FOXBORO, Mass. — A season can slip away so easily.
And in the first week of October, with the Patriots in the AFC East cellar at 1-3 and preparing to start unknown rookie quarterback Bailey Zappe, there appeared to be danger on the horizon in New England.
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It didn’t necessarily feel like the 1-3 start from a season earlier when they had been coming off a quarter billion-dollar production in free agency. This October, by comparison, they were trotting out 10 rookies, not to mention a first-time offensive play caller. Through four weeks, the starting quarterback couldn’t attend three postgame news conferences due to injuries that stemmed from protection issues. The defense had been largely overhauled with younger, mostly unproven players. And some of the team’s mistakes that crippled the 2021 Patriots’ stretch run — notably substitution errors and ill-timed penalties — were resurfacing.
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The Patriots looked to be on the brink of a long, losing season.
And then, they rattled off consecutive victories against the Lions and Browns. No, neither the Lions nor Browns appear destined for NFL royalty this season, but the Lions boasted the league’s top-scoring offense and the Browns the No. 1 rushing attack.
The Patriots stifled them both. Blew them out. With a third-string quarterback, a remade defense and a roster that made too many mistakes in their opening four-game stretch.
The Patriots’ longest-tenured leaders — special teams captain Matthew Slater, safety Devin McCourty and center David Andrews — spotlighted one particular reason behind this turnaround.
“I think of it as he’s shepherding his flock here,” Slater told The Athletic this week. “He’s going to set the tone. He’s going to head us in the right direction. He is going to do everything he can to make sure he cuts out the outside noise and refocuses on the things that we need to focus on. … This team is only going to go where we’re directed to go, and fortunately, we have a great director.”
McCourty’s brother, former Patriots cornerback Jason McCourty, played for the Browns’ 0-16 team in 2017. As often as Devin enjoys reminding Jason of that season, Jason was able to impart wisdom of that lonely life at the bottom.
Those lessons were important for players who only experienced life on the other side. Devin McCourty and Slater each played in five Super Bowls, winning three, before ever enduring a sub-.500 season.
“I try to tell all the young guys, don’t think about your record,” McCourty told The Athletic. “When it’s a really good start, 8-0 (in 2019) or 10-0 (in 2015), I remember Bill coming in there and telling us, ’10 wins is pretty solid, but it won’t win you anything. There’s a good chance it won’t win you the division. It won’t get you a bye in the playoffs.’ I always think about that, whether it’s a good start or a bad start. No matter what, the season is not over. If we start 3-0 and don’t win another game, no one will really care that we started 3-0. If we’re 1-3, and we can start winning and playing well, that’s what will matter.
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“When you are struggling, from talking to my brother who went 0-16, that feeling of, ‘We’ll work hard, but at some point it goes wrong and we lose.’ Every person is like that. We beat Detroit after a tough loss to Green Bay, then you go to Cleveland and get a win. You start to see, if we do some of these small things right, we can win, and I think it makes more guys buy in. It’s not that guys (weren’t) buying in, but that feeling of when you actually see things coming to fruition, it just makes you take your game up another notch.”
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Belichick’s steadying message is driven by honesty. That’s why the players always recognize where they stand, either individually or collectively.
Andrews faced that reality before joining the Patriots in 2015 as an undrafted free agent. The Georgia product met with Belichick before the draft, and the coach bluntly told Andrews that he wouldn’t draft him but hoped to sign him afterward, which is ultimately how it went down.
Fast forward several years, and Andrews and his teammates would return to Gillette Stadium each April for the offseason workout program. They came off three Super Bowl appearances, two wins, and each time were greeted by line coach Dante Scarnecchia, who almost immediately pulled footage of their mistakes from the championship game.
Belichick doesn’t deliver or delegate those hard truths as a form of cruelty. The point is to remain consistent — that everyone can always find a way to improve.
“Early in the year, when you’ve been in the league long enough,” Andrews said, “every (narrative) is looked at as, ‘This team is winning the Super Bowl, and this team is going to be nobody and they’re no good.’ I’ve been part of teams that started hotter than a firecracker. My rookie year, we were 10-0. It was, ‘Wow, this is easy. This is awesome.’ … Something we’ve always done here is to ignore the good and bad. The only narrative is what you create. Coach is really honest. He tells you when things are good, and he tells you when things are bad. I think that’s how it has to be.”
So when Belichick sets the tone with that honesty, it filters through the staff and the locker room. Again, the goal is to spread consistency and to avoid getting too high or too low.
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That tone has been a necessary component since Brady’s departure. For so long, if the Patriots lost a game or (gasp) two, there was such a strong assuredness that they’d self-correct.
Now, there are far fewer players with championship credentials, as the Patriots only have 12 players on the 53-man roster who were with the team in 2018 for their last Super Bowl. Compare that to Week 1 in 2018 when the Patriots had 14 players on the roster who had already won two Super Bowls.
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So the message from the top down is vital.
“When things aren’t going well,” McCourty said, “(younger) guys will look toward guys who have been there before like myself, Slater, (Brian) Hoyer, even guys like (Jalen) Mills who won a Super Bowl with Philly. Guys are looking to see, how’s their approach? They want to see that. That consistency when you can come in day in and day out with good energy off a two-game losing streak and come in here Wednesday yelling, screaming, ready to go to practice — guys see that, and they’re like, ‘All right, the sky is not falling.’
