Loss to Ravens Ended More Than the New England Patriots' Season

It didn’t take long yesterday afternoon to realize that the Patriots were in for something they had not experienced during the Belichick-Brady era.

Just 17 seconds into the game, Ray Rice tore off an 83-yard touchdown, sending a clear message that just being the Patriots, just being at home, just being coached by Bill Belichick and quarterbacked by Tom Brady was not going to be enough.

And as we all know now, it didn’t get much better as the Ravens stormed to a Playstation-esque 24-0 first quarter lead.  While New England had a few opportunities to make a game of it, every time they had a chance, they were unable to make the necessary plays.

After cutting the deficit to 27-14, the defense surrendered a long touchdown drive to the Ravens, which essentially closed the door on the game and the Patriots season.

What it also may have closed the door on is any talk of a Patriots mystique, aura, or intimidation.

This door has actually been closing all season, for many reasons, and Ray Rice and the Ravens defense slammed it shut yesterday afternoon in Foxboro. 

After this season it can no longer be said that:

New England holds on to leads;

New England wins big games on the road;

New England, with Belichick and Brady, will find a way to win the close games;

New England doesn’t lose consecutive games;

New England does not lose at home;

And New England does not lose at home in the playoffs.

So how did we get here?  How did the Patriots go from a preseason Super Bowl favorite to losing at home in the Wild Card Round by three scores to a team that passed the ball for just 34 yards?

We watched the Patriots all year waste timeouts and be flagged for false starts and delay of game penalties—mental breakdowns that just did not happen before with this team. 

We saw New England struggle on the road, finishing 2-6.  They could not hold on to leads on the road, blowing second-half advantages in five of six road losses. This happened in week 2 at the Jets and continued throughout the season up to week 17 at the Texans. 

Was playing on the road the problem or just playing against better teams on the road as opposed to an easier home schedule?

Not to mention for the first time under Belichick, we saw and heard about the Patriots having internal problems that became all too public, to go along with reports of poor practices.  If this happened before, it was always kept in-house.

The signature moment of the 2009 season will likely be the failed 4th-and-2 conversion at Indianapolis. The game (not just the fourth down call but everything that led up to it) symbolized everything that went wrong with this season.

We all remember what happened.  Blown lead, unable to run the ball in key moments, inability to move the chains in the fourth quarter, unable to get crucial stops on defense, wasted timeouts, predicatable play-calling, disorganized offense - these traits plagued New England in the Colts game and they plagued them all year long.

From a talent perspective, the lack of depth to this team was glaring.  Watching the Cardinals-Packers game after the Patriots loss yesterday, what stood out to me was the Cardinals found out the day of the game that Anquan Boldin, who caught 84 passes for over 1,000 yards in ’09, would not be playing.

Yet their offense had the depth to fill in for the missing receiver and still put up over 40 points.  The Patriots, on the other hand, were paralyzed yesterday on offense after the injury to Welker.

To understand why New England lacked depth, we must do something that doesn’t happen very often in New England: question Belichick.

Let me say I am very happy Belichick is the coach of the team I root for and I wouldn’t want anyone else in control.

With that said, many of his personnel decisions over the last year or so have simply not worked out due to what can only be labeled as mistakes in talent evaluation. 

A trademark of Belichick personnel decisions over the years has been that, almost universally, when New England either released or traded away a player, that player’s best days were behind him.  That has not been the case as of late.

Defensively, Belichick let walk Assante Samuel and traded away Richard Seymour, then watched a defense this season that did not have anyone to step forward to make the big play in a game's most important moments.

On the offensive side of the ball, after the '08 season, the Patriots did not resign wide receivers Jabar Gaffney and Kelley Washington.  Right before the start of this season, New England traded away tight end David Thomas.

In their place, New England signed Joey Galloway and traded draft picks for Greg Lewis and tight end Alex Smith.  Lewis and Smith would be cut before the start of the season and Galloway would be cut a few weeks later after never getting on the same page as Brady.

Galloway a wasted signing, and the Patriots gave away draft picks for two players who never played one down during the regular season while Gaffney, Washington, and Thomas all contributed to their new teams, combining for 123 receptions, 1522 yards, and five touchdowns.

So if anyone is wondering why New England never established a third option in the passing game all year, those player personnel mistakes are a primary reason.

Another reason for the glaring lack of depth on this year’s team is that the Patriots, after having a solid 2005 draft (Logan Mankins, Ellis Hobbs, Nick Kaczur, James Sanders, Matt Cassell), had really poor drafts in 2006, ’07, and ’08, with it being far too soon to really judge the ’09 draft class.

In 2006, New England took Laurence Maroney in the first round, a player who even at the end of his fourth season does not have a real identity, while passing on running backs DeAngelo Williams, Joseph Addai, and Maurice Jones-Drew. 

But Maroney was not even the biggest blunder of the ’06 draft.  Wanting a receiver, the Patriots traded with Green Bay to move up in the second round to grab Chad Jackson.  Jackson caught just thirteen passes over two seasons in New England and is now out of the NFL.

Green Bay, using New England's pick later in the second round, took receiver Greg Jennings, who is coming off of back-to-back 1,000 yard seasons.  In addition to Jennings, the Pats also passed on Brandon Marshall, Devin Hester, and Elivs Dumervill.

