal line, So-Fi in particular is one I've noticed it over and over where they have about a half foot of green past the goal line. I'm fairly certain this is a deliberate thing, maybe to discourage players reaching out over the goal line by tricking them with the extra green to make them think they've further to go. This is something the league should really clamp down on.

I know I said last week I felt we'd go to the play-offs only if the Fins and Jets shat the bed, which is exactly what they've been doing. However, now I feel even in that case, we can't get out of our own way to take advantage. Difficult to make a case for us even going 1-2 over the final games, although you'd imagine BB will have the whip out this week. I'd like to say that on the plus side, we might finally get to pick in a decent position in the draft, but even then can we trust BB to use it on a game-changing talent that could elevate those around him. Last year's draft delivered solid players, several of who might have a bright future, but I wouldn't define any of them as game changers yet. Again, I feel there's too much flux in the offense for it to be on that side, fix the scheme and execution first so that we can find out what we've got. Defensively, I feel if we could get an elite player ala a Donald, early JJ Watt, Micah Parsons, Revis type, that could push the defence from good enough to keep us in games to good enough to win us games in spite of the offence. You can get those kind of talents in the top 15 range on defence, so hopefully that's what we do.

Didn't get to see the 2nd half but seems like another sickening defeat

A lot to like in that game. Went toe to toe and was really only the two stupid kick-off returns between the teams. Missed opportunity and would have loved to go into Cincinnati next weekend after such a solid showing tonight.

But a losing season when it comes down to it, albeit the damage was done by stupidity against the Raiders and Bears rather than tonight.

It was a good performance but very un pats like, allowing 2 TD on special teams is ridiculous

Trade away first this year for an extra one next year, package to move up?

It's going to take a lot to get that pick. It'll be one of the most expensive picks ever.

I have a friend whose a Texans fan, they have their pick and the Browns pick this year. I was telling him you should trade the no.1 away, they no longer have it, to a bad team looking to grab a QB for their first round this year and next. Then trade away their pick this year for a second this year and their first next year and have three first rounders next year. If they were lucky one of those picks could be the first one but they'd be in a very strong position to move up and get Williams.

So a couple of weeks ago my friend calls me to tell me he was listening to Sean Payton saying exactly what I was saying.

Now it's become clear that Payton wants to coach again. I wonder what's the odds he goes to the Texans?

On Williams, my comparison is Mahomes. He's going to challenge him for the best in the NFL. Caleb Williams is the most certain QB to make it in the NFL at a high level since Andrew Luck.

This year he threw for 4537 yards in 14 games with 42 touchdowns, that equates to 5500 yards and 51 TDs over 17 games. On top of that he rushed for 380 yards and 10 TDs.

Imagine having 6000 yards and being involved as a passer and rusher for 63 TDs in one season?

I see a long term deal is been worked out with Jerod Mayo and interviews for OC beginning next week.

Yeah I mean we need an OC . We've had a DC playing OC this year and it didnt work. I wouldnt mind Bill O'Brien, can't be any worse.

My preference of course would be if McDaniels gets fired from LV that we bring him back!

I'm quite happy to have BoB back.

All things considered, he's always been a good coach - he did well with us in the past, has worked with Mac before and had a solid record in Texas. He's just a god-awful GM and needs to be kept away from all personnel decisions.

I actually think he'll do a better job with Mac than McDaniels, as he's more likely to play to Macs strengths than Josh did.

Aside from getting a real OC in, I think the next highest priority by far is OL coach - we can add a player or two via draft and FA, but the guys we already have need to play a lot better than they did this year.