What we learned in Patriots-Jaguars: Pats have a toughness problem originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
It might’ve been the closest the Patriots would get to a “must-win” game in a season where wins were always going to be few and far between.
Taking on a fellow basement-dweller, the Patriots had a chance at a rare victory against the Jaguars in London. If they lost it, they’d be looking at a long and slow slog to the end of what would feel like a meaningless season.
The pressure was on. (As much pressure as there could be, at least, in a game between one-win teams.) And the Patriots folded, getting embarrassed on an international stage, 32-16.
Here’s what we learned…
Patriots have a toughness problem
Toughness in New England, from a football standpoint, has long been defined by a team’s ability to a) run the ball, b) stop the run and c) cover kicks.
That’s how Bill Belichick defined it during his tenure, and it’s how Jerod Mayo defines it now.
They went 0-for-3 in that regard against Jacksonville. The whiffs were so obvious that Mayo pointed to those three elements — and his team’s no-show when it came to all three — almost as soon as he positioned himself behind a microphone after the game.
“We’re a soft football team across the board,” Mayo explained. “What makes a football team? That’s being able to run the ball, that’s being able to stop the run, and that’s being able to cover kicks. And we did none of those today. They controlled the ball for most of the day… Back to the drawing board.”
The Patriots allowed the Jags to average 4.4 yards per carry on Sunday, totaling 171 yards on the ground in a performance that included 17 consecutive runs at one point. They knew the Patriots couldn’t get stops on the ground, and they continued to hammer downhill run calls as they drained the clock through the second half.
And if that wasn’t deflating enough, the Patriots picked up just 20 yards on 12 running back carries for an average of 1.7 per attempt. They also got gashed in the kicking game, allowing a 96-yard punt return for a touchdown at the end of the second quarter.
The question now is how the Patriots respond to that performance. Can they fix their issues with scheme changes or play-calling changes? Do they need to re-shuffle their personnel? Or is it something more intangible — attitude, focus, energy — that needs an overhaul?
A game like that one, when you’re bullied by one of the worst teams in football, left the Patriots with more questions than answers in the immediate aftermath.
Players seem to be supporting Mayo’s take
Patriots players, meanwhile, seemed to agree with their head coach after the fact.
“He kept it real with us,” Kyle Dugger said. “And I’m glad he did.”
“Coach Mayo’s not going to come in here and say something he hasn’t said to us in the locker room,” Drake Maye said. “We’re not tough… I think he does a great job of relaying the message to us. And the guys know… We gotta find something. What we’re doing isn’t enough. Gotta man up.”
“He said it well. We’ve gotta look in the mirror and understand what he’s saying,” Jahlani Tavai said. “And if we’re OK with being soft, then some people will fall off and the rest of us who want to prove that wrong will step up and make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Jerod just said everybody gotta check their ego when they come in,” Daniel Ekuale told the Boston Herald. “And I agree with him. I feel like a lot of guys think too highly of themselves and have to check their ego and come in and just play as a team. I feel like if we play as a team nobody can stop us. But if we go out there and do our own thing, and play outside of the scheme, that’s when we get beat.”
There may be players in the locker room, of course, who don’t love what the head coach had to say. Particularly if they have qualms with the positions they were being put in by their coaches in their latest loss.
But the comments from Tavai and Ekuale seem to suggest there is a level of division in the locker room between those trying to do the right thing and those trying to do their own thing. That in and of itself provides another challenge for Mayo and his staff. This team isn’t good enough or buttoned-up enough to overcome any level of dysfunction behind the scenes.
Doug Pederson should thank them
Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson looked like he might be about 10 minutes away from being told by team owner Shad Khan that he was being relieved of his duties.
The Patriots got out to the roaring start they’d been hoping for, riding a game-opening touchdown drive to a 10-0 lead that they carried into the second quarter. Then the wheels came off.
After an eight-play touchdown drive, the Jags forced a four-and-out and drove the field quickly thanks to a 58-yard completion from Trevor Lawrence to Brian Thomas Jr. Suddenly, they had the lead.
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Four plays later, after another stalled Patriots drive that saw Hunter Henry jump offsides on third down, they notched their 96-yard punt-return score. After another penalty on the extra point — this one a neutral zone infraction call on Tavai — the Jags opted to go for two and succeeded.
Instead of Pederson losing his job at halftime, he was the proud owner of a 22-10 lead. New England’s butchering of their double-digit advantage led to the highest-scoring quarter in seven years for Jacksonville.
The run was not established
While Alex Van Pelt’s opening script was far more successful than his first sequence of play calls in Week 6 against Houston, where the game went from there was a head-scratcher.
To start the game, the Patriots dialed up 10 pass plays for Maye against just two runs. Eleven plays and 68 yards later, JaMycal Hasty was in the end zone, taking a short blitz-beating throw from Maye for 16 yards and a score.
From there, the Patriots ran it eight more times in the first half. The result? A loss of two yards. Facing a double-digit deficit in the second half, the Patriots attempted just five more rushing attempts for the remainder of the game.
Still, the damage from the failed runs in the first half had to have stung. After a Joey Slye field goal on their second drive of the game, the Patriots ran it three times on first down in the second quarter — for -1, 1 and -4 yards — helping lead to three straight punts.
Handed Jacksonville the game
While Maye wasn’t the issue (more on him in a minute), the Patriots still had their issues in the passing game. Ja’Lynn Polk, whose drops issues have plagued him now for weeks, had three potential completions bounce off his hands. Kendrick Bourne also had a crossing route hit his mitts and fall incomplete, turning a potential touchdown drive into a Slye field-goal attempt.
The Patriots were limited to a degree by an illness to Pop Douglas, taking their top playmaker at the position off the field. But it’s worth wondering why Kayshon Boutte didn’t see more targets in this one. He finished with two, catching a fade down the sideline for 33 yards and drawing a nine-yard pass-interference penalty. Polk, meanwhile, had three targets that yielded no catches, and he slipped on the Wembley Stadium turf and fell on a potential two-point conversion.
The kid looked good again
Maye flashed his high-end potential in his first start against the Texans, but his latest performance might’ve been better. There were still the signs of his eye-opening physical skills — he scrambled for 15 yards, he found Hunter Henry for a 12-yard pickup in a scramble-drill situation, he dropped one in the bucket to Boutte, and he fired a fastball up the seam to K.J. Osborn for his second touchdown pass of the day — but his misses seemed to be reduced, too.
He wasn’t perfect. Maye nearly threw two picks; one was dropped by the Jaguars, and one was broken up nicely by Osborn. But the rookie finished without a turnover, and he made a heady play to get the ball to Hasty for a touchdown when staring down an unblocked rusher during the game’s opening drive.
Maye finished the game 26-for-37 for 276 yards and two touchdowns, giving him a rating of 109.7, which would’ve seen a bump had his teammates been more sure-handed.
Gonzalez looked knackered
Was Christian Gonzalez tired after the transatlantic flight and the early kickoff time? Even if he wasn’t, he certainly had his hands full while tracking rookie first-rounder Brian Thomas Jr.
We thought it might go this way.
This looked like it was going to be a challenging week for Gonzalez, despite Thomas not having quite as big a name as some other receivers Gonzalez has shut down in his first couple of seasons. And it was.
Thomas ran away from Gonzalez briefly on his 58-yard catch in the second quarter. While Gonzalez did an excellent job to get back onto Thomas’ hip — getting his hand on the football as Thomas reeled it in — the Jags still ended up with an explosive gain to put them in position to score. Gonzalez was also on Thomas when Lawrence found the LSU product for a two-point conversion soon thereafter.
