New England Patriots: That's a bad operation right there, not the answer at quarterback, and a coach whose head is packed with meat

Monday 9/8/25

Watched the Patriots get it handed to them yesterday in a game that was nowhere near as close as the final score suggested, which itself is odd, because during the first half, the Patriots looked like they had control of the game.

I've written here that I think this will be a bad team, that Drake Maye is not the answer at quarterback, that Will Campbell was a terrible draft choice, and Mike Vrabel is not some great coach, or even a good one. Also, that the Patriots will never win so long as Robert Kraft is in charge and the organization is relying on Patriots alums, retreads, old friends, whatever you wish to call what's tantamount to the sports form of cronyism.

Robert Kraft owes everything he has to nepotism, so I understand why he thinks hooking up those you know and/or are related to is the way to go. People who are hooked up themselves and are only whatever they are because they were hooked up always think like this. They never think in terms of merit (publishing people, for example). They trick themselves that they do, but that's easy, because they spend their entire lives fooling themselves. But sure, maybe bring Josh McDaniels back six more times. That will probably fix things.

The Patriots next head to Miami, where they almost always lose if it's September, including when they had some of the best teams of all-time. The Dolphins were woeful yesterday, so maybe these Patriots win. But if they fall to 0-2? Look out below. But you can already see it happening.

To start with Drake Maye: I don't want to call him a loser, because there's something deficient in someone's character, in my view, for that to be the case, and I don't think we need to go there, but I will tell you what his defining trait is: He loses.

This guy just flat out loses. He's not a winner. He's inconsistent, inaccurate, he doesn't make any big plays, he doesn't make plays that turn games around, win games. It's who he was in college, too, because it's who he is. But he'll make an impressive throw every now and again--which is like someone who clangs their three-point attempts knocking down some far-off heave with someone in their face that one time--and in this age of mass stupidity and a world in which one highlight clip supersedes both 1. A player's body of work/track record and 2. Reality, everyone then says, "He's the future!" in that awful Boston accent.

He isn't. He'll be someone else's back-up soon enough. Or maybe not soon enough in terms of the Patriots' needs.

His fundamentals--like his footwork--are lousy. He has no touch on short and intermediate passes, which was a problem yesterday, because that was basically all he threw. His "best" completion down the field was under thrown. He's a bad fit for McDaniels' superannuated offense, which he just ripped off from others anyway. And I'm sorry, but this player isn't very bright. He's not a leader/field general. He doesn't have "it." The winner gene. The extra. The harummpph. It ain't there, and if it ain't there, there's nothing in the world that can make it be there.

The Raiders won 4 games last year. They have a new (soon to be seventy-four-year-old) coach and quarterback (who is in his age thirty-five season). There was dicey weather yesterday, which ought to play into the Patriots' hands and be a problem for the visitors from Las Vegas, but that wasn't true at all.

Maye is technically 3-10 as a starter, but he's really 1-10, because the way it works in football is if you start the game at QB and leave after a series and your team goes on to win, despite you not completing a pass and your replacement throwing for five TDs, you get the win and he doesn't. Two of Maye's "victories" happened in this style. He had nothing to do with them and wasn't there, essentially.

But everyone is going to do what they do, which is this...

"But, but, but...Josh Allen!"

If you think Drake Maye is anywhere near Josh Allen or ever will be, I don't know what to tell you. Sure, Allen was raw, and it took him a bit to harness his raw skills, but come on--you have to live in reality. Also, these comps never work. In anything. Look at all of the people who were tabbed as the next Bob Dylan. Players don't come in packages of two.

Allen's Buffalo Bills beat the Baltimore Ravens last night by a score of 41-40. The Ravens are a good team. A contender. I don't think as much of their quarterback as others do--because I don't believe you can win everything with a quarterback with a run-first mentality--but that's a hard team to beat.

Allen led his team to a comeback win, which involved putting put up a 22-spot in the fourth. He was 33 for 46 for 394 yards, two TDs, no interceptions, and he added 30 yards on the ground.

Do you know what that is? That's an MVP performance. That's a big-time, special performance. That's not what others can do.

That will never be Drake Maye. Can you even imagine Drake Maye having that type of game? It's not shocking from Josh Allen. That is, it's not some miraculous one-off.

Also: The "c" on Maye's jersey for "Captain" is ridiculous. He's 1 and 10. And I'd say about half of those games were there to be won if you were a winner. Captain. Can I be assistant captain since we're just handing out titles?

Then we have number four overall draft pick, Will Campbell. Holy shit was this guy over-matched. I guess there's something to this whole "You can't have short arms" thing with players at his position. I'll say straight up what I've hinted at since the summer: This is a bust. Game 1 grade: F. Abysmal. He could get Maye hurt. The Patriots blew that pick. They won that meaningless game to finish last year, costing themselves the first overall pick, then they blew the pick they got.

