FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — No Mac Jones. No starters.
Talk about taking the bite out of the first preseason game. The Patriots fielded mostly rookies and backups against the Giants on Thursday, giving fans a healthy dose of unknown quarterback Bailey Zappe and wide receiver Tyquan Thornton.
Granted, the starters don’t tend to see much time in the exhibition opener. But given how poorly the offense has looked in general, sending Jones and the starting unit out for a series or two might not have been the worst thing.
Judging how their offense looked the past few weeks, they need all the reps they can get to sort out all the issues that have plagued the unit since the start of training camp. A few reps, if only to help get the system down with the communication between Jones and the play-caller Matt Patricia, who appeared to be calling the plays early on — although Joe Judge seemed to take over in the second quarter — might have been worthwhile.
Bill Belichick felt otherwise.
It’s possible he didn’t think the offense was ready for game action against an actual opponent. Maybe he saw danger in putting Jones out there with an offensive line that hasn’t quite grasped the new scheme. Maybe he thought more harm than good would come of it, given how slowly the transition is taking to not only install a new offense, but grasp it with some measure of confidence.
So on some levels, that makes sense.
But that explanation, in itself, gives reason for pause and concern about the state of Jones and the Patriots offense. It lends to more criticism and scrutiny about dumping the old complicated offense — which Jones mastered — in favor of a completely new scheme; one with simpler language and dynamics, to help the players and the coaches who are installing an offense for the first time. Yes, that means Patricia, the offensive line coach and de facto coordinator, and quarterbacks coach Joe Judge.
It’s not the best look having the replacements for Josh McDaniels also learning what they’re teaching, not to mention moving to a different scheme to bail out coaches who couldn’t coach the old scheme. Because that’s how it seems.
But let’s cut to the chase.
Belichick can’t dodge the inevitable. He needs to find out if the new offense and accompanying zone-blocking scheme is going to work. He has to get a better sense soon if it’s going to work, or if he needs to scrap some or all of it.
For the record, Brian Hoyer started at quarterback with a cast of roster wannabes. The offensive didn’t look terrible on the first series, but still punted nonetheless.
In any case, after taking a pass on the first game, and using it to further evaluate some of the newbies on the roster, next week looms as a big week.
Belichick can’t hide Jones and the starting offense from the joint practice sessions with the Panthers. He also won’t surrender another preseason game, with just two remaining on the docket.
We’ll get the best idea where this is all headed against the Panthers, and the following week in the joint practices against the Raiders out in Las Vegas. Jones said last week the group was still at the point of trying to “iron everything out.”
They are clearly behind, but the joint practices should help speed up the process. In theory at least.
Belichick has long been a fan of joint practices. He said teams sometimes gain a lot more from those matchups, than an actual preseason game. Jones, for his part, did his best to convey confidence and buy-in with the new offense, and that eventually, they’d all make it work.
“I think right now there’s nothing to focus on besides watching the tape and figuring out what we can do better,” Jones said Tuesday. “You can always assume things, but, I’ve been in different offenses, and a lot of guys on our team have, and we feel confident about it. And that just has to come with reps, and in-game reps, too.
“We have to see it on tape and see how it looks and — the buy-in has to be the buy-in. You have to trust it. But at the end of the day, we’re going to figure it out and make this thing work. We have good coaches that are laying the path for us, and we just have to see it how they see it, and come together and dominate together.”
On the surface, the coaches just didn’t have enough buy-in to compete against the Giants in the pre-season opener. They put that off to next week.
We’ll see if the strategy works.
