New England Patriots: Where Has the Offense Gone?

After only scoring nine points, and zero touchdowns yesterday against the New York Jets, there is some cause for concern this morning among New England Patriots fans. 

Entering the year, even the most level-headed Pats fan could not help but dream back to the offense of 2007 and think with Tom Brady healthy and Randy Moss, offense should not be a concern for this year’s team.

As we have witnessed in the first two games, putting points on the board for this year’s team may not come as easy as most of us had hoped.  What might not be so obvious is this is a trend that didn’t begin yesterday in the Meadowlands, but perhaps finds its roots in the midst of New England’s 16-0 2007 regular season.

That season, both Brady and Moss etched their names in the record books, as did the New England offense; Brady with his 50 touchdown passes, Moss with his 23 touchdown receptions, and the Patriots with 589 points. The Brady-Moss duo was nothing short of dominant.

But, it appears teams began to figure out how to at least control the Brady-Moss tandem, and stop the big play, beginning in 2007.  Through the first 13 games of the Brady-Moss combination, New England averaged 38.7 points per game, with Moss averaging 97.2 receiving yards per game and catching 19 total touchdowns. 

In the eight games since, including the 2007 postseason and the first two weeks this year but not week one last year, the Patriots have averaged only 23.4 points, and Moss’s numbers dip to 61.0 yards per game and five touchdowns. 

In his first 13 games catching passes from Brady, Moss failed to get in the end zone just twice; in those eight games since, he hasn’t had a TD five times.

This decline with Moss’s big-play ability has coincided with the games in which New England has struggled the most to put points on the board.  In the 21 games with Brady and Moss playing together for New England, again discounting week one last year when Brady was injured, the four lowest scoring games for the Patriots have all occurred within these last eight games. 

Expanding that list a little, six of New England’s eight lowest point totals are within these last eight games, as are seven of ten. 

To put it more simply, the explosiveness we saw out of the New England offense through the first 13 games of the 2007 season is no longer there, and began to disappear long before failing to reach the end zone against the Jets, and even before Brady went down with a knee injury against the Chiefs in ’08.

So, what does all this mean?  Well for starters I think Patriots fans need to lower expectations a bit for what this team is capable of offensively.  Fans need to realize that the records set by New England in 2007 did not come easy and asking for the team to duplicate its feats is likely asking far too much. 

But, it also means the team itself may have to realize things have changed since those early days of ’07 and a more balanced offense may be what is called for to win.

The strength of this team on offense remains the passing game with Brady, Moss, and Wes Welker leading the way.  But, over these first two weeks, the passing game has dominated the play-calling at the severe expense of the running attack, to the tune of 100 pass attempts to just 43 rushes.

Because New England hasn’t even been a threat to run the ball these first two games, teams do not even have to concern themselves with stopping the rush.  This has to make New England easy to defend.  Sure, some of the low-rushing totals thus far are the fault of the running backs.  But, to a larger degree, the problem lies in the lack of repetitions they receive and also an offensive line that in a few key short-yardage situations thus far, has been out-muscled. 

I’d like to see New England adapt in these next few weeks to what has transpired on the field in weeks one and two—maybe lineup in a few more running formations, give backs Fred Taylor and Laurence Maroney an opportunity to get into any sort of rhythm.  And also, be able to attack through the air out of a running set, forcing teams to at least think for a split second about what is going on in the backfield. 

A more balanced offense would no doubt help the passing game as that split second a defender may take to think about the rush may be all it takes for Moss to get downfield and deliver one of those big plays we became accustomed to in 2007.