Nothing went right for the New England Patriots in Thursday night's Week 3 showdown with the New York Jets.
As head coach Jerod Mayo put it after his team's 24-3 loss, they were "not good in any phase of the game." They totaled just 139 yards while the Jets tallied 400. The porous offensive line allowed 15 quarterback hits, including seven sacks.
Now 1-2 on the season, the Patriots have crashed back down to earth since their surprising Week 1 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. NBC Sports Boston's Patriots insider Tom E. Curran believes the last two weeks are a more accurate representation of who they are: a deeply flawed team that must play a perfect game to have a shot at a victory.
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"The Patriots are not a good enough team to play anything less than perfect football and have a chance of winning," Curran said on Patriots Postgame Live. "And even if they play almost perfect football, they might still lose, last week being a perfect example of it. Two mistakes cost them the game.
"Tonight, they showed up at about 60, 50, 40 percent capacity? And then got their asses handed to them. So that's about the size of it. This is a team that I think a lot of us fairly started to reconfigure their expectations on after Week 1. But that was a perfect performance and a bad performance by Cincy. This was a very good performance by the Jets and a poor one by the Patriots, and you have now a 24-3 loss."
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Former Pats linebacker Ted Johnson was among those buying in after the Bengals game. He even considered Sunday's loss to Seattle a moral victory. But after witnessing Thursday's abysmal performance, that Cincinnati win feels like a distant memory.
"I wasn't expecting this, guys. I really wasn't," Johnson said. "I was expecting a closer game, a more competitive game. I gave high marks to Jerod Mayo in the pregame show. I said it's because he has his team ready to go even though they lost to Seattle last week. I thought that was a very good Seattle team, so no shame in that even though they had some issues. I just thought the compete level was really high.
"That first game against Cincy I think just maybe screwed us all up, because my expectations were still high and I felt good about this team. This game scares me. Now, I'm not sure what this team is. Because they got run on, their offensive line was a sieve all game long, they didn't look prepared, they didn't have answers. And this is where I start to go, 'Oh boy, this could be a really long season.'"
The Patriots' schedule doesn't get much easier over the next few weeks. They'll visit the San Francisco 49ers next Sunday, though they'll catch a break with stars Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel sidelined. They will return home for their next two games against the Miami Dolphins and Houston Texans before heading to London to take on the Jacksonville Jaguars. They'll host the Jets for a rematch the following week.
Although Brissett isn't the problem -- he continues to take a beating behind the struggling offensive line -- the Patriots' QB situation will be worth monitoring heading into next Sunday's game vs. San Francisco. Rookie QB Drake Maye replaced Brissett and made his NFL debut in the final minutes of Thursday's defeat. He completed four of his eight passes for 22 yards and was sacked twice.
Watch the full instant reaction from the Patriots Postgame Live panel below or on YouTube: