In the wake of their 2022 season, the Patriots believed they were rebounding.
The days of dysfunction, an ill-conceived offense, players questioning coaches’ tactics and quarterbacks melting down were over. Ex-offensive play-caller Matt Patricia had left, and Joe Judge was re-assigned. That 8-9 campaign represented a misery never to be experienced again.
Instead of soaring to familiar heights, the Patriots found rock bottom.
A year after Judge, Patricia and Bill Belichick oversaw what was then the team’s worst offense in decades, the Patriots rank dead last in scoring heading into Sunday’s season finale against the Jets.
For the first time since 2000, the Patriots are a last-place team, having lost 12 games for the first time in Robert Kraft’s ownership. The season deteriorated into an unforeseen failure.
To unpack that failure, the Herald interviewed more than a dozen team sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Patriots. Over months, sources described an offense undone by a quieter type of dysfunction, a broken quarterback and finger-pointing between the coaching staff and front office.
They paint scenes of a new offensive coordinator unsure of his assistants; a quarterbacks room filled with tense radio silence; an offensive lineman unofficially working as a coach to round out a shorthanded staff; another veteran proclaiming, with four games left, he would play for another team next season.
“This was messed up from the beginning,” a locker-room source said.
“Nothing like I expected,” another said. “Not at all.”
A year ago, such disaster caused Kraft to push for coaching changes, which led to the re-hiring of ex-Patriots assistant Bill O’Brien last January. Belichick, according to sources, preferred to keep Patricia and grow together. Instead, Belichick relented, and O’Brien returned as offensive coordinator.
Through the spring and summer, players spoke glowingly of O’Brien. He brought organization and structure, competence and confidence. The offense collapsed anyway, dragging the season into irretrievable depths by late October.
The waste of another season fed doubt about Belichick’s future in New England for the rest of the year. But the Belichick speculation overlooked another question that spoke directly to the offense and driving force behind his downfall.
How did this happen again?
Repeating the past
Days after the Patriots announced the opening of an offensive coordinator search last January, it became clear Belichick had no intention of running the search in good faith.
O’Brien was the only candidate of the five he interviewed with coordinator experience. Three were ex-players Belichick had either coached or crossed paths with in New England, one of whom, sources believe, interviewed for a different position he would later accept: offensive line coach Adrian Klemm.
Klemm first interviewed virtually, then met with Belichick in late January at the East-West Shrine Bowl in Las Vegas and agreed to terms less than two weeks later. On the surface, it was a sensible reunion. Klemm had played and learned under legendary Patriots offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia from 2000-04. However, his fit in the year 2023 struck some in the organization as questionable.
Klemm’s techniques and philosophy had evolved since his playing days under Scarnecchia, molded by stops at SMU, UCLA, Oregon and in Pittsburgh with the Steelers. In New England, Klemm joined a coaching mash unit bound not by a system, philosophy or even experience with the coordinator.
There was O’Brien, Klemm, new tight ends coach Will Lawing, a loyal O’Brien disciple, and Belichick’s holdover assistants that included two former college defensive players under 30 (running backs coach Vinnie Sunseri and wide receivers coach Ross Douglas).
According to league sources, some assistants came to believe O’Brien wanted to clean house and build his own offensive staff upon arriving in January, but Belichick denied him. Belichick allowed one hire, Lawing, who replaced ex-tight ends coach Nick Caley. To onlookers, a clear hierarchy developed with O’Brien and his assistants: there was Lawing and assistant quarterbacks coach Evan Rothstein, then everyone else.
“The staff dynamic is completely f—ed,” a team source said.
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O’Brien also pulled the offense closer to him, running more unit meetings - which involve all offensive players - than Belichick and Patricia had the year before. Consequently, positional meetings became scarce, sources said, which limited individual time shared between players and their position coaches. Most everything flowed through O’Brien.
As for how he saw his approach to the staff, O’Brien told reporters Tuesday: “That’s a little bit of a strength of mine. We were able to come together very quickly. We have a hard-working staff. It hasn’t been easy. We’ve had some things that we’ve had to deal with over the course of the year, but that’s just like that for every staff."
The Herald could not confirm whether O’Brien wanted to remake the offensive staff, but O’Brien’s frustration with the wide receivers and offensive line coaches began bubbling as soon as the late spring. Both position groups feature underdeveloped high draft picks and rank among the league’s worst units. Klemm oversaw the offensive line until he took a health-related leave of absence in late October, while Douglas and longtime receivers coach Troy Brown handled the wideouts.
Members of the front office shared O’Brien’s frustration with the lack of development as the season wore on.
