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After sidestepping disaster for so long, the Patriots regular season ended with a gigantic thud, as they lost to the lowly Dolphins 27-24. The saddest part of it is that the better team won.
Let’s face it, if you had hindsight and were choosing up teams on the sandlot for this game, which quarterback would you have picked today. Ryan Fitzpatrick not only showed off his Harvard IQ, reading Patriots coverages and going to the right receiver every time, but displayed a howitzer for an arm, throwing dart after dart for 320 yards against the suddenly inept Pats defenders.
From the start Tom Brady looked off, throwing high right from the beginning and just not showing an ability to toss the ball into tight windows. On the interception he threw, Heaven knows what was going on. He simply tossed it to old friend Eric Rowe, the former Patriots db who will get credit for a great play when he was just minding his business, positioned between two Pats receivers, when Brady threw the ball right to him.
The usually stellar Stephon Gilmore had an off day against Devonte Parker who seemed to be spinning him in circles. When your shutdown corner gives up eight receptions for 137 yards, it doesn’t bode well for a successful outcome. If votes for defensive player of the year were still up for grabs this week, today Mr. Gimore trended sharply downward.
And let’s hand it to the Dolphins brain trust, formerly the Patriots brain trust, for getting these guys fired up and well-prepared. Miami head coach Brian Flores, having moved on from his position as Pats defensive coordinator, was one step ahead of the Pats most of the day. And on offense, former Pats coach Chad O’Shea, who learned at the feet of Josh McDaniels, threw the kitchen sink at the Pats. Dialing up trick play after trick play, O’Shea’s inventiveness, combined with Flores’ knowledge of the Pats defense, tipped the scales to the Miami side.
I’ve got nice things to say about only two Patriots players today, and I’ll admit that my praise is far more symbolic than meaningful in terms of the game’s outcome. First, kudos to Elandon Roberts. I wondered whether the Patriots would ever dare to throw to him, and today they did, much to Miami’s surprise. Then I wondered whether he had hands of steel, but he made a really nice catch of a somewhat off-target Brady pass. The icing on the cake was running through a tackler and scoring. And who said that the days of the two-way player are dead.
Second, Julian Edelman needed just three receptions today to hit the 100 mark, but he had just one catch against the Dolphins as the game wound down in the fourth quarter. Maybe it was the result of double teams and good coverage. Maybe it was because Brady was typically less than accurate when he went to #11. But in those last few seconds of the game when Brady needed to find someone reliable, Jules caught his second pass of the game to keep our hopes alive, and with just a few ticks on the clock, Edelman was on the receiving end of that last crazy rugby play that went for naught. Bad day for the Patriots, but how nice that the toughest guy on the team made it to the century mark.
This is a team that has a smaller and smaller margin for error. The conservative mind of Bill Belichick made perfect sense when he had a vintage Brady with reliable targets and a good-enough defense. But this is a team that needs to take a few chances but won’t. To watch Mohamed Sanu consistently call for fair catches with nobody near him, under coaches’ orders we presume, means that this team will never score or at least reverse field position off a good return.
How much more sadly conservative was the Pats strategy with just under two minutes left in the first half. A coach who trusted his passing attack even a bit would have called time out before the Miami punt and let Brady do his magic with two time outs left. Would this be the first time that Brady pulled out a field goal or touchdown with less than two minutes? But, given this Tom Brady with this batch of receivers, what do they do? They keep their timeouts in their pocket, call two running plays, and head into the locker room. Sad.
And as long as I’m venting, how could the Patriots leave themselves totally bereft of tight ends. Jacob Hollister, who was let go by the Pats, went into this weekend with 35 receptions for the Seahawks, six more than the invisible duo of Ben Watson and Matt Lacosse. And by the way, Jimmy Garappolo’s all-pro tight end, George Kittle, he of 78 receptions and almost 1,00 yards, was drafted in the fifth round of the 2017 draft. That was well after the Pats selected the immortal trio of Derek Rivers, Deatrich Wise, and Antonio Garcia.
So, what’s the best metaphor for people like me? Am I a fair weather friend, perhaps a guy with a tendency to jump off the bandwagon? Or, less pleasantly, might we say that I’m a rat abandoning a sinking ship? Or maybe I’m just a person who knows how to read the writing on the wall? If the Pats can beat the wild card, and that’s a big if, I don’t see them having much of a chance against KC or Baltimore.
(Parenthetically, of course, somewhere down deep, I still hold out a smidgeon of hope. Bill, I just don’t think you can manage this shaky ship through the storm—but please oh please, I wouldn’t be that sad if you made me eat my words.)
