For brief spurts in the first half of the New England Patriots' season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs, the Patriots looked like the champions of old, but for most of the rest of the game, they resembled a rag-tag bunch of kids on the playground, picked by a captain who thought they were bigger, faster and smarter than the other kids.
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| A dejected Brady leaves the field |
Then they proceeded to do what kids do, chucking the football around seemingly indiscriminately, throwing the ball deep like fantasy stars when the better call would have been to throw underneath, drawing up plays in the dirt with all of the pass catchers yelling, "I'm open deep, throw it to me!"
These were not the New England Patriots.
The New England Patriots play move-the-chains, ball control offense and sturdy, limit-the-big-play defense. The New England Patriots are disciplined in their blocking assignments and in playing their gaps. The New England Patriots show up and play their best in the biggest of moments.
But these New England Patriots chose the "Fantasy Star" route on offense, were overwhelmed at the line of scrimmage when they needed just inches to gain and fell into a mundane rotation of play calling, all the while the defense fell for Kansas City's offense lulling them into a false sense of security, then striking at just the right moment.
In other words, the Kansas City Chiefs played their game and stuck to it while the Patriots played right into their hands - and in the end, the defending world champions left the field with bubble gum stuck in their hair and their lunch money taken.
And that includes the coaching staff, as the game plan on both sides of the ball was decidedly unpatriotic, as they seemed to want to try and surprise the Chiefs with trickery and general tomfoolery instead of playing the game of football the way it was meant to be played, and the 42-27 final score was their punishment from the football Gods.
Many will look at quarterback Tom Brady's 16 of 36 stat line and automatically think that the game has passed him by. They will look at the 3.5 average yards gained per rush and think that head ball coach and general manager Bill Belichick made a mistake in bringing in all of these redundant talents in the backfield. They will look at the secondary and the defense as a whole and wonder why Belichick brought in free agents instead of paying the players he already had.
But the real problem had nothing to do with any of that.
Sure, Brady looked like recently-traded Jacoby Brissett at times, throwing too deep for his receivers to get to and the running game at times looked like a reincarnation of the 2015 squad that couldn't gain a yard to save their lives in the playoffs, and the defense collectively resembled a punch-drunk boxer that was seeing three opponents and lunging at one of the apparitions...
...but this game was dictated by the poor play calling on the part of the Patriots' coaching staff, who apparently thought that they could just take the field and have Brady heave the ball down the field and let Randy Moss just float underneath the ball and they would score 48 points.
Of Brady's 20 incompletions on the evening, thirteen were deep balls - and of those, just one, a 57 yard strike to Brandon Cooks, was a completion. The rest were badly overthrown. In contrast, on balls thrown by Brady in the conventional Patriots' design, he was 15 of 23 for 210 yards. With the offense properly balanced, the running game accounted for a stat line of 23 carries for 119 yards, but when they really needed just inches, they were 7 for five yards.
Before the season started, the fans' expectations of the team had to be tempered as visions of Randy Moss danced in their heads - but even those who had those tempered expectations had to be disappointed with the way the weapons on offense were used.
The biggest and most disappointing example was how the backs were used in the passing game. Normally a staple of any Patriots' offense, the four backs combined accounted for just four receptions on eight targets, with just two of the four backs ever becoming involved. Mike Gillislee, the closest thing the Patriots have to a lead back in their "By-committee" approach wasn't targeted in the passing game at all, nor was human joy stick Dion Lewis, who barely saw the field on offense.
This was the fundamental flaw in New England's offensive game plan. This is a team that gets the ball to their backs and receivers in space in the short passing game, allowing them to make yardage after the catch - and it has been a staple of the success of the team for going on two decades, but when the Chiefs dropped eight into the coverage, the Patriots abandoned that plan and went over the top, with disastrous results.
As a result, all the Chiefs' defense really had to do was to play a standard nickel defense and let the Patriots' game plan play to their favor.
On defense, the Patriots played a curious style in which they had four safeties on the field for much of the evening, seemingly overly-concerned about Chiefs' tight end Travis Kelse, whom they shut down for the most part, but in exchange Kansas City took advantage of the alignment to sucker the New England defense into playing a box-heavy game, then pinned them inside and went all Brady-to-Moss on the Patriots.
Despite the relatively poor play from the Patriots, the still led 17-14 six minutes into the third quarter when Chiefs' quarterback Alex Smith hit a wide open Tyreek Hill in stride for a 75 yard score to give Kansas City their first lead, but the Patriots responded with ten straight points to retake the lead 27-21 in one of the brief glimpses of Patriot' football on the night...
...but then in one felled swoop, the Chiefs doubled their point total on the night on a New England defense that completely collapsed down the stretch.
Kansas City took the lead for good on a 75 yard bomb to rookie running back Kareem Hunt, taking advantage of the box-heavy Patriots who were suddenly without their "Jack" linebacker Dont'a Hightower who was rolled up on from behind and sprained his MCL, leaving him a spectator to the horror unfolding before his eyes.
Both long touchdown pass plays resulted from fundamental breakdowns in pass coverage, and then when New England compensated to limit the big pass play, the Chiefs rubbed their faces in the dirt with two consecutive speed runs around the the left corner, Hunt taking one 58 yards to the New England 21 yard line, where fellow running back Charcandrick West finished them off with the same play for an easy score.
To make matters even worse, after the Chiefs had taken an eight-point lead and knowing that Brady had no choice but to go deep where he had been inaccurate all night, they unleashed their heretofore docile pass rush and beat Brady to a pulp, ending any hopes of a miraculous comeback.
All of this said and true, the Patriots lost this game by trying to be something that they are not. New England is not a vertical entity on offense no matter how much speed they possess on the outside, and they are not a team with enough depth on defense to allow the opposition to pin them inside the box and rely on a fourth safety instead of an edge-setting linebacker.
It's only one game - a game against an opponent that they regularly struggle against. But the game calling suggested that the Patriots are trying to find themselves, which shouldn't be that hard to do - they just have to be what they've always been in the Belichick era, with a move-the-chains, ball control offense and a conservative, bend-but-don't-break defense.
On Thursday night they were neither against a good opponent, and they got their butts handed to them.
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