“It’s just a lot of bad s—,” another team source said. “Bad coaching.”
Outside the front office, a few staffers privately pointed fingers back at decision-makers about the talent available. That is, save for Klemm, who confronted director of player personnel Matt Groh early in the season in a loud exchange that reverberated through the organization. Klemm, according to sources, didn’t feel heard, while some offensive veterans didn’t want to believe their eyes.
In the season opener, a banged-up offense started late-round rookies Sidy Sow and Atonio Mafi at guard and swing tackle Calvin Anderson. All three arrived that offseason because Belichick and Groh believed the best available tackles in free agency and the draft had been overrated, according to one source. Instead of investing significant money or a high draft pick in a proven starter, they opted for veteran discounts in Anderson and 34-year-old Riley Reiff and three late-round rookies.
Months later, Reiff’s performance forced the staff to move him off the starting right tackle spot before they could even practice in pads. With Anderson out due to a mysterious illness (he played just five games), the Patriots began suffering from the same turnstile tackle play that undermined their 2022 campaign. The team’s pass protection ranks fifth-worst by Pro Football Focus grades and last by ESPN’s pass-block win rate, both down from 2022.
“We didn’t invest in the offensive line until the fourth round, didn’t take a receiver until the sixth,” a third source said. “How do we spend the first three picks on defense when tackle was the biggest problem on the team last year?”
At receiver, Belichick’s attempt to replace No. 1 receiver Jakobi Meyers with JuJu Smith-Schuster backfired immediately. Smith-Schuster lost all explosion due to a chronic knee injury, as the Herald reported in September, when team sources shared he was not one of their five best pass-catchers. Smith-Schuster will finish his season on injured reserve with 260 yards, almost 500 fewer than Meyers, who’s scored seven touchdowns for Las Vegas.
The closest the Patriots came to fielding a game-changing receiver was during a free-agent visit in June, when DeAndre Hopkins flew in and Belichick offered him a contract. During his visit, the five-time Pro Bowler garnered support from coaches, executives and players, including Mac Jones.
“Obviously, we’d love to have him,” Jones said that month.
But weeks later, Hopkins signed for more money in Tennessee, where he’s since posted his seventh 1,000-yard season. The Patriots marched on. Asked about Hopkins’ decision in training camp, Jones expressed profound belief in his teammates, whose support for him would wane in the coming months.
Because after two decades of Tom Brady masking the Patriots’ offensive deficiencies with his expert play, Jones’ downfall would expose them all.
Problems under center
By the time Bailey Zappe made his first start in December, the internal consensus was he hadn’t beaten Jones out so much as waited him out.
Zappe continued to throw as many, if not more interceptions, in the weeks of practice leading up to that 6-0 shutout loss to the Chargers. He was no more accurate than Jones. But, an intact Zappe was better than a broken Jones, who turned the ball over three times before halftime of his last start against the Giants in November.
“We had no chance to win with Mac at quarterback,” a locker-room source said.
Under O’Brien’s tutelage, Jones fell from completing a career-high 35 passes in the season opener to getting benched in four of his 11 remaining games. Teammates recognized his confidence was shot when panic became a habit, and he would audible to a new but decline to throw to the play's intended target.
The locker room's confidence in Jones waned significantly after a 34-0 home loss to New Orleans on Oct. 8, the worst home shutout in team history. Around that time, the staff began deliberating a quarterback change, but Zappe, whom Belichick had cut six weeks earlier, undercut his own candidacy by going 7-of-18 for 69 yards in mop-up duty over two games.
Newly signed backup Will Grier was never a serious consideration, per sources, despite being told he could compete for playing time. That left Jones all alone in a quarterbacks room that sources familiar with the room paint as quiet and uncomfortable.
“There definitely isn’t healthy communication in there about trying to win football games,” a team source said.
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Jones and Zappe, whom teammates say are cordial to one another, hardly talk. Instead of rallying to support the starter each week, they are often siloed in their own preparation. Several members of the organization believe they would have benefitted from a veteran backup with experience in more cooperative rooms who could direct them and tie the room together.
Asked about Jones’ presence as a backup, Zappe praised him after last Sunday’s loss to Buffalo.
“It’s been good. Both of us want to win games,” he said.” So, whoever’s out on the field, we’re going to help the other one.”
Zappe also painted a different picture about the entire room during a press conference on Dec. 20, while noting the Patriots have cycled through several younger third-stringers (Grier, Trace McSorley, Matt Corral, Ian Book and Nathan Rourke).
“Everybody wants to win and everybody's helping each other out, no matter who's out there playing,” he said. “(Bill O’Brien) and (assistant quarterbacks coach) Evan (Rothstein) have done a great job of keeping us all on the same page. Personally, I've never felt any change. Of course, those guys left, but it's been the same vibe the whole year.”
