It's so much worse than expected and other leftover Patriots thoughts

BOSTON -- How did you feel after the Philly game in Week 1? There were all sorts of debates and arguments about "moral victories," which got out of hand. But how did you feel?

I know I came away feeling ... impressed. Invigorated, even. I believed the Patriots were going to have a solid season. They lost a tight game to a Super Bowl contender, and they could have won if a rookie had just gotten his foot down quicker. Mac Jones threw for 316 yards and three touchdowns. The makeshift offensive line held its own against a ferocious pass rush. The defense handled the two-headed monster of A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith while making Jalen Hurts look ordinary. Things were looking up.

Now? Things are looking ... less up. The Patriots are 1-5. The season is over. Bill Belichick is out of buttons to push. Mac Jones looks like a lost cause. The offensive line is criminal, the receiving corps is proving the haters correct, the defense lost its two best players to injury, and even special teams has become a wreck. Many fans in this great football region have turned to rooting against the Patriots, so that this horrific season can at least produce a top-five draft pick.

Even if you had low expectations for this season, it's hard to believe you saw it getting so bad so quickly.

The most recent evidence of this sad state of affairs can be summed up thusly: The Patriots lost a game to Brian Hoyer and Josh McDaniels.

Was it more complex than that? Some nuance involved? Sure, sure. But there's just no reason for a Patriots team with playoff expectations to be losing football games to Brian Hoyer and Josh McDaniels.

Yet it happened. You saw it. I saw it. It was real, and it was bad.

But hey, there's still a week until the Patriots play again, so let's chew on some leftover thoughts from the latest 21-17 defeat in the meantime.

--It's a different conversation -- to some degree -- if DeVante Parker could have just caught the pass.

It's been a tough year for Mac Jones. It's been a tough couple of years for Mac Jones. Yet with a comeback win on the line, on the road, with no offensive line to speak of, Jones uncorked that pass in that moment.

And Parker dropped it. Brutal.

Had he caught it, the Patriots would have had a first down on the Raiders' side of the 50-yard line with about 95 seconds left to gain 15 yards to give Chad Ryland a chance to win the game. Does the rookie kicker make a long kick to win the game? I have my doubts. But still. If you are the purported "playmaker" on the team, you have to make plays.

--Parker also killed a first-half drive by running this route, if you want to call it a route.

After signing a contract extension in the offseason, Parker has been on the field for 69 percent of the Patriots' offensive snaps this season. He's caught 13 passes on 22 targets for 136 yards.

 DeVante Parker is not the one single reason the Patriots are bad. But he's certainly not helping.

--The Mac Jones fixation goes too far in all directions, but I do think there was plenty from Sunday's game to dislike. While the protection on the game-ending safety was abysmal, Jones did have a safety valve in Rhamondre Stevenson for a short gain that could have at least set up a fourth-and-10.

(Mike Gesicki might have been his preferred "safe" checkdown on that play. If only Jones could have anticipated his tight end stumbling and bumbling around on the turf after getting smoked by Maxx Crosby.)

Jones' deep throw to Tyquan Thornton was probably never going to be completed, given the coverage. But throwing the ball eight feet out of bounds made sure that it never had a chance of leading to a big gain or even a pass interference penalty.

The interception speaks for itself, as that was just a horrible physical error by Jones. (That's almost worse than the mental error picks, really.) And he could have had another pick-six if Robert Spillane doesn't let this one go through his fingers.

Everything remains true about Jones being put in a terrible position to succeed. But he could still be better.

--Regarding that whole thing about the quarterback being in a bad position, this offensive line is just not going to work. Yes, it wasn't in the plans to start two rookie guards, but the Patriots have hit on plenty of interior linemen over the years. Atonio Mafi and Sidy Sow are not hits at this point in their careers, and that is an indictment of Jake Andrews, who hasn't been trusted to take a snap yet.

Watch Mafi at left guard once again get sucked into the middle of the line, opening a free lane to a pass rusher running a simple stunt: 

And we could do a whole story on Vederian Lowe at right tackle, but there's no need to pick on Vederian Lowe at right tackle. It's not his fault that Bill Belichick believed Calvin Anderson and Riley Reiff could handle that spot. The issue isn't with Lowe (who had 33 NFL snaps prior to this season and has now taken 315 snaps for the Patriots) himself but with the Patriots for being forced to play him, because Reiff lost the job in the summer and Anderson lost the job with an abysmal performance in Week 2 vs. Miami.

