The Mac Jones-Bailey Zappe drama shouldn’t distract from horrific defense and other leftover Patriots thoughts

BOSTON — Leaving Gillette Stadium on a misty and strange Monday night, I had but one prevailing thought: The New England Patriots still have to play the Buffalo Bills two times this season. Golllllllllllllly.

Obviously, the situation at quarterback garnered most of the attention during and after the game. And that’s more than understandable. It’s not often that a head coach decides to willingly follow in the footsteps of Lloyd Carr at Michigan and go with the ol’ “see who’s better tonight” approach at the most important position on the field. Then again, it’s not often that a head coach enters the season with a defensive coordinator and a special teams coordinator running the offense for his second-year quarterback.

The quarterback situation is bad — and more than a little dysfunctional, based on the way the locker room reacted — and we’ll get to that shortly.

But for the most part, outside of the guy who ultimately beat out Drew Henson for those reps at Michigan, there’s not a quarterback alive who could have saved the Patriots from outright embarrassment on Monday against the Bears. Because the Patriots’ defense was simply non-competitive.

Look at this way: The Bears were coming off a home game in which they scored seven points, in which they went 6-for-17 on third and fourth downs combined, and in which they were 0-for-3 on red zone trips. They entered the game averaging 15.5 points and 293.5 yards per game.

Yet against the Patriots, they scored 33 points — and that’s only because they mercifully took a knee at the 2-yard line in the final minute to resist the urge to deliver a 40-burger. They gained 390 yards, they went 11-for-18 on third down, and they were 2-for-3 on red zone trips before the aforementioned mercy kneeldown.

Justin Fields — who entered the night with a completion percentage under 55 percent and with four touchdown passes to five interceptions — was almost literally unstoppable.

Receivers were wide open. Running backs were getting whatever they wanted. Resistance from the Patriots was just nowhere to be found.

As a result, a team that had topped 20 points in a game just twice all year was casually pasting a 33 on the video boards at Gillette.

Back in the dynasty days, bad losses against bad teams would happen from time to time. The 2018 lost in back-to-back weeks in Jacksonville and Detroit. The 14-2 team in 2010 lost to … the Browns. The ’04 team, arguably the best of any Patriots team, lost in Week 15 in Miami. Those missteps happened … and almost served more to help the team than hurt the team in the long run.

This, though, was different. Very different.

A team that legitimately cannot stop Josh Allen is one thing. Josh Allen is an MVP-caliber player who’s ascended to the top of the league.

A team that can make Justin Fields look like Josh Allen is another thing.

The Patriots may be able to stop the Mitchell Trubiskys and Jared Goffs and Jacoby Brissetts of the world, but just like last year, that won’t matter much in the end. Until or if the defense gets magically fixed, the quarterback sideshow will be exactly that.

On that cheery note, leftover thoughts? Sure.

–While it’s not the reason they lost, the fumbling of the quarterback situation is so out of character for an organization built on being smart that it’s hard to discern what the goal was. 

Think of it through this lens: In 2016, when Tom Brady was set to miss four games due to suspension, Bill Belichick was so bothered by a line of questioning about Jimmy Garoppolo potentially stealing the No. 1 QB job that he uttered “Jesus Christ” into a microphone at a podium.

Late in the 2020 season, when Cam Newton was in a stretch with three touchdown passes in 11 games, Belichick adamantly stated without question that Newton was the starting quarterback. Even if Cam’s play on the field left plenty of doubt, Belichick’s answers to questions about his QB1 left none.

That carried into the summer of 2021, when Belichick insisted that Newton was the starter … right up until the day he was cut from the team.

In the few times that his team had the chance to have a “quarterback controversy,” Belichick put all of his effort into squashing any such chatter as best as he could. Now here in 2022, he’s almost creating one when it need not exist.

So why do it? Why refuse to say “Mac is our starting quarterback” when asked about it? Why enter a nationally televised game with a plan that sets up Mac Jones to fail? Why set him up to get booed almost immediately by the home crowd? Why (seemingly) leak the QB plan to a select few media members but not inform the actual players on the football team?

For Belichick, it was a miscalculation and a misstep at best. It was a potentially locker room-fracturing move at worst.

We can’t determine that now. We could guess, but that would be useless. For now, we — like a number of players in the locker room — are left to scratch our heads and wonder what the master plan was at the most important position on the field.

–I found this fascinating in the moment, and I still find it fascinating now: Zappe obviously created an electric atmosphere when he entered the game … but he also wasn’t very good! I know, I know, I know! Box score. Check the box score. Stats don’t lie. Whatever.

Zappe’s “touchdown pass” to a wide-open Jakobi Meyers was horrible.

The adjustment Meyers had to make just to get his hands on that ball — let alone catch it — must have brought him back to his NC State days with Ryan Finley. (OK, OK, OK, I’m sorry. No need for Ryan Finley to be catching strays on a random Tuesday.)

And the big 43-yard shot to DeVante Parker right after the Myles Bryant interception? The pass was fine, but that big gain was all about Parker and his individual effort to climb over a defender and haul it in — just like he did last week in Cleveland.

Now, undeniably, the place was going BONKERS with Zappe in at quarterback. Seemingly everyone in the lower bowl was literally jumping up and down at the mere sight of Zappe walking to the huddle from the sideline. That definitely happened, as did the quick surge of offense.

Yet just like his YAC-filled stat sheet a week ago, the right thing to do would be to assess the throws and the play of the quarterback, more than the “fever” or whatever else may be going on.

And on that note, after the first two drives in which he went 4-for-4 for 97 yards and a touchdown, Zappe went 10-for-18 for 88 yards with two interceptions. It was bad.

