Regardless of who plays quarterback, the Patriots shouldn’t have much trouble with the Bears
The Bears do have the No. 2 rushing offense in the league, but the Patriots shut down Nick Chubb and the Browns last week. We're predicting a big Patriots win by a notable score.
Welcome to Season 11, Episode 7 of the Unconventional Preview, a serious yet lighthearted, nostalgia-tinted look at the Patriots’ weekly matchup.
It’s possible Mac Jones will start at quarterback Monday night against the Bears after missing three games with a high ankle sprain suffered in Week 3 against the Ravens. Some intrigue emerged in his absence, with unflappable rookie fourth-round pick Bailey Zappe playing well in victories over the lousy Lions and dysfunctional Browns. But Jones is the more talented and advanced player, and it’s in the Patriots’ best interests to play him if he’s healthy.
This played out almost as a best-case scenario, as much as anything can when it begins with an injury to an important player: Zappe proved his mettle in a couple of low-degree-of-difficulty games in Jones’s absence, and Jones, who had two touchdown passes and five interceptions in the first three games, got a reminder that he’d better start protecting the football better or perhaps there will be a challenge after all.
You know what might count as a worst-case scenario for Bill Belichick and the Patriots? Benching Jones for Zappe, only for the rookie to struggle against better defenses as the league picks up his tendencies, and then having to go back to a ticked-off Jones. Now that would be a real quarterback controversy that no one would be happy about.
Sure, it was a blast watching Zappe come through. His arm and accuracy are better than advertised, and while he has physical limitations, he has provided legitimate clues that he can succeed in this league. But I can’t help but wonder why Patriots fans have such short memories with Jones. Is it that his TV ads are so awkward?
This is a quarterback who had by any measure a terrific rookie season. He led a flawed Patriots team to 10 wins. He had the fifth-most passing yards by a rookie quarterback in NFL history (3,801). He threw 22 touchdown passes. During the Patriots’ seven-game winning streak in the middle of the season, he threw nine touchdown passes and just two interceptions, protecting the ball while the defense and the running game did their thing. And yet so much of that is dismissed or forgotten because of a mediocre three-game start with an offensive coordinator new to the job in every way.
There’s another reason Jones deserves to have the job back: The coaching staff did him wrong to start the season. They had him chucking up the deep ball like he was the second coming of Jeff Blake. Too much was on Jones’s plate, and the new implementations to the offense didn’t play to his strengths.
That all seemed to get fixed while the other guy was in there. The Patriots did things to aid Zappe that they should have done for Jones. The offensive line became stout, other than penalty collector Isaiah Wynn. Rhamondre Stevenson became a star. And the offensive scheme became simpler, yet more creative, with play-action finally utilized regularly.
This should be a get-right game for Jones on Monday night, presuming he is good to go. The Bears, with Justin Fields showing everyone what a struggling second-year quarterback really looks like (four touchdowns, five interceptions, 54.8 completion percentage), have the league’s 32nd-ranked passing offense at 122.8 yards per game.
The Bears do have the No. 2 rushing offense in the league, but the Patriots shut down the Browns’ Nick Chubb last week, and Belichick against a one-dimensional offense usually means that the offense will be no-dimensional by game’s end.
Kick it off, Bailey — Jake, not Zappe — and let’s get this thing started …
Three players to watch other than the quarterbacks
Jakobi Meyers: During the first three seasons of his career since catching on with the Patriots as an undrafted free agent in 2019, Meyers was a smart, dependable receiver, but one with a limited ceiling. He wasn’t a downfield threat, averaging just 11.6 yards per catch through those first three seasons. He didn’t do much after the catch, never averaging more than 4.4 yards after the catch in a season. And he wasn’t especially efficient, particularly last season, when he made a career-high 83 receptions, but on 126 targets, a mediocre 65.9 catch percentage.
I know, that’s way too much negative data on Meyers, who is a good player, and one who really bailed out the Patriots when N’Keal Harry busted. The point is that Meyers’s trustworthiness led Patriots quarterbacks — particularly Jones last season — to rely on him too much given his limited big-play capability. It’s going to be very interesting to see whether Jones locks in on Meyers at the expense of other receivers upon his return.
