Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 4: Patriots vs. 49ers

Things to consider while praying of the repose of the soul of the best there ever was in the game of coaching up genetically altered, half human, day walking vampire killers:

--Let's begin with a thought experiment. Let's say some town planners were laying out a new configuration of streets, and the local residents were worried about a certain intersection because it looked dangerous. But they were told by the powers that be it would be fine. That they understood their concerns, but assured everyone they had a plan to address them. Then when the roads were being laid, this crossing looked even more hazardous than they feared. Just accidents waiting to happen. Again, they were assured the problem was not being ignored. They had a vision and were sticking to it. But when the roads opened, it was pure carnage. Crashes happening on a daily basis, just like the townspeople predicted. Still, the ones in charge merely insisted they're fully confident in the intersection they have. Sure, they're always looking to improve it. But those roads are working hard to improve, everyone's on the same page, the motorists are getting better at their communication, and they fully believe they have the streets they need going forward to make this one of the best, safest, most sustainable traffic interchanges around. Even as the whole area is littered with tire marks, shattered glass, twisted metal, and blood stains. That's the 2024 Patriots offensive line situation. And once again yesterday, Pats management put Jacoby Brissett in the middle of the intersection and told him to direct traffic.

--In no way am I going to sit here and put down Demontrey Jacobs. He's a 2023 UDFA who never saw the field until his 14 snaps of cleanup duty last week. Being assigned to solo block one of the most unblockable edge players of his generation. According to the notes I took, that strip sack was the fourth time in the last two possessions that Bosa got his hands on Brissett. One was a TEX (tackle/end cross) stunt on 3rd & 5 where he technically beat Sidy Sow. And another he circumnavigated the globe to tackle Brissett just across the line of scrimmage so it wasn't a sack. But on none of those plays did Jacobs have a legitimate chance of slowing him down.

--This isn't a failure of the player involved. It's failure on a systemic level. Failure of the front office to make offensive tackle the priority everyone knew it was.  Failure to plan. Failure to adjust the plan to the realities of the league. Going into the season with Vederian Lowe or Caeden Williams at LT was the football equivalent of buying a scratchie at the gas station and calling it "financial planning." The fact they got injured and Jacobs was forced to enter Thunderdome against Bosa isn't bad luck. It's bad management. 

--Not that Bosa was the only one to attack the weakened flanks of the Pats battle lines. Sam Okuayinonu beat Jacobs with an inside move. Though Brissett was able to make a positive play out of it, connecting on a back shoulder throw to Ja'Lynn Polk. But still:

--I get the overall plan is to focus on the long term. To build this roster in a way that's sustainable. Locally sourced. Fair trade. Farm to table. Non-GMO. Probiotic. Anti-oxident. Whatever. Sometimes you just need to overspend in order to get somebody - anybody - that can do the dirty job you need done. Without that, you're never going to be able to transition to Drake Maye. And you're never going to develop a young wide receiver room with a spray chart like this (via NextGen Stats):

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That's not the passing chart of a 2024 NFL offense. It's the EKG of a coma patient whose family is debating whether to unplug the machines. It indicates that of his 19 completions, 7 were at or behind the LOS. Including the first touchdown pass since the 1st quarter of Week 2. And another 10 completions were shorter than 10 yards. Simply put, you can't accomplish any goal, long term or short, if you can't achieve the basic task of giving your passer time to throw it 10-plus yards. 

--We're a month into the season and things not only haven't improved since the first day of camp in July, they've gotten appreciably worse. The more the personnel has changed, the harder it's been to have any sort of continuity. The communication along the line might as well be done by carrier pigeon. And no one can claim we didn't all see this coming. 

--Part of me does want to pin some of this on Brissett holding the ball and being generally slow to go through his reads. But the stopwatch would indicate it's not him:

--And while I'm not willing to complete absolve Brissett, he's the one taking all the physical abuse. And since he possesses a survival instinct, it's very much in his self-interest to not hold the ball longer than he has to. So I'm much more comfortable putting the blame on personnel decisions and on coaching. We know the rush is coming. Whether opponents send extra guys, employ twists and stunts, or simply send four bodies shooting into gaps. It's coming like winter in Westeros. And yet you don't see Alex Van Pelt scheming up ways to take advantage of the aggressiveness. Not effective ones anyway. Two plays after the catch by Polk, he called for a backside screen to Rhamondre Stevenson, which Ji'Ayir Brown promptly read and destroyed with fire and water like he knew the playcall in advance. 

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--But beyond the wildly ineffective screens and dumpoffs into the backfield, where are the hot routes? The quick slants. Receivers getting their heads around because they know the ball has to come out in 2.46 seconds to avoid catastrophe. Tight ends scraping along the line into the vacated zone behind the pass rushers. The standard operating procedures when you're trying to make a defense believe there's a risk/reward to selling out on the rush. Just to give them something to think about. All we've seen these past few weeks is Van Pelt locking up Offensive Coordinator of the Year honors at the Defensive Linemen Association's Rushie Awards. 

--And calls like this aren't going to hurt his chances. 4th & 1, they line up in Tank formation against a box that was not just fully loaded, but armed as well. Maliek Collins was already three steps into the backfield on Layden Robinson before Stevenson had the ball. And there was simply no chance of him converting:

--Though credit where it's due (and because I need something positive to say before I start Irishing-up my morning coffee), AVP did come up with a great constraint play off of that one in a 4th & goal later. With the same formation on offense and San Francisco back in their short yardage package, he drew up a way to get both Brissett and Austin Hooper some room to operate in. Play action. Hooper sold the run with a block on Bosa before releasing into the flat. Malik Mustapha was spying Stevenson, who picked him up his blitz, and Hunter Henry ran off Deommodore Lenoir just long enough for Hooper to beat him to the goal line:

That's how you do it. Use your own predictability against your opponent. That's some real Sun Tzu stuff right there.