–Not to make excuses for Mac Jones, who threw a really bad interception, but what exactly was the offensive approach when he was in the game? Here’s what the Patriots ran for Jones’ three series, not counting penalties:

First Drive
First-and-10: Inside handoff to Rhamondre Stevenson out of the shotgun, nowhere to go, no gain
Second-and-10: Fake screen right (to nobody), screen left to Stevenson, nowhere to go, loss of a yard
Third-and-11: Pressure in the pocket, scramble up the middle for 6 yards

Second Drive
First-and-10: Inside handoff to Damien Harris out of the shotgun, gain of 3
Second-and-7: Play-action pass, checkdown to Harris for gain of 2
Third-and-10 (after false start): Handoff to Stevenson out of shotgun, gain of 5

I don’t think that was the recipe for Jones or the offense to hit the ground running. 

That being said, once Jones got into a rhythm on the next drive, he didn’t look for a potential shot play to Parker … 

… and then threw a very bad interception off his back foot for no reason.

So it’s not as if Jones played well. I just don’t know that he did a whole lot wrong outside of the pick. (He did take a shot downfield at Tyquan Thornton and he threw a decent ball, but a potential defensive pass interference penalty wasn’t called, so it fell incomplete. That throw wasn’t altogether different than the one Zappe threw to Parker.)

–Ah, geez. I wrote a whole story that implored everyone to not get lost in the quarterback drama. And yet here I am. Quarterback Drama Central.

OK, moving on.

–Trent Brown is sure to come under fire for his penalties, but I honestly feel like the officiating crew was picking on him. He was flagged for holding early … while blocking Robert Quinn, who had lined up offside. He got called for a false start for getting started a split-second before the snap — something that doesn’t usually get called in the NFL, unless it’s egregiously early. And he was wrongly penalized for tripping after executing a cut block on a defender.

I don’t know how they feel about excusing some penalties down inside the walls of Gillette Stadium. But I don’t think Brown’s day was as bad as the stat sheet might have indicated.

–If you want to play the woulda-coulda-shoulda game, you have to wonder if things would have been different if Kyle Dugger hadn’t whiffed on David Montgomery on third-and-14 on the Bears’ initial drive:

Had Dugger made the stick — as he is wont to do — then it would have been either a 53-yard field goal attempt or a punt for Chicago. Instead, Montgomery plowed ahead for a gain of nine yards, making the decision easier for Matt Eberflus to kick the field goal. It also made the field goal itself easier for Cairo Santos.

Maybe given the blowout, it wouldn’t have mattered. But little moments like that early go a long way in shaping a game.

–Do you want to see some wide-open Chicago Bears? Partner, have I got a select few snapshots for you.

The latter two came just before the Patriots’ defense just kind of quit on a play. Instead of finishing a tackle at the line of scrimmage to force a third-and-1 at the 10-yard line, the entire Patriots defense just kind of assumed Matthew Judon would make the play. Instead, Judon lost his grip on the running back, and Montgomery rumbled forward for 8 yards.

I mean. What is that? What would you say that is? 

Throw that in the what-if pile. Finish the play, make a third-down stop, hold Chicago to a field goal. Different game.

On the wide-open receivers front, it’s one thing to dare Justin Fields to beat you with his arm. It’s another to just not cover human beings at all. On the run stopping front, it really only got worse from there.

And then … this:

That’s the Bill Belichick-coached New England Patriots getting outschemed Luke Getsy.

What a bad, bad night for the Patriots. All around. (That includes you, Jake Bailey. I don’t have the heart to write a whole punting section. But man. The falloff from 2020 continues.)

–Last year, after a game like this, the radio and the TV would be filled with conversations about Steve Belichick, Jerod Mayo, and Bill Belichick, and how their defense was a problem. This year, the defense is much worse — factually and anecdotally speaking — and they just got carved up by the Chicago Bears, and everyone’s talking about the quarterback. (Myself included.)

I’m not suggesting that it’s a master plan to distract everyone from the defensive issues or anything like that. I am merely pointing out that it’s worth taking extra care to focus on more than just the quarterback spot.

Because, again … two games against Josh Allen await. Plus a Kyler Murray game. Should be an issue.

–Credit to N’Keal Harry for taking his booing in stride. Playing his first game as a Bear, in his old stadium, Harry was on the receiving end of the loudest boos of the night after his lone catch, a 14-yarder in the first quarter.

“It was funny, it was funny. I enjoyed it actually,” Harry told reporters postgame. “It was just great to be back. Their crowd was rocking tonight so it was good to come in and silence them a little bit. It was definitely different. Coming back to this stadium and coming through the visitor’s side was definitely different.”

It truly was funny. He is not wrong about that.

–Cole Strange had a tough one on a little delayed blitz:

–One more in the what-if bucket: What if Devin McCourty grabs this interception?

(It wasn’t quite Atlanta-in-2017 foggy at Gillette Stadium, but it was kind of close!)

It would have been Patriots ball at the Bears’ 35-yard line, trailing 23-14. Again, knowing the final score, maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. But the game still could have been won if the Patriots had managed to make a play like that happen, or recover one of the Bears’ five fumbles, or not fumble a handoff from Zappe to Meyers, etc., etc., etc.

–I asked Belichick on Tuesday morning how, after the Patriots took a 14-10 lead, the game got away from the Patriots.

He said this: “We didn’t play well enough, we didn’t coach well enough in any phase of the game to have a chance to win or deserve to win.”

Fair enough. I think we can leave it there, so we can get back to the latest melodramatic developments in the middling QB battle in New England.

You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.