The no-risk Patriots are playing the only way they can, but will it work against Aaron Rodgers and the Jets?
The Jets beat the Patriots, 17-3, to end the 2023 season, putting an end to a streak of 15 Patriots victories against the Jets.
Welcome to Season 13, Episode 3 of the Unconventional Preview, a serious yet lighthearted, nostalgia-tinted look at the Patriots’ weekly matchup …
It’s against the Patriots’ better judgment to even attempt to be exciting on offense.
That might seem sort of a strange statement given that the modern NFL is designed to benefit quarterbacks, theoretically leading to more points, more highlights, more interest, and, of course, more money.
But two games into this season, that is the crystal-clear truth about rookie coach Jerod Mayo’s 1-1 team, which takes on Aaron Rodgers and the 1-1 Jets Thursday night. The Patriots have managed to be predictable, methodical, and still quite fun, though that last perception might be a product of low expectations.
A 1-1 record and two highly competitive games look pretty good when an 0-6 start did not seem out of the question.
The Patriots’ victory over the Bengals in Week 1, and even their overtime loss to the Seahawks in their Gillette Stadium opener Sunday, revealed a team more poised (for the most part) and disciplined (again, for the most part) than it had suggested it would be during a sloppy preseason.
The question is, can the Patriots sustain their relative success while continuing to play the only way that they can? Running the ball, throwing short passes to the tight ends, rarely taking anything resembling a risk in the passing game, and relying on a boulder-solid defense has been the formula, but the margin of error is quite small with that approach.
Much of the weight-bearing for the team’s success has been hoisted onto the defense. With inside linebacker and captain Ja’Whaun Bentley expected to miss the rest of the season with a pectoral injury, that burden to be near-flawless just got a little heavier and more difficult.
Thursday night’s matchup — a road game on short rest against a talented conference opponent — should offer significant clues about whether the Patriots can continue to find success (or at least more than was initially anticipated) by playing the only way their limited roster can.
The Jets have much more high-end talent than the Patriots. Do-it-all running back Breece Hall and receiver Garrett Wilson were probably first-round picks in your fantasy football league. Rodgers is 40, and Tom Brady’s extraordinary success as an older player has clouded how few quarterbacks have even been good at that age (the contemporary list is basically Brady, and a year or two of Warren Moon, Brett Favre, Drew Brees, and Vinny Testaverde).
Rodgers, returning from an Achilles’ injury suffered four plays into his Jets career last season, looked sharper in the Week 2 win over the Titans than he did in the opening loss to the 49ers. His statistics were fairly modest (18 of 30, 176 yards, 2 TDs), but he did lead a winning fourth-quarter touchdown drive in the 24-17 victory.
For the first time in a long time, the Jets enter a matchup with the Patriots having won the last meeting. The Jets beat the Patriots, 17-3, to end the 2023 season and Bill Belichick’s 24-year run as HC of the NEP. That halted a streak of 15 Patriots victories against the Jets. Thursday, the Jets will try to make it two in a row against the Patriots, something they haven’t done since winning in Week 11 in 2008 and Week 2 in 2009.
Kick it off, Slye, and let’s get this thing started . . .
Three players worth watching other than the quarterbacks
DeMario Douglas: The Patriots cannot afford to look downfield in the passing game more than occasionally for a couple of reasons. The most relevant: The offensive line has struggled to give quarterback Jacoby Brissett time to throw.
He’s been sacked just four times, which is a tribute to his poise in the pocket, because he is chronically under siege. That is unlikely to get much better against a Jets defense that even without talented linebacker Jermaine Johnson (torn Achilles’) features an aggressive pass rush.
The Patriots also would be wise to avoid challenging cornerback Sauce Gardner, who might be the best at his position in the league.
But there is one spot where the Patriots can enhance the passing game: Get Douglas involved. He’s excellent at getting open quickly underneath, and in his rookie season last year he was one of the top receivers in the league in yards after catch.
He should not be an afterthought in coordinator Alex Van Pelt’s offense, and yet he has been, with just two catches for 12 yards this season.
Breece Hall: The Patriots have proved skeptics worried that the run defense would not hold up in the absence of tackle Christian Barmore woefully wrong.
It’s arguably been the strength of the team. The Patriots have allowed just 116 yards on the ground through two games, and they held their ground against the Seahawks (limiting them to a 2.4-yard average) even after Bentley departed early.
But Hall is a whole different challenge. He’s run for just 116 yards on 30 carries through two games, but he also has 12 receptions. The Patriots cannot allow Hall, who has touchdowns in the Jets’ last five games, to find his 2023 form (1,585 total yards, 9 touchdowns).
Garrett Wilson: Some of the numbers regarding the Patriots’ pass defense against the Seahawks were deceiving. While they did allow 27 receptions to Seattle wide receivers — including 10 for 129 yards and a 56-yard touchdown by DK Metcalf — just three of his catches came when Christian Gonzalez was in coverage.
