What in the heck is going on with the Patriots, and can New England turn it around?

Tom Brady, even at the age of 43, is living well with the Buccaneers. Tampa Bay, coming off their Monday night victory vs. the Giants, is 6-2 and is one of the best teams in the NFC, a perch the Buccaneers haven’t climbed for the past 15 years. Meanwhile, Brady, like so many other older quarterbacks in 2020, continues to perform admirably.

There were real questions when Brady left New England about whether the quarterback could replicate his success in a new location without coach Bill Belichick running the show. But halfway through the 2020 season, we have some semblance of an answer. What we don’t know, however, is what the heck is going on with the Patriots post-Brady. Well, we do know one thing: New England, with Belichick and without Brady, has been a poor facsimile of the team we’ve seen for the past 20 years.

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After losing 24-21 to the Bills on Sunday, the Patriots fell to 2-5, the first time they’ve held that record since 2000. How long ago was that? There are people who will vote for president on Tuesday who weren’t alive the last time New England was this bad. There are people who will grab a beer (and/or drown their sorrows with cheap whiskey) as they watch the election results come in who were in diapers the last time New England was three games below .500.

So far this season, the Patriots, simply put, have been in bad, the worst we’ve seen in recent memory.

“The frustration level’s definitely high,” running back Damien Harris said Sunday. “Moral victories mean nothing in this organization. We’re frustrated, I’m frustrated, the team’s frustrated. We just gotta do better. There’s really no other way to put it: We just gotta do better

In 2000, Drew Bledsoe was the quarterback in charge of the Patriots. He had success in his career previously, leading the league in passing yards in 1994. He took his team to the Super Bowl in 1996. Cam Newton is the quarterback in charge of the Patriots in 2020. He had success in his career previously, playing well enough to be named MVP five years go. He took his team to the Super Bowl in 2015.

There are certainly parallels between the two quarterbacks, especially since they serve as the bookends to Brady in New England. But Bledsoe struggled in 2000, and Newton certainly is struggling in 2020. Newton has thrown for two touchdowns against seven interceptions. His yards per game average is the worst of his career. His quarterback rating is terrible. And as the Patriots drove to a potential game-tying or game-winning drive with less than a minute to play against the Bills, Newton fumbled the ball away, ending New England’s chances to knock off the AFC East’s first-place team. The week before, Newton threw three interceptions and was benched in a loss to the 49ers. The week before that, Newton tossed two picks and took four sacks. The week before that, he was out with a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Obviously, poor play from the quarterback, a free agent who did a nice job to win the starting job in the first place, has hindered New England.

“I am still jeopardizing this team’s success because of my lackluster performance of protecting the football,” Newton said after Sunday’s game. “Coach [Bill Belichick] trusts me with the ball in his hand and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I just have to do a better job protecting it. It’s extremely frustrating, but this league is not what have you done for us, but what have you done lately? I understand this is a production-based league.”

It’s not just Newton who isn’t producing. The defense is the 12th-best NFL team in points allowed. That’s not bad. It’s, after all, better than average. But under Belichick, the Patriots have finished outside the top-10 in that defensive stat only once in the past 15 years. It’s certainly a concern.

More worrisome is the rest of the offense. Newton is the team’s leading rusher. Hey, it’s great he’s recorded six rushing touchdowns so far, but it’s not all that fantastic the rest of the team has four rushing scores combined. The receiving corps has been quiet in 2020. The tight ends have been anonymous, something that never could have been said during the Rob Gronkowski era. The team overall is the fourth-worst in the league at scoring points—if that stat holds up, it would be one of the worst-performing offenses in franchise history.

So, can the Patriots turn it around? If you read this passage from NESN.com, you might not walk away optimistic. As Doug Kyed wrote, Newton has “acknowledged New England’s system is ‘advanced and so schematically driven by a specific reaction of how the defense, or what the defense is doing’ while he specializes in ‘playing and reacting.’ With Tom Brady at the helm, the strength of the Patriots’ offense was also in its complexity. With Brady gone, it might be more of a hindrance than a benefit.”

Meanwhile, Belichick had this to say on Monday, seemingly blaming the team’s salary cap. “Look, we paid Cam Newton a million dollars. It’s obvious we didn’t have any money. It’s nobody’s fault,” Belichick said. “That’s what we did the last five years. We sold out and won three Super Bowls, played in a fourth, and played in an AFC championship game. This year we have less to work with. It’s not an excuse. It’s just a fact.”

And I’m not sure that letting Brady get away was even the wrong call. Better to say goodbye to a legend a little bit too early than to see him flounder and cut him loose a little too late. But that doesn’t help New England this year.

Brady is 1,300 miles away. He’s not coming back. Cam Newton, on a one-year deal, might only be around for this season. It seems doubtful that Jarrett Stidham is the next franchise quarterback in New England. So maybe, the Patriots will have to start over again with their offense next year. Maybe, their two decade era of dominance is over.

All along, many of us thought that Belichick was the real reason the Patriots had become one of the greatest franchises in NFL history, that he was the genius mastermind, that he was the best coach in NFL history.

But what if it was Brady all along?

Josh Katzowitz
Josh Katzowitz

NFL Analyst

Josh Katzowitz is a longtime sports writer who covers boxing for Forbes and who previously reported on the NFL for CBSSports.com. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He’s currently a writer and editor at the Daily Dot. His work has been noted twice in the Best American Sports Writing book series.

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