The Patriots’ passing offense was in a good place before New England took the field in a windstorm in Buffalo ahead of their bye week in Week 13.
At that point, rookie quarterback Mac Jones was 12th among 32 qualified quarterbacks in expected points added per drop-back (0.13) and sixth in completion rate over expected (+4.8).
New England was also ninth in drop-back success rate (50%) and fourth in third-down conversions over expected (+6.4) in the first 12 weeks of the 2021 season.
Even with a first-year quarterback, the Pats were an above-average passing unit with new additions in Hunter Henry, Kendrick Bourne, and Nelson Agholor supplementing Jones’ own upward trajectory.
However, as smart as the play-calling was given the weather conditions, Mac and the passing offense hasn’t been the same since Jones only attempted three passes in a historic Monday night win against the Bills.
As we all remember, it was the fewest pass attempts in an NFL game since 1974.
Since the bye week and the win in Buffalo, Jones went from one of the league’s most accurate and trending towards one of its most efficient passers to one of its worst in the last two games.
In losses to the Colts and Bills, Mac is 18th in EPA per play (-0.01), and even more alarming is that he is completing fewer passes than expected, ranking 29th in CPOE (out of 32).
Only Jones knows if his confidence was shaken by the decision to win the first matchup against the Bills without a passing game. But his overall process from timing, decision-making, and accuracy wasn’t as sharp in two-straight losses.
On the other hand, context matters, such as pointing out that Buffalo has the top-rated pass defense in the NFL in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric, and Jones played them short-handed.
Although Agholor hasn’t produced hugely in the stat sheet, the Pats’ offense clearly missed his field-stretching presence. Additionally, Bourne, who cleared COVID protocols on Saturday, didn’t practice with the team all week and was on a pitch count on Sunday (47% of snaps).
A disjointed aerial attack led to New England’s receivers struggling mightily against Buffalo’s man coverages, and the discrepancy between the two teams was the difference in the game.
Based on the types of coverages the Bills played, it was apparent that the Buffalo defense had zero fear of the Patriots beating them outside the numbers or Jones driving the ball into tight-windows past ten yards in the air.
The biggest worry from watching New England’s tape over the last two weeks is how little grass they threaten in the passing game on any given play, or, in other words, their passing game currently has a limited scope.
So now the question for the Patriots’ offense is, is it fixable this season? Are the answers in the locker room, or did two likely playoff teams expose fatal flaws? As always, there’s no simple answer.
As easy as it is to say one player or position group is the problem, executing a passing game at a high level is a complicated and coordinated dance number that takes all 11 working together.
Let’s take a look at the Week 16 tape against the Bills to answer as many concerns as possible:
An ugly rep for Jakobi Meyers and Kendrick Bourne against man coverage, with the two Pats wideouts ending up in virtually the same place.
The route concept is New England’s double dig scheme featuring Meyers and Bourne, with N’Keal Harry clearing out the deep safeties. All three receivers are on top of each other and don’t truly threaten the coverage.
Furthermore, notice how Buffalo plays inside leverage out of two-man, anticipating the Pats to run in-breakers at the sticks. The routes are designed to allow Mac to throw into single coverage. Typically, corners will take outside leverage and have robber or post safety help in the middle of the field. Then, Jones will throw to the receiver who doesn’t get the help. Instead, the Bills play with inside leveraged corners to smother the in-breakers, basically telling us that they weren’t worried about New England throwing outside the numbers.
Here’s another example of Buffalo blanketing the Pats’ receivers in man coverage using inside leverage to take away in-breakers from the slot.
This time, when Meyers motions into the stack, Bills slot corner Taron Johnson once again anticipates an in-breaking route and establishes inside leverage instantly. Johnson’s positioning forces Meyers to go through Johnson’s body rather than break away from him over the middle. The results are similar to the previous play, but Mac throws to a covered Meyers instead.
The Pats wouldn’t adjust to Buffalo playing inside leverage in man coverage until the second half.
Along with the separation issues against man coverage, Jones and tight end Hunter Henry weren’t on the same page when Buffalo played zone.
The Pats are running their sail concept against a two-high safety structure and get exactly what they want to take a shot to Henry.
