It’s coming up on a decade since Bill Belichick drafted Jimmy Garoppolo. The main reason?
"With the situation we have at quarterback... I think you're better off being early than late at that position," Belichick said in 2014.
Tom Brady, as it turned out, wasn’t even close to his expiration date. He’d play another nine seasons, compiling a record of 120-43, playing in six conference championships, five Super Bowls, hoisting four Lombardis while throwing for 40,005 regular-season yards, with 290 touchdowns and 78 picks.
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In the Brady-Garoppolo case, Belichick was talking about a succession plan. Which doesn’t really apply to the current Patriots and Mac Jones.
What does apply, though, is a sense urgency at the position. An acknowledgment that you never want to be caught short. If you want to be a contending team, you never drag your feet because setting the quarterback up for success means setting the entire organization up for success. That seemed to be the gist of it.
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But by the end of the decade, the Patriots didn’t just wind up being late at the spot, they wound up being wholly unprepared.
They seemingly folded their tent on a Brady succession plan, wrongly presuming he’d never leave no matter how dismal they made the situation around him. They were fortunate to get the very capable Jones with the 15th pick in the 2021 draft – the fifth quarterback taken.
And since then – aside from a mostly ill-fated 2021 spending spree (Nelson Agholor and Jonnu Smith) – the roster-building and coaching decisions have failed him.
The development of their second-round pick from last year, Tyquan Thornton, has been stunted by injury. Jones’ most trusted receiver, Jakobi Meyers, was allowed to walk to Las Vegas. Their X-receiver, DeVante Parker, was a Miami castoff. The offensive line is wafer-thin behind the starting group. And we need not explore for the 23,000th time the offensive coaching Jones got in his second year.
Jones is in the third year of his financially-friendly rookie deal. Time’s-a-wastin’.
And then there’s Sunday night’s opponent, Miami. They – like the Patriots – have a first-round quarterback from Alabama. But the Dolphins have been all-in on making sure the similarly-skilled quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has everything at his disposal to succeed.
From hiring an offensive-minded head coach (Mike McDaniel), to drafting a first-round receiver the team actually hit on (Jaylen Waddle), to adding a big-ticket offensive tackle (Terron Armstead) and other significant pieces (Raheem Mostert, Braxton Berrios), to trading for (arguably) the most difficult to defend player in the NFL (Tyreek Hill), Tagovailoa woke up from the fever dream of his first two seasons and found himself in offensive nirvana.
It’s such a juxtaposition that it’s impossible to overlook. Instead of being in a huge “prove it” season in New England, how would Jones have looked in Miami last year? Or last week, when Tua threw for 466 and three touchdowns? How would Tua look if he were in Foxboro?
The Patriots' current offensive state isn’t just a “hey, we tried and it didn’t work out…” situation, though there’s some of that. They spent first-round picks on Sony Michel, Isaiah Wynn and N’Keal Harry. They signed Agholor and Smith.
But when you look around the roster at the lack of resources expended on offense, it’s striking. Jones and Cole Strange are the only first-round picks selected by the Patriots. Kendrick Bourne, David Andrews and Calvin Anderson all went undrafted. Trent Brown was a seventh-round pick, Michael Onwenu was a sixth-rounder and Rhamondre Stevenson was a fourth-rounder. Kudos to the personnel department, coaches and the players for rising to the levels of performance they have. But the drafting hasn’t been good and the free-agent spending has been miserly and with spotty success.
Despite the league-wide offensive explosion in which every team seems to have at least one and sometimes two elite receivers, the Patriots are late to the offensive party. Actually, they’re barely dressed for the party. Instead, their approach is to do it with defense.
Last week, that kind of worked. The Patriots defense allowed one touchdown to the potent Eagles offense And that was at the end of a penalty-extended, 20-yard drive. This week, it’s the same kind of challenge. Two elite receivers, a good quarterback and as much speed as any team in the league.
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Can the Patriots bottle up Tua (who’s 4-0 against the Patriots) and the Dolphins offense and keep them from having a performance similar to last week’s when they put up 36 in a win against the Chargers?
It starts with defending Hill, which the Patriots have done a good job of by basically doubling him from the time he gets off the bus. Tagovailoa will happily work short and let his receivers do the work. But if New England can hatch schemes to confuse him, then their pass rush will have a shot at getting home and making his life difficult. Given the scheme work done last week, I’d wager they will.
Which brings us back to Jones and the offense. Can they get past 20 points? Miami’s no defensive juggernaut. The Chargers ran all over them last week. But the Patriots’ offensive line is a MASH unit here in mid-September and Miami’s new defensive coordinator, Vic Fangio, will have his team’s attention after last week’s poor performance in Los Angeles.
If the line was healthy, I’d see this as a breakout spot for the Patriots offense because of the Jones-Bill O’Brien collaboration. The Dolphins defense can be had. But the injuries are going to tie their hands and leave them having to play more cautiously than they’d like.
Still, I’m a bigger believer in Jones’ upside than most. And no matter how slow Belichick’s been to catch up with the offensive times, he can still roll back the clock and come up with a masterful plan for his precious defense.