The 2007 draft did not result in very much talent either, although to be fair, ’07 picks were traded for Wes Welker and Randy Moss, both, obviously, great moves by Belichick.  The point, though, is that another draft went by the boards with New England only adding one young player of any help to their roster (Brandon Meriweather).

The 2008 draft also has not worked out for New England.  Jerod Mayo looks like he will be the leader of the defense for years to come.  But the Patriots then forfeited their own pick due to Spygate.

Now, whatever one may think of Spygate, that the Patriots were punished too severely or not severely enough, the bottom line is that Belichick’s decision to ignore a clear memo from the commissioner resulted in New England not having a very valuable first round pick, missing out on players like Ray Rice or DeSean Jackson.

In the second round, New England took Terrence Wheatley, who could barely find the field this season.  Linebacker Shawn Crable was selected in the third round and he has yet to play due to injuries.

The Pats also selected QB Kevin O’Connell in the third round, but he was released prior to this year, resulting in another wasted pick.

I understand that the draft is a difficult process and if you analyze any team, there are going to be hits and misses over the years, and ultimately you just want the hits to outnumber the misses.  And for Belichick, that is certainly the case.

But it has to be acknowledged that there have been some bad mistakes in the last few drafts.  That, combined with the mistakes in signing and trading for players that did not contribute at all this season, has to lead to the question of are the Patriots (and Belichick specifically) still properly evaluating talent in a league that is changing.

The NFL is now a pass-first league where you need explosive playmakers on offense and you have to rush the passer on defense, two areas where New England severely underperformed this year. 

The other real problem area that I saw for the Patriots this season was the inconsistency and utter transparency of their offense.  It is really a testament to the talents of Brady, Welker, Moss, that the New England offense scored as many points and gained as many yards as they did.

In a nutshell, the Patriots offense was this: They either passed when Brady was in the shotgun or ran the ball when he was under center.

When passing, it was either deep to Moss or underneath to Welker.

When running, it was nothing more than a simple handoff to the deep back.

There was hardly any diversity of play calling, no tricks, and barely any plays that caused an opposing defense to be fooled by what was going on.

I am not a huge fan of the wildcat offense.  But the Patriots had two receivers on their roster, Julian Edelman and Isaiah Stanback, who were both former quarterbacks.  New England did not run one wildcat-like play all season where they took advantage of the skill-set of these players. 

The Pats used to run a receiver-pass play with David Patten (remember the game at Indy in 2001?).  Where was any play like that this year?

Edelman did motion under center for one play, but the Patriots were not organized, were flagged for illegal formation, and the play was never called again.

Due to the Galloway and Lewis failures, the Patriots lacked receiver depth.  Yet, they still tried too often to run the same offense that we saw in 2007, when in addition to Moss and Welker, New England had veteran receivers Gaffney and Donte Stallworth.

The Patriots underutilized the tight ends in their offense and the running backs in the passing game.

Kevin Faulk, who along with Edelman, was one of the few players to play well in defeat against the Ravens, touched the ball 41 less times this year than last.

Ben Watson was a major factor running down the middle of the field in the Week 1 win over Buffalo; now this may be on Watson too, but where were those plays the rest of the year?

Where were the screens that defined the Patriots offense since 2001?

Where was the mentality that the Patriots will win a game any way they can?

Long gone are the days of clock-killing Corey Dillon.  Instead, the Patriots seemed insistent on throwing the ball out of the shotgun, even if other formations were far more suitable to their talent and the situation.

The Patriots offense routinely struggled in the second half, which to me says that the offense functioned well in the early going when the plays were likely being called directly from the script that teams prepare beforehand.  But once the game got going and the script had to be abandoned, then everything came to a screeching halt.

Going forward, what do the Patriots need? Here are the areas of concern:

• Must examine system for evaluating talent in context of the changing landscape in the NFL. 
• Must find players and a scheme that leads to a sustained pass rush.
• Must find consistent options in passing game other than Moss and Welker.
• Must design and run offense that is best suited to your talent, even if it is not the same offense that produced all those records in 2007.
• Must find playmakers on offense—players who are a threat to score every time they touch the ball, not just on offense but also in the return game.  If Josh Cribbs is available, might as well start there.
• Running back.  I don’t care about yards or touchdowns, when New England needed to run the ball this year, they could not do it.  Maroney is not the guy and another season cannot be wasted hoping he becomes what we all think he can.  Next year cannot start with him as the top back.
• With that said, the Patriots have to find a running game-plan that allows them to both pass and run out of the same formation.  Right now, they are far too predictable.
• The Draft.  The Patriots need an impactful draft this year.  They have a number of picks and I hope they use them well.  Looking at last year’s draft- Patrick Chung, Sebastian Vollmer, and Edelman all have potential. But even with the success of some of the rookies, New England still passed on players like Rey Maualuga and Jairus Byrd, a pair of rookies who had significant impacts with their teams this year, and traded out of the first round which caused them to miss on players like Clay Matthews and Michael Oher.

The decade in New England football is now officially over and it was no doubt a great one, better than any New England fan ever could have imagined. It is too bad, though, that it ended with such a thud.

The Patriots and their fans now must look to the start of the 2010 season, leaving not only the bad taste of the '09 season behind but also the confidence (some might say arrogance) that came with all of the team's success between '01 and '08. 

Losing the way New England did throughout the season, and then losing like they did to the Ravens, means you are no longer an elite team in the league.

The Patriots must refocus and adjust if they wish to reestablish themselves as the team to beat in the NFL.