As we roll it, Kendrick Bourne’s vertical route takes the cover-four corner upfield, leaving Henry wide open breaking into the sideline. However, Jones throws Henry to the corner while Henry flattens his route break like a deep out. As a result, the ball isn’t catchable for Henry because he runs a different route than Mac is expecting.
In a reminder that Jones is still a rookie, the Bills nearly intercepted Mac here with a savvy coverage rotation out of a single-high structure.
The Pats ran a play-action pass off their toss action to set up a shot using a post-crosser combination to threaten single-high.
As we roll it, Mac sees the deep safety vacating the post to jump Meyers’ crosser and thinks he has N’Keal Harry for the touchdown. However, Jones doesn’t account for the backside corner, who falls off Meyers to replace the deep safety on the post, and ends up throwing into coverage. Jones likely saw the outside corner initially on Harry eying the crosser and was concerned that the defender would fall off Harry to remain on the deep-third and jump Meyers. With the advantage of hindsight, Meyers was the open read here.
Jones completes the pass to set up a manageable fourth down, but Mac misses a touchdown to Jonnu Smith on the corner route.
At the bottom of the screen, Smith gets a good release off the line and stacks Micah Hyde on an inverted cover-two scheme. Cornerback Levi Wallace falls off the boundary into the deep half, and Jonnu is leveraging Wallace on the corner route, a good two-man beater. Ideally, we’d like to see Mac make an aggressive decision there to throw the ball into the corner of the end zone for his tight end to make a play. Instead, he checks it down and forces the offense to convert on fourth down to keep the drive alive.
Although it’s not the exact same coverage, Bucs quarterback Tom Brady made a similar throw to Mike Evans against a cover-two safety for a touchdown versus the Bills a few weeks ago.
We have seen Mac make aggressive decisions, especially in the high red zone, before, so you know Jones has the ability to do so.
One last example of Jones and Henry being on two different pages with a route conversion against zone coverage.
The Bills are in quarters, and Gunner Olszewski’s vertical route clears out the sideline for Henry. However, Henry settles or sits rather than continuing towards the sideline. Likely because the Pats saw a two-trap coverage earlier in the game where the outside corner jumped Henry’s out route. It’s straight quarters this time, and Henry likely ran the wrong route. He should’ve kept going to where Jones threw the ball.
Here is a less egregious missed downfield opportunity with the pocket collapsing around him, but ideally, Mac hangs on the downfield route and makes an aggressive throw.
This time, Jakobi Meyers (left slot) has a lot of space between himself and the post safety on a deep over route against cover-three. The play-action design holds the second level enough for Mac to drop a pass over the second level and in front of the post safety, but Jones opts to check it down instead.
Now that we’ve seen the tape, let’s go back to our original questions: are the issues the Bills exposed in the Patriots’ passing attack fixable?
On some levels, the answer is yes. The Pats can get Agholor back, distance Bourne from his COVID bout, and get Jones and Henry on the same wavelength again, and that’ll go a long way.
Plus, if the Bills’ game plan to take away the middle of the field with inside leverage becomes a blueprint, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels will adjust to protect their favorite route concepts with complimentary-style plays attacking inside leverage rules.
Still, ideally, we’d see a Patriots offense in the future that doesn’t force its quarterback to be nearly flawless in only a handful of opportunities to create explosive plays downfield.
New England’s arsenal still needs more firepower, so we aren’t cherry-picking three or four plays per game where a big gainer was either converted or missed based on a thin margin of error.
Ultimately, creating a larger margin of error is something Bill Belichick will need to address in the offseasons to come as they build around Jones.
As for Jones, the Pats need him to pick his spots throwing downfield better than he did on Sunday. On the one hand, he’s throwing the post to Harry into double coverage. Then, he’s passing up other shot plays for check downs. With better competition late in the season, the passing windows are tighter, and they’ll need to keep up with top-flight offenses. Mac needs to recalibrate his decision-making process and take more calculated risks.
The execution can undoubtedly be better for these current Patriots, and we’ve seen much better performances out of this group in the past.
But they did nothing to quell concerns about their ceiling offensively in the loss to Buffalo on Sunday.
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