Why did the Patriots cut Bailey Zappe? It's not all that complicated

BOSTON -- If you looked at the relationship between quarterback Bailey Zappe and the New England Patriots from 5,000 feet, you likely were shocked by the news on Tuesday when he was waived by the team. He's a young player at a premium position who had some strong showings as a rookie. He inspired a whole ZappeMania/Zappe Fever phenomenon. He briefly made Gillette Stadium shake to its core by coming off the bench and throwing a touchdown on Monday Night Football.

How, then, could the team cut ties with him less than a year after alllll of that, especially when plenty of question marks still remain about starting quarterback Mac Jones?

The answer, put indelicately, is that Bailey Zappe just isn't all that good. Not right now, at least.

The forgotten part of that Zappe craze last year, too, was that the quarterback's surge was short-lived. While his (off-the-mark) touchdown pass to a (wide-open) Jakobi Meyers served as the highlight of the night when 68,000 fans chanted Zappe's name as if a quarterback savior had descended from the heavens, Zappe finished that game with two interceptions and a lost fumble. He had a bad game, despite what the imagery of the evening might have suggested. (The Bears won, 33-14. The Bears then went 0-10 for the remainder of their miserable season.)

And we never saw him in game action again. His rookie season saw him throw five touchdowns and three interceptions and he also fumbled four times, losing three of them. He committed six turnovers in 14 quarters.

This summer, Zappe looked worse. His lack of height was a problem throughout training camp -- save for one Sunday where he shined. Observers on the practice fields could easily note that the Patriots' backup situation was not ideal. With a shaky offensive line protecting Jones, who missed time due to injury last year, that figured to be an important matter. So the Patriots made a move to fix it.

The Patriots, ultimately, made two strong statements about their feelings on Zappe.

First, in a preseason game where they reportedly didn't use Jones in order to protect him, the team had Zappe play almost the entire game. He took four sacks. He finished the preseason with a 58.8 percent completion rate, throwing one touchdown while taking six sacks and fumbling three times.

Second, the team waived him on Tuesday. The Patriots would seemingly be happy to keep Zappe on the practice squad, or they may still want him on the 53-man roster. For now, they're comfortable with exposing Zappe to waivers in order to accomplish either of those end goals. In their estimation, the relative reward of keeping Zappe on the practice squad is worth the relative risk of losing Zappe to a waiver claim by another team that remembers ZappeMania fondly. That means that the Patriots are comfortable with the fact that they may no longer have Zappe coming to work in Foxboro every day.

If he goes, he goes. That's the message from Tuesday.

For Zappe, there's still a chance of managing an NFL career. He's unlikely to hit a late-stage growth spurt, true. But he did set a single-season record for collegiate touchdowns with 62 two years ago, knocking Joe Burrow down a rung in the record books. (LSU might have faced a tougher schedule than Western Kentucky. Don't @ me, OK?) He is from Texas, so he's destined to be a football lifer. And he does have a leg up on competitors for jobs, because most of them won't have such a high-profile bit of history on their resumes.

But as of right now, he hasn't been good enough. And his story ought to serve as a reminder that it's always best to focus on substance over hype.