It's why, really, there's just about no hope for this Patriots offense ever really getting above water. They'll have spurts, they'll score some points, but having three holes in the offensive line is the definition of a fatal flaw.

--The defense ... also had some breakdowns.

Just not enough humans involved in the defense.

--I'm guessing that the Patriots didn't spend much time in the meeting rooms last week talking about Michael Mayer. The second-round pick out of Notre Dame entered the game with three catches for 41 yards in his first five games, yet he torched the Patriots for five receptions (on six targets) for 75 yards. Four of those receptions moved the chains for Las Vegas, with all four of those conversions coming on third down.

--Mike Reiss was on a rampage with facts during the game.

There's the old saying that truth hurts but damn. That truth hurts a lot.

--I saw a headline on Monday that said Bill Belichick is closing in on the all-time LOSSES record. He's five losses away from matching Tom Landy for the third-most, and that got me thinking. We know that Landry, a Dallas legend and two-time Super Bowl champion, was fired when Jerry Jones took control of the team in 1989. Here's what Landry's final five seasons looked like:

1984: 9-7
1985: 10-6*
1986: 7-9
1987: 7-8
1988: 3-13

*Team made playoffs, lost only playoff game via blowout

So four years of mostly mediocre football with one postseason appearance and an 0-1 playoff record, before the wheels fell off with a 3-13 season.

Here's what Bill Belichick's record looks like after a 12-4 season with Tom Brady in 2019:

2020: 7-9
2021: 10-7*
2022: 8-9
2023: 1-5

*Team made playoffs, lost only playoff game via blowout

There are certainly some parallels there. I'm not necessarily saying that this is definitely Bill Belichick's final season, but this situation very much looks like a mess of his own doing, and he doesn't seem to have the answers to get the team out of this spot.

--What do we call this play?

It's kind of funny (emphasis on "kind of"), I watched last year's Patriots-Raiders game the other day. The ineptitude of the Matt Patricia-Joe Judge offense was a totally different brand of incompetence than the Bill O'Brien version in 2023. But the end result is largely the same.

--If this means what I think it means -- the Patriots trying to "hide" Cunningham's ability to throw a forward pass -- then it's one of the dumber bits of strategy I've ever seen.

That bit of shenanigans did not work.

--The Patriots started the game with two penalties on defense -- an offside penalty and a personal foul for leverage on a field goal. They then started on offense with two straight penalties -- a false start on Sidy Sow, and an ineligible man downfield penalty on Trent Brown. Jahlani Tavai committed an ill-advised unnecessary roughness penalty. Hunter Henry committed a hold that negated a 74-yard Ezekiel Elliott touchdown. In the fourth quarter, Sidy Sow jumped early, and Kendrick Bourne committed an illegal shift penalty on the next snap.

After the back-to-backers, Jim Nantz called it very un-Patriotlike. Announcers keep saying this. How many years can announcers say it before they realize it is actually very Patriotlike? They make a lot of mistakes these days. The Super Bowl years were a while back. No need to put a fancy bow on it.

--You want positives? OK, some positives. J.C. Jackson played the whole game and looked pretty good. (That pass interference penalty came on an uncatchable ball. Alas.) Christian Barmore looked very much like an emotional player who wanted to win in crunch time, and he combined with Mack Wilson for a run stuff on third down to force a Raiders punt in the final minutes. Matthew Judon traveled with the team and stood on the sidelines, which shows him embracing an important leadership role when he could be at home playing on his phone. Kendrick Bourne was, despite a couple of pre-snap mistakes, a baller. Jabrill Peppers delivered an incredible hit, leading directly to a pick. Ezekiel Elliott looked good. Rhamondre Stevenson's injuries didn't keep him off the field. And uhh ... look that's a lot of positives. Considering that list was empty over the previous two weeks, you can call that progress.

--The progress, though, is at risk of being abruptly halted. The Buffalo Bills come to Foxboro on Sunday. They haven't lost to the Patriots in non-tornado-level conditions since 2019, when Tom Brady still worked in New England. After that it's a trip to Miami, where the Patriots historically stink, against a Dolphins team that has a historic offense that seemingly cannot be stopped.

This story began by stating that this is all so much worse than most anybody imagined it would be. The safe bet now is that it gets a lot worse in the coming weeks.

You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.