Welcome to the Friday Five!
Each week during the NFL regular season, I will drop five Patriots-related thoughts on Friday to recap the week that was in Foxboro and look ahead to kickoff.
Ready, set, football.
1. All-underrated team
The Patriots will go as far as Drake Maye takes them.
That much is clear through five games, where Maye has turned the ball over in both losses and protected it in all three wins. But if Maye represents their ceiling, the rest of the team is the Patriots’ floor. And not just Stefon Diggs, Christian Gonzalez or Will Campbell.
All surprise teams are powered by middle-of-the-roster overachievers. Mid-level free agents or late-round rookies who outperform their contracts to provide surplus value. Start with the man directly in front of Maye: center Garrett Bradbury.
Last year, Bradbury graded out as the fourth-worst pass-protector among starting centers, per Pro Football Focus. A month after he signed as a free agent, the Patriots drafted center Jared Wilson in the third round. It wasn’t far-fetched to believe Wilson might win the starting job.
Instead, Bradbury has become a rock in pass protection. He’s allowed just two pressures, both hurries, in 200 pass-blocking snaps, per the Herald’s charting. He ranks as the sixth-best pass-protector among centers this season, per PFF.
Across the line of scrimmage lies another unheralded veteran: Khyris Tonga.
As the Patriots’ third defensive tackle, Tonga doesn’t see the field much (24 snaps per game). But when he does, he thrives.
Tonga keyed the Pats’ game plan to flex into 3-4 fronts against Buffalo last weekend, when he controlled the middle as their new nose tackle. That night, the Patriots allowed 3.2 yards per designed run to the best rushing offense in football. On the season, the Pats are allowing almost a full yard less with Tonga on the field.
Tonga is also active against the pass. He’s tallied a QB hit, hurry and a pass breakup in 60 snaps of pass defense, including one he took in coverage. This summer, it was hard to imagine the Patriots wouldn’t suffer much of a drop-off when Milton Williams and/or Christian Barmore leave the field. Tonga has been that good.
2. Upset alert
Already wary of a lull coming off their big win at Buffalo, the Patriots should be on high upset alert after Christian Gonzalez’s apparent setback with his hamstring injury. He was limited at practice Thursday.
All along, the Saints’ surest path to an upset has involved a couple turnovers and hitting a few deep shots. Both are more than possible on Sunday, especially if Gonzalez is limited or out.
New Orleans is tied for fifth in the league in takeaways per game. Rhamondre Stevenson might have the most famous butterfingers in football. Starting Saints receiver Rashid Shaheed hit 21.72 mph last week, the fastest an NFL player has run on a scoring play this season. Chris Olave, a legitimate No. 1 receiver, starts opposite him.
Olave likely would have drawn a shadow assignment from Gonzalez this weekend, at least in critical situations. As bad as the Saints may be, the Patriots may have lost their ability to neutralize one of their best and most dangerous players.
3. McDaniels’ future
Josh McDaniels carved out a nice career coaching the greatest quarterback of all time for most of Tom Brady’s 20 years in New England.
After some dark years, the Patriots finally appear to have a worthy successor at QB. Considering how bright Drake Maye’s future looks, would McDaniels be content coaching him for 10-plus years and perhaps the rest of his career?
Here’s what McDaniels said Thursday: “I love living in New England. That’s the short of it. I just try to focus on now. (I) really enjoying coaching for Mike (Vrabel) and the staff and the guys we have here. That would be surprising if I moved my kids out of Westwood.”
Considering his disastrous head-coaching stints in Denver and Las Vegas, there is virtually no shot McDaniels ever becomes a head man in the NFL again. Which leaves two options: keeping this job or maybe taking a shot at Boston College, which, last I checked, is not exactly thriving under another ex-Patriots offensive coordinator right now.
4. Analytics set the table
On Thursday, outside linebackers coach Mike Smith gave voice to something most close to the team have known since Vrabel’s hiring: this team is deep into the numbers.
Vrabel expanded the Patriots’ analytics staff in the spring, which is to say he hired one. The data they dig up helps shape the team’s game plans, in-game decision-making, and scouting reports. For example, Smith revealed that every week he’s handed a breakdown of how the next opposing offense performs against every type of pass rush, from three-man rushes to all-out blitzes.
Those numbers, in concert with the coaching staff’s findings on tape, then inform how they prepare for their upcoming game.
“If it’s the run game, you obviously want to look at the personnel and what tight ends are in the game. What running backs are in the game?” Smith said. “You know, there’s so many things they can pull: (an offensive lineman’s) two-point stance, three-point stances. I mean, formations, anything you think of.”
5. Belichick should quit now
In a matter of five weeks, Bill Belichick has lost three games by 25-plus points for the first time in his head-coaching career. His decision-making is erratic. His program is leaking like a sieve.
Never mind the Jordon Hudson fiascos or banning Patriots scouts from North Carolina’s facility or the shuttered “documentary” series on Hulu. Reports surfaced this week that Belichick explored exercising his $1 million buyout to leave the program while the Tar Heels are on a bye.
He should pull the trigger. This is beyond sad now.
Belichick has nothing to gain by pushing through the rest of an ACC schedule littered with teams better than his. Chalk this up to an experiment gone wrong, even if it’s much messier than that. This was never going to be a long-term marriage, anyway.
Belichick signed a five-year contract with only three years guaranteed. There is little in the last half-decade that would suggest he’s still an above-average head coach, let alone an draw for teenage recruits. Belichick’s own players have been wronged or run out by this entire regime, which one of his defensive assistants reportedly admitted to this week.
To jump into major college football — the most unpredictable, untamable sport in America — and assume you could master it was always foolish. So was naming Michael Lombardi UNC’s general manager, a blowhard whose arrogance is unmatched, even in a sport composed of cocksure coaches and executives. That UNC roster, the roster Lombardi turned over entirely and built, stinks.
But most gave Belichick the benefit of the doubt. After all, a former FCS head coach named Curt Cignetti turned another basketball school, Indiana, around just last year and had the Hoosiers in the College Football Playoff during his first season. Cignetti thrived pulling talent from the transfer portal. Why couldn’t Belichick do the same?
Now, the question is: why hasn’t he? And the list of reasons is too long to count. But soon enough, the last bullet should read: Belichick doesn’t work there anymore.