Zooming out, some teammates believe Jones got “a raw deal” over his final years in New England. They cite the churn of new quarterbacks coaches and new offensive play-callers each season, saying Jones' failures really reflect a poor support system.
Others disagree, citing an old Belichick saying about ball security: "When you are carrying the football, you’re not only carrying the football for the team and everyone in the building, but you’re carrying it for everyone in the region. The fate is in your hands."
Too often, Jones dropped the ball. Now, he holds a clipboard.
Winter is coming
Two months before the Patriots were officially eliminated from the playoffs, at least one football staffer believed the season was already over.
He wasn’t alone.
Hours after the Saints loss, former Patriots captain and NBC Sports analyst Devin McCourty all but declared time of death on the Patriots’ 2023 campaign on national TV.
“I don't know where they turn to try to find answers to turn this season around,” McCourty said on NBC's “Football Night in America.” “Their best bet might be (to) tank it - or whatever you want to call it - and get a great draft pick.”
In his next press conferences, Belichick declared the team would start over. Starting over meant doubling down on their fundamentals, their techniques and core philosophies. Over time, as playoff hopes slipped from his grasp, Belichick tightened on his grip on a program that began to fray on the edges.
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After allowing troubled cornerbacks Jack Jones and J.C. Jackson to play against Washington on Nov. 5, a day they missed curfew at the team hotel, Belichick left Jackson home on the Patriots’ trip to Germany. But in Frankfurt, according to a team source, Jones blew up on position coach Mike Pellegrino at halftime for not starting.
Belichick cut Jones a day later.
In December, ahead of the team’s road finale, Belichick ruled out starting left tackle Trent Brown as a healthy scratch. Brown had dealt with knee and ankle injuries in late October, and had his mind on free agency. Days after a surprising upset at Pittsburgh, Brown openly discussed plans to play for an NFC team in the team locker room.
Brown also opened up about changes Belichick had installed after setting the agenda for the offensive line room in Klemm’s absence. With Klemm out, the patchwork offensive line was now practicing Scarnecchia’s techniques and drills instead of those he had taught.
“I think that has to do a bit with people being set in their ways,” Brown told the Herald in December. “I think Klemm brings more of a new-age (approach).”
Though it wasn’t Belichick running drills and holding meetings, but assistant coach Billy Yates and veteran lineman James Ferentz, who also met individually with rookies and assisted them on the sideline during games.
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Across the roster, players continued to play hard for Belichick, but doubt and discontent crept up anyway. Veteran safety Adrian Phillips and defensive tackle Davon Godchaux vented to the Herald after consecutive late-season losses, saying they felt they had to shut out opponents for any chance to win because of the offense’s failures.
Ten days after Godchaux’s rant on Dec. 3, more than a dozen teammates applauded undrafted rookie quarterback/receiver Malik Cunningham on social media when the Ravens signed him off the Patriots’ practice squad. According to sources, some organization members told Cunningham he had made the right decision to leave New England.
“They just had no plan for Malik,” one source said.
Meanwhile, Zappe began to transform the offense into a more explosive outfit. Granted, no one, not Belichick nor O’Brien, could exterminate the offense’s turnover bug. When he also asked why the offense crashed this season, O’Brien took accountability for that failure Tuesday in a conference call with reporters, while specifically pointing at the offensive line.
“You have to do a better job of finding consistency, and a lot of that’s coaching,” O'Brien said. “I think the turnovers have been a problem. ... We’ve been inconsistent with our protection, with our run blocking up front. We’ve been inconsistent in the passing game. I accept responsibility for that.”
As for Belichick, sources universally agree his personnel control and inability to assemble a functional staff continue to undermine the offense. Though, they maintain, Belichick hasn’t lost his fastball as a hands-on coach; an argument they support with the team’s bad injury luck and 4-8 record in one-score games.
“The guys still respond to him,” a tenured Patriots source said of Belichick. “And goddamn, we have so many squad meetings where he shows them what’s going to happen in the game, and it always f–ing happens. Even down to what we can’t do, and then we end up f—ing doing it.”
Whether Kraft opts to keep Belichick or part ways next week, winter is coming for these Patriots, as sure as the snow that will blanket Sunday’s season finale.
Contracts for several starters and assistant coaches will expire in the coming months. Multiple league sources do not expect Klemm to return, though his deal extends past this season, as does O’Brien’s. A year ago, both had been hailed as saviors for a broken offense that remains at the heart of a broken team.
Who will come to fix it next?