“When you first get in this league, you have a tendency to watch a lot of what people are talking about … reading every article that mentions your name. When you’re younger, I know for me, I used to love watching that stuff like, ‘Oh man, they’re talking about the Patriots.’ When guys come in here and see the reality of the situation of what we need to do as a team and not just hear people talking about, ‘There’s no more Tom Brady. This team is not that good.’ That helps guys. Being consistent pays off when there’s adversity.”
So does execution. The Patriots lost three of four games to open the season because their offensive line wasn’t playing well, and quarterback Mac Jones was committing too many turnovers as a result. (Jones also suffered a back injury in Week 1 and a high ankle sprain in Week 3.) The defense couldn’t get timely stops against the Dolphins or Ravens, and special teams were spotty at best.
Then, they gained confidence in a 27-24 loss to the Packers at Lambeau Field. Zappe, who made his NFL debut in relief of Hoyer (concussion), entered that game with virtually no first-team practice reps. He has since operated well within the system — a credit to assistant coaches Matt Patricia and Joe Judge — and has only committed two turnovers, with the lone interception the result of a drop by receiver Nelson Agholor.
The defense has also scored twice, and special teams have pounced on a pair of pivotal muffed punts. The complementary aspect has been operating in full capacity.
“Certainly now, we realize part of our identity is going to be playing complementary football,” Slater said. “Every phase of this team has to carry its weight for us to be successful. You certainly don’t want to put too much on any one phase’s plate. We don’t want to say, ‘Hey offense, you have to score 50 every week. Defense, you’ve got to hold them under 10 every week.’ Though that may be the aspiration, we realize everybody has to pull their weight.”
Interestingly, as McCourty put it, the defense didn’t change their approach to aid the Zappe-led offense. More accurately, they improved upon their fundamentals, and the results have followed.
“When you watch some teams that I would say have good defenses, and they don’t do a good job because their quarterback is hurt, it’s because they’re trying to make plays,” McCourty said. “They’ve told themselves that in order to win this game, the guy they have playing quarterback can’t do it. To me, you can’t play football that way. There are going to be plays in the game that are going to present themselves, and you’ve got to make those plays, but you can’t go out there searching to make plays.
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“I played here with the greatest quarterback to ever play. If we only went off how he played and how great the offense was, we’d be ranked last as a defense every year. Because we’d be like, ‘You know what? As long as we get the ball back at the end, he’ll go win it.’ You can’t have that mentality. That’s what I’ve always said it doesn’t matter what they do on offense if we do what we’re supposed to do on defense. Then instead of being a team with a good offense, we’ll just be a good football team. Now in this league, you don’t see many teams win who are only good on one side of the ball. Look at Kansas City and Buffalo. Kansas City for years had one of the best offenses, but they finally won the Super Bowl when the defense was pretty legit. No matter what, you have to keep building to be good on both sides of the ball if you want to have a chance at the end of the year.”
Same with the offensive line. Though they haven’t eradicated the communication breakdowns, there have certainly been far less.
The line also got off to slow starts in 2020 and 2021 before eventually reaching their talent level. There was turnover on the line’s coaching staff each year since Scarnecchia’s retirement (2019), and they’ve also swapped a few players.
It naturally took time for everything to come together.
“Consistency is a big thing,” Andrews said. “It’s guys being out there and more confident in the system and fixing those mistakes. We’ve got to keep doing that or it all goes to waste.
“After wins, there are not just good plays shown. There are bad plays. (Belichick) is truthful with you as a player. It stinks sometimes. I wish he wasn’t so truthful, but I appreciate it as a player. He’s a great football coach. He’s evolved. He really sets the tone. As a player, when you have that, it makes things easier.”
So here are the Patriots, set to host the Bears on Monday Night Football before their next four games against the Jets, Colts and Jets again. If the last pair of games are any indication, the Patriots have put themselves in position to make a run.
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If not? This season might closer resemble 2020 than 2021. The second half will be more daunting with two showdowns with the Bills, a rematch with the Dolphins and games against the Vikings, Cardinals, Raiders and Bengals.
It’s all right in front of them, though, and that’s more than many outsiders likely imagined a couple weeks ago. The Patriots, at least on the leadership level, were too conditioned to consider the potential perils that seemed to await.
That’s why they’re back in it.
“(Belichick) is the spearhead of being consistent,” McCourty said. “His ability, what I’ve been so impressed with, he doesn’t change. Four-game suspension, for Tom and we’re out there with Jimmy (Garoppolo) and then Jimmy gets hurt, nothing changed within those weeks. He’s still up there showing us the lowlights, talking bad about us in a big win like when we beat Houston on Thursday night (in 2016). You’ll get a couple compliments, then you go straight to the film of all the bad plays. The consistency of that, when something big or dramatic happens, guys expect, ‘Man, this is going to be different now. Tom just got suspended.’ Or, ‘This is going to be different. Dion Lewis tore his hamstring. When things like that happen, early in my career we lost Vince (Wilfork) and (Jerod) Mayo in one season, it’s like, ‘What the hell is Bill going to say today?’
“He always keeps that same (level). Him doing that, for players, it keeps you calm. You’re not going to press the panic button because the guy who you see talking to you every day isn’t doing that, so you follow his lead. It starts at the top and goes down throughout the whole team.”
(Top photo: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)
