Bill Belichick doesn't anticipate replacing Matt Patricia at offensive play caller
BOSTON -- Pretty much any way you look at it, the New England Patriots' offense is bad.
With just the Monday night game left in Week 13, the Patriots rank 24th in the NFL in yards, which breaks down to 23rd in rushing yards and 20th in passing yards. They have the eighth-worst interception rate and the eighth-worst rate of sacks allowed, while also having the eighth-worst third-down conversion percentage. They are tied for having the worst red zone offense, and they have the third-worst fourth-down conversion rate. They rank 24th in the NFL in average points scored per drive.
It's not good.
The offense is being run by Matt Patricia, who's never had those responsibilities before. Joe Judge is the team's quarterback coach, and he's likewise never had those responsibilities before. Given the production through 12 games, it would seem as though Bill Belichick's experiment on the offensive coaching staff has failed.
Nevertheless, Belichick does not think it would be easy to replace Patricia as the offensive play caller in the middle of this season.
"Yeah I think we need to do what we're doing better. Yeah, I don't think at this point making a lot of dramatic changes is -- it's too hard to do that," Belichick said on WEEI's The Greg Hill Show. "If we can just do consistently what we're doing, we'll be all right. But we just haven't been able to have enough consistently and that's hurt us. It's not one thing. It's just one time it's one thing, next time it's something else. We just have to play and coach more consistently."
Belichick was asked for his thoughts about his comments from the preseason, when he said that if the Patricia-Judge duo running the offense ended up not working, then the blame should fall on the head coach. Belichick didn't change his mind on that one.
"Yeah well I'm responsible for our team's performance. So I accept that," Belichick said.
Belichick expounded on some of the Patriots' struggles thus far this season, leaning back on that call for consistency.
"Yeah, I think it's been a little bit of a combination of things on every front, really. Coaching, playing, penalties," he said. "We've had some high penalty games, and then we've had some low penalty games. We've had some turnover games and then we've had some no turnover games, and so forth. It hasn't always been the same problem or hasn't been the same problem on certain plays. Sometimes that's shifted. And there's certainly been some plays that haven't matched up well against the defense when they've been called. Whether that's the design of the play or the way it went against a certain defense, those have come up as well. So I'd say it's a combination of things."
Belichick was also asked about wide receiver Kendrick Bourne's public suggestion that the Patriots need to "scheme up better" on offense. The head coach did not seem to agree with Bourne's assessment.
"We work through the schemes every week, depending on who we play, and so forth," Belichick said. "Yeah. We scheme up every -- we run our schemes every week. So I'm not really sure about that."