Wilson, who had more than 1,000 receiving yards in each of his first two seasons despite a dire quarterback situation, has begun Season 3 with 10 catches for 117 yards in two games. Wilson’s matchup with Gonzalez — who limited him to three catches for 18 yards in Week 3 last year and whom Rodgers called an “elite” player this week — should be one of the game’s best subplots.
The flashback
The Patriots and Jets have played five Thursday games, with the Patriots winning four. So we have some options for the flashback here. Let’s see, we could go with the time they . . .
. . . oh, who are we kidding? Of course it’s going to be the Buttfumble! When you have the Buttfumble, there is no other option.
The game in which it occurred is fairly eventful beyond what it is most remembered for. The Patriots pummeled Rex Ryan and the Jets in Week 12 of the 2012 season, 49-19, their fifth straight win in what would be a seven-game winning streak. (The Patriots had defeated the Jets previously in that streak, 29-26 in overtime, in Week 7, after starting the season 3-3.)
The victory was the 200th in Belichick’s career, making him the eighth coach in league history to reach that milestone. Julian Edelman and Wes Welker had receiving touchdowns, the only time that happened in the four seasons (2009-12) they were teammates. Edelman also returned a fumble for a touchdown during the second quarter, when the Patriots scored 35 unanswered points — including four touchdowns in just over a six-minute stretch, and three in 52 seconds.
For all of those feats, however, this game is rightfully remembered for one thing: Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez’s blunder while trying to improvise during a broken play, when he ran facemask-first into the posterior of offensive lineman Eric Moore, fumbled the football, and could only watch while sprawled on the turf as Patriots safety Steve Gregory returned it 32 yards for a touchdown with nine minutes left in the second quarter.
Yessir. The Buttfumble.
The blunder instantly became an all-timer of a football folly, not to mention the ultimate symbol of the Jets’ frequent ineptitude. Watch it today, right now, a dozen years later, and it’s still sure to elicit genuine laughter.
For poor Sanchez, it might not have even been the most embarrassing thing to happen to him that game. When the game really got out of hand, Jets fans began chanting for his backup . . . Tim Tebow.
Grievance of the week
If I had to give Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf a grade on how he fared in his first offseason of roster building, I’d probably go with a B+.
He re-signed an assortment of the best players on the roster to logical contracts. He drafted quarterback Drake Maye with the No. 3 overall pick, and he brought in the ultimate replacement-level veteran quarterback, Brissett, to act as a placeholder/mentor.
What else? In the second round, he took receiver Ja’Lynn Polk, who scored his first career touchdown against the Seahawks and looks like he has the potential to be a dependable No. 2. He got a third-round pick for disgruntled Matthew Judon.
It wasn’t perfect by any means, and there is a long way to go, but I would call it an impressive roster-building debut.
His one significant mistake was failing to land a dependable left tackle. The Patriots may not have been the most desirable destination for left tackles with real free agent options, but he needed to do better than signing Chukwuma Okorafor (who has since left the team) and running it back with Vederian Lowe. There had to be a better option, somewhere, somehow.
But that’s an acknowledgment of what he didn’t do, not my grievance. My grievance is related to one of the ways that some Patriots wanted him to get that tackle: by trading up into the second round to take BYU’s Kingsley Suamataia, or even taking him over Polk.
He was the best-regarded tackle remaining in the draft, and the Chiefs pounced, moving up one spot in a trade with the 49ers to take him at No. 63 overall.
Suamataia earned rave reviews — and the starting job in camp — but he has struggled mightily since the real games have begun. After allowing two sacks, four pressures, a hurry, and committing a pair of penalties while failing to impede the Bengals’ Trey Hendrickson whatsoever Sunday, Suamataia was benched in the fourth quarter in favor of second-year lineman Wanya Morris.
It did not go unnoticed here that in the Patriots’ win over the Bengals in Week 1, Lowe did a better (if hardly flawless) job against Hendrickson than the rookie many among us wanted the Patriots to give up future capital to draft could do.
The Patriots still need a left tackle (in the first round, 2025, hopefully). And Suamataia might be a fine player soon. But right now, it sure looks like Wolf played it right in his first draft.
Prediction, or do we really need a “30 for 30″ on “The New York Sack Exchange”? . . .
The key for the Patriots will be familiar. To quote a certain legendary voice from another local team, Tommy Heinsohn: “Run!” The Patriots are fourth in the league in rushing with 177.5 yards per game. Rhamondre Stevenson has been both resilient and explosive (he has 201 yards and two touchdowns), while Antonio Gibson chipped in with 96 yards on just 11 carries against Seattle, including a 45-yard burst. The Jets have struggled against the run, allowing 155 yards per game. There are no secrets about what the Patriots will try to do. They’re predictable out of necessity. Why not keep believing it will work until it doesn’t? Patriots 20, Jets 18.
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