This kind of stuff sets you back years. Spare me the BS mirage, the fool's gold, the fluky, meaningless happenstance, the smoke and mirrors, that was the 2021 "false-positive" playoff season. This has been a five year rebuild so far, and welcome to year six, with no answers in sight. (Actually: It's added up to a five-year plus rebuild, but it's more like failing to recognize a rebuild, a rebuild misfire, another, and another reset. The Cam Newton "era" was a rebuild--or should have been--but Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick were too arrogant not to realize things wouldn't keep rolling along, minus the best quarterback in history, with the worst quarterback in the league--by far--taking his place. Then Mac Jones was a rebuild, then Jarod Mayo and Maye, and now Vrabel and Maye and McDaniels.) Nothing on the roster, the wrong people in charge, a bad mix of people in charge, no quarterback, nothing to show from the drafts when you had favorable draft positioning, no one wanting to come to this place. Good luck.

Then you have Mike Vrabel, who has tricked not very smart people into believing that he's a super smart person, which he isn't.

In all of the time I've watched football, I've scarcely seen anything as dumb as when he punted with his team trailing by ten and 4:53 left in the game. The guy on the other sideline, Pete Carroll (who looks great, by the way), is responsible for the dumbest decision in NFL coaching history, given that if he just ran the ball back in 2014 the Patriots wouldn't have won that Super Bowl and who knows what would have happened with the franchise going forward after another Super Bowl loss, but Vrabel's decision was tough to beat.

When would you punt in that situation? Basically never. Maybe...maybe...if it was fourth and sixty. It had been fourth and five, but then a penalty made it fourth and ten. Those extra five yards--which really changed nothing in terms of whether you kept the offense on the field or not--registered, to Vrabel, as significant; a bridge too far.

Think about the point I'm making here. He couldn't adept mentally to realize that five, ten, fifteen yards, it was all the same at that juncture. He received this bit of information--the extra five yards--as something it wasn't. The event--the penalty--caused him to fail to understand the unwavering reality. It became his point of focus because and the impetus for his decision; not, again, that unwavering reality. That's how easily he lost mental control of the situation as what the situation actually was.

Here's how Vrabel operates and why he gets cushy coverage and dim people think he's a fantastic coach, a man to have at the forefront of the organization, etc.

His shtick is this "I'm going to answer your question before you're done asking it" thing to intimidate people, like he's this scary guy with a quick mind but who is also a rogue with saucy charm, which media morons eat up (even as he debases them), like a beefy pirate, blah blah blah, and a sarcastic retort--"He breaks balls!"--ever at the ready.

Don't be fooled. His head is filled with meat.

Fourth and ten is eminently doable, which isn't even the point. You know what the point is?

It's fucking math.

You need two scoring drives in less than five minutes, and that's with the other team having a possession.

It borders on mathematically impossible that you can do that, barring some seventy-yard type of home run play and a turnover. Or certainly one of those things. You're going to need a touchdown drive. How long do those take? When do you see two scoring drives take less than five minutes? When there's a short field. Or two short fields. Now add in a possession for the other team. So you pretty much need a turnover, a short field or two, a huge chunk play of fifty, sixty, seventy yards, perhaps an onside kick recovery, and almost certainly a combo of some of the above.

Or...you could just take what is inarguably your best chance with the position you have put yourself in and try and convert the down, do so, score, kick off, force a three and out, get the ball back, and score again, all of which was on the mathematical table, so to speak. You know, the whole "there's this thing called time" thing.

I couldn't believe the stupidity of this decision. I'm also leaving out there there was no reason--but rather the opposite--to think that you were going to stop the Raiders anyway. And the Patriots didn't, because he of the head filled with meat decided to blitz on third and twenty, and the Raiders converted, no problem! But you're punting on fourth and ten with less than five minutes to go in a game?

That's not even about being conservative. That's about not being able to do math. Philosophy doesn't enter into it. Nor strategy. That implies rhyme and reason, and there wasn't any.

Jerod Mayo--and I can't believe here I am positively comparing him to the new Patriots coach on September 8--wouldn't have punted that ball. I'm not saying Mayo wasn't among the worst coaches I've ever seen, because he was. But there's no one who punts there. Your only chance to win that game was to convert that down. The punter then shanked a twenty-yarder, and people won't understand how bad and brainless Vrabel's decision was, because they'll be distracted by the yardage total of the godawful punt (the rookie field goal kicker also missed a routine kick that every kicker in the league should hit thirty out of thirty times), because that's how people are these days, but the yardage total on that punt is an academic matter, because if it was the worst punt ever, or the best, nothing changes.

The Patriots might as well have walked off the field and hit the showers after Vrabel elected not to go for it in that moment. That was the real end of the game. The Patriots' head coach took time off the game for his team in which they trailed. He shortened the game on them. I mean, honestly. Can you not add and subtract? What's two plus two, ball buster? Because that's what we're talking here. Basic--as it gets--math. If this was a kid, mom and dad would be looking into getting him a tutor.