The spread-it-around approach last week was how the Patriots’ passing game should look, with four receivers — including Meyers and previously underused tight ends Hunter Henry and Jonnu Smith — all tallying at least 60 receiving yards, and dynamic rookie Tyquan Thornton being involved in all sorts of ways. But the Bears have a curious pass defense. They have allowed just 178.7 passing yards per game, third-best in the league, and have intercepted more passes — five, including three by safety Eddie Jackson — than they’ve allowed passing touchdowns, four.
But they habitually struggle against slot receivers, which happens to be the role in which Meyers does his best work. This may be a week where it’s wise for Jones to look to Meyers more often than anyone else. But in the long run, to paraphrase Tom Brady from 20 or so years ago, his favorite receiver needs to be the one that’s open.
Rhamondre Stevenson: It wasn’t as electrifying, obviously, but Stevenson’s 19-carry, 76-yard, 2-TD performance in the win over the Browns was as impressive in its own way as his 161-yard masterpiece the week before against the Lions.
The Browns were keyed on stopping Stevenson, a reason Zappe’s receivers always seemed to be so open, and they did bottle him up on several 1- or 2-yard runs. But he got loose for a spectacular 31-yard touchdown run late in the second quarter, and had worn down the Browns by the end, charging in for a clinching 6-yard run with less than four minutes left to punctuate the rout.
The Bears, led by rangy linebacker Roquan Smith (a team-high 66 tackles, 1½ sacks), will surely emphasize slowing Stevenson above all else. But chances are that their 29th-ranked run defense, which permits 163 yards per game, is going to have a tough time keeping Stevenson, now seventh in the NFL with 448 rushing yards, from running off toward the end-zone horizon.
Matthew Judon: Despite spending much of last Sunday buzzing Jacoby Brissett’s tower, Judon’s streak of having at least one sack in every game this season ended against the Browns. It will be a shock if he doesn’t begin a new one Monday.
The Bears have done almost as lousy a job of protecting Fields as they have developing the No. 11 pick in last year’s draft. (Aside: You don’t hear Patriots fans lamenting that they didn’t trade up from the No. 15 spot to get Fields anymore, but man, was that a common hot take post-draft.)
Fields has been sacked 23 times this season on 138 dropbacks, a 16.7 sack rate that is by far the worst in the NFL. The Giants’ Daniel Jones has the second-worst rate, at a comparatively well-protected 10.7. The Commanders sacked Fields five times a week ago Thursday. Judon and Deatrich Wise might hit that number in tandem come Monday.
Grievance of the week
This is not so much a grievance as it is a plea: If we can’t get some national acclaim for Adrian Phillips, can we at least get an occasional nod of appreciation for all that he does for the Patriots defense? He’s not a future All-Pro like Kyle Dugger or someone who could have been fitted for a red jacket years ago like Devin McCourty. He just does, week after week, what Jerod Mayo and Steve Belichick ask of him, whether it’s lining up as a de facto linebacker, showing his versatility and range in pass coverage, or sticking his helmet into the trenches to belt a running back before he can hit the accelerator. Phillips’s statistics offer hints at his value — he is tied for second on the team with 29 tackles and has two passes defensed, as many as Dugger and one more than McCourty. But Phillips really should be a darling of the film gurus. He’s the kind of unsung hero that should pop off the screen.
Prediction, or everyone knows the ‘85 Bears are the greatest team in NFL history and there’s no shame in what happened, right?
The Patriots have beaten the Bears the last five times they’ve met, most recently a 38-31 win at Soldier Field in Week 7 in 2018. Remember it? Cordarrelle Patterson returned a kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown and Kyle Van Noy took a blocked punt 29 yards for another score to break a third-quarter tie.
This matchup probably won’t be quite as entertaining, especially if rain remains in the forecast. But it should be a relatively easy victory for the Patriots — Belichick vs. Fields and rookie coach Matt Eberflus is an epic mismatch — and it will also be meaningful.
A victory Monday would be the 325th of Belichick’s career, postseason included, breaking a tie with Bears legend and founder George Halas for the second most in pro football history, behind only Don Shula’s 347. Belichick loves such historic symmetry nearly as much as he does leftfooted punters, stonewalling the media, and memories of coaching Lawrence Taylor, maybe more. He’s not going to let the moment slip, for him or his suddenly surging team.
Patriots 46, Bears 10.
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