--Just to circle back to that failed 4th & 1 though, it's worth pointing out that came after a time out. As was the illegal shift they got flagged for after the 2:00 warning before the half. And there were other examples of questionable coaching. For instance, burning a timeout challenging a Brandon Aiyuk catch that looked legit. Then not throwing the red cornhole bean bag for this one by George Kittles:

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--But to me the worst example was burning a perfectly designed gadget play - a Hook & Ladder of all things - while you're down 17 points in a lost cause, instead of saving it for when it might be useful:

What that X-post is referring to is how on the previous play, Tyquan Thornton was assigned to block all 269 pounds of Okuayinonu on a Stevenson run. It went for a loss of 7. Van Pelt would've slowed Okuyinonu's rush more if he put down a yellow plastic "Wet Floor/Piso Mojado" sign with the little stick figure guy slipping and falling. Beyond that non-block and that penalty, Thornton contributed 0 catches, bringing his season total to 2. Right now he's  the Patriots version of the dad in every commercial who's a useless doofus who can't back into his driveway, cook, pick out an insurance company, raise his children, or sexually satisfy his wife. (That last one isn't literally in the ads, but it's always the subtext.) We can't be sure if the problem is the player, the quarterback or the system. But since he's on his third starting QB and his third OC and the results are still the same, I think the answer is pretty clear.

--Here's a play that won't mean much in the grand scheme of things. But let's consider it a palate cleanser:

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Brissett again had to step around pressure, this time coming from Michael Onwenu's side. But Polk and Gibson ran a perfectly executed mesh concept, and Gibson made the most of the space he had. He's been a nice pickup for a team that hasn't had a true pass-catching back since James White's last effective year. So while this didn't affect the outcome, watching it is sort of like looking at a Moo Deng video. It's just to make you temporarily happy in the middle of all the doom scrolling. 

--Here's more video joy:

I'll say about Joey Slye what I said about Nick Folk. Kickers are weird. You can scout the bejeebers out of them. Measure all their measurables and deep dive into their stats. And then it's the one everyone overlooked that ends up being lights out. Kickers are weird in the same way MLB closers are. The 2013 Red Sox went through four of them until they landed on Koji Uehara, who made them a World Series champion with one of the great seasons in franchise history. Go figure with either of these positions. That's all I got.

--With those out of the way, it's time we have a talk about Stevenson. He has a fumbling problem, and it's starting to affect us all. Four fumbles in four games is unsustainable. Never forget that Stevan Ridley once had 1,200 yards and was benched because he fumbled four times in a season. There's no question Stevenson has been our best offensive player for years. But ask yourself this: If you were working on the Manhattan Project, would you ever find yourself asking, "Say Rhamondre, can you grab that box of radioactive isotopes and bring it over to me?" Then why would you trust him with a non-nuclear football?

--I'd like to give the Pats defense credit. I really do. This is, after all, a powerful, highly efficient, precision space rocket Kyle Shanahan has built. It's got a lot of thrust and it's not easy to keep on the launch pad. But it's tough to heap praise on them when you watch the same Jets team that picked them apart last week only manage three field goals at home against one of the supposedly weakest teams in the league.

--The Niner's system is an heirloom in the Shanahan family. Famously designed to stress a defense with outside zone runs, then counter those with boot action away from linemen who are conditioned to sell out in order to defend the edge. That creates space for the quarterback and opens up the deep parts of the secondary. Which is precisely what happened yesterday. Whether it was Jaylinn Hawkins not staying "deeper than the deepest" at his single high safety spot:

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Or Marcus Jones staying completely in phase with Jauan Jennings, but lacking the size to stop a 6-foot-3, 212-pounder from making the play:

I don't want to grade on the curve here. Low expectations aren't going to do us any good. It's just that every time I see this defense give up a chunk play, my default setting is to go back to how the Pats offense is virtually incapable of pulling off anything remotely like it. And it stopped being a small sample size a long time ago. We're now five seasons into this disaster. Five years of not being able to generate points. A half decade of opposing coordinators having no one to worry about gameplanning for. Five orbits around the solar system of not being able to win a single 1-on-1 matchup. Consider the following:

Through four games under Matt Patricia in 2021: 74 points scored

Through four games under Van Pelt in 2024: 52 points scored

So while in no way am I letting Jerod Mayo and Demarcus Covington's defense off the hook after surrendering 431 yards, an insane 7.2 yards per play (more than twice what New England had), and 19 1st downs, this is the least of our problems.

--In other small bright spots, while in coverage on Aiyuk Christian Gonzalez allowed one reception for 10 yards. And Keion White had seven pressures. Every week these two prove they are the rock upon which this unit's church will be built for the next football generation. It's a question of whether they'll want to stick around past the ends of their rookie contracts if the other side of the ball doesn't get addressed. And soon.

--This Week's Applicable Movie Quote (tie):

"I'm too old for this! Someone get me a goddamn wheelchair!" - Whistler, Blade

"Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill." Blade, Blade

--I've already gone on way longer than I expected to. So I'll end on a non-Patriots high note. One I deeply regret not thinking of first:

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--We're onto a month of three home games and one at a neutral site. Which seemed like the perfect time to switch to Drake Maye until we saw this debacle unfold. If they decide to make the move anyway, strap yourself in. Their track record for bold decisions hasn't been good here in a long time.