Knee Jerk Reactions to Week 1: Patriots vs. Raiders
Things to consider while realizing this is one aging, white-haired, bespectacled, shrill, hysterical lunatic who might have to lower his expectations for his team:
--A couple of weeks ago, Barstool saw the 22nd anniversary of its first ever print edition. Which means I've been posting these KJRs here in some form or fashion for almost as long. So let me kickoff the first one of a new season with a disclaimer: Everything I say here is with the understanding that Mike Vrabel had his work cut out for him when he took this job. This wasn't some redecoration. It wasn't a remodel. The problems of this team couldn't be solved with a fresh coat of paint and getting the hardwood floors done. It's a reno. He's had to rip stuff out to the load-bearing walls. I'm sure everywhere he looked, he encountered new problems. Termite damage. Black mold. Mice infestation. Asbestos. A family of possums living in the dryer vent. Whatever. And based on everything we're now learning about the level of insanely petty, internecine warfare that was going on at One Patriots Place since they hung the Super Bowl LIII banner, I'm sure this rebuild was a lot tougher than it looked in January. So take all of this in that spirit.
--With that as preamble, I don't think I can take another year of this. Of a team finding a way not to win. Self-destructing. Making fatal mistakes in high-leverage moments of close games. Proving to be incapable of putting on more than one or two scoring drives. I heard from a friend yesterday who has a kid entering Nursery School who has never seen the Patriots score 30 points in a game. I mean, it's been a minute. By my count, 46 games. And it's starting to feel like that kid will enter Nursing School and still not have seen this team break 30. It's bad when they can't outscore the UNC Tar Heels. At home. In a rainstorm. Against a team that plays in a dome in the middle of a desert. These are the games that used to be won as soon as the vistors stepped off their plane. Now they're 3-15 at Gillette since the start of 2023. And the natives are understandably getting restless.
--This year is supposed to be different. It has to be. But in this game, it wasn't. This was playing the hits from the last couple of years of Belichick and the Mayo Era. In the way The Temptations and The Four Tops keep touring as the vocalists all die of old age and get replaced, but the set list never changes. Same 3 & outs. Same defensive breakdowns. Same unforced errors. Same turnovers. It feels like we're the kid with social cooties who got picked on by everyone. But we switched to a new school in a different district hoping to reinvent ourselves, but pattern of shame and humiliation is just repeating itself. Starting on Day 1. New toilets, same swirlies.
--The difference being that the metaphorical bullied nerd I'm describing at least never knew what it was like to be the cool, popular one. We do. That memory is still fresh, but becoming more distant by the game. In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, society is built on a caste system of genetically engineered humans, organized into five tiers. The Alphas are intellectually and physically superior and are literally "World Controllers." The Betas are your professional class. Followed by the Gammas (semi-skilled laborers) and Deltas (who perform menial tasks). By the time you get to the Epsilons, think Charlie at Paddy's Pub. And all these castes are trained at birth with sleep-teaching and drugs to believe that they're in the best group of all and life is terrible for the other four levels. Patriots fans aren't capable of accepting that this is our lot in life. We're Alphas, but we've been forced to live like Epsilons. With 2/3s of the stands full and visiting teams fans invading the stadium like we're Jets fans. Well we had it too good for too long. And there's not enough social-conditioning or drugs in the world to make us content with more games like this one.
--Oh, right. The game. We'll get to it. But let me just point out I was at this one, in the Press Box. So this Knee Jerk will be from that perspective. I don't know what happened on the broadcast. I'll just assume since this was the Pats like 40th regional telecast in a row that the rest of the country doesn't care about that they got some bottom-feeder announcer team. And since this is 2025, every TV ad featured a feckless twit of a dad whose smart, sophisticated wife and sassy teen kids treat like a doofus. I'm pretty confident in that claim. Please correct me in the comments section if I'm wrong.
--I went into this one expecting to see the Josh McDaniels offense. To welcome it back like an old friend you have great history with, but haven't seen in a while. That pair of jeans you're taking out of the drawer for the first time since April. But this was a reminder of the things you didn't like about that friend. You washed these jeans before you put them away so they're still tight around your nads. Pick your metaphor; the point being, this was uncomfortable.
--Over the past few iterations of the McOffense, his teams were among the league leaders in putting the quarterback under center and a downhill, power run game. Very often behind a fullback. And once the run is firmly established, running play actions off of that. Yesterday we witnessed practically none of that. I don't have the numbers, but if you told me Drake Maye lined up in Gun with Rhamondre Stevenson as the lone back 60% of the offensive plays, you'd get no argument from me. And if you then said it wasn't working, I'd touch my nose, yell "Jinx!" and say you can't talk until you buy me a Coke because I said the same thing. Virtually everything was run out of 11-personnel. Jack Westover is the designated fullback and took all of two snaps. The gap run game was nonexistent, as Stevenson ran into a wall of sandbags between the tackles to the tune of 2.1 yards. Which, since he's 6-foot-0, is slightly more than he would've gotten if he tripped over the line of scrimmage on every run.
--Unsurprisingly then, the play action package never got going; there was no action to play off of. And when they did attempt some, they tended to be slow to develop and well covered, with Maye having to go deep into his progressions because no one on Pete Carroll's defense was biting on the fake. They sat back in their zones and took away every option and had Maye running around trying to make things happen. They rarely did.
--Still, there were a few successes. On two goal-to-go snaps, they motioned Stevenson out and then back in again, to confirm the Raiders were in man coverage. On the first, Maye had Demario Douglas with a full step on his man along the back line, but led him too much. On the second, Stevenson picked up the edge rush by Devin White, as Mack Hollins ran a cross under Douglas' corner route, and this time Maye put it right on his belt buckle for the score:
--One play design that proved McDaniels didn't spend his time away from the game just getting to those projects around the house he'd been ignoring when he was too busy with work was this fake Tush Push. The formation left the Raiders no choice but to fill the box with all 11. But instead, Stevenson and Hollins threw combo blocks on Kyu Blu Kelly on the edge, Austin Hooper bounced up to the second level on Tommy Eichenberg, and Will Campbell set the edge for a 14 yard carry by TreVeyon Henderson:
You can argue that it might have come to better use down the road in some have-to-have-it situation with a game on the line. But as long as it gives opposing coordinators another thing to think about in the future, it serves a useful purpose. Let's take our small victories when they present themselves.
--The offensive lineup is pretty much what we thought it would be. Kayshon Boutte is your boundary X-receiver, and demonstrated how he won the job with a 6-catch, 102-yard day on 8 targets. None better than this Dig out of a 3-man Levels concept, with Boutte deep on the outside, Douglas up the seam, and Stefon Diggs sitting on the underneath:
As scary as that looked when he got 252 pounds of White giving him the Jimmy Snuka "Superfly Smash" at the end, he only missed three snaps the entire game.
--As far as Diggs, he quickly established himself as a reliable possession receiver type, with 6 catches on 7 targets and 57 yards. One that stood in particular for me was a 7-yard catch on a out-route from the slot that looked very much like the 3-man "Ghost" combo that was a staple of this attack when a certain Statue-Worthy quarterback was running the huddle. What we saw a lot of was Diggs being where he was supposed to be, running good routes, finding open spaces (see that 22 yarder to Boutte above), and making sure hands catches. Which of these guys emerge as the WR1, or whether we even need that designation, time will tell. They can take turns with it like the Employee of the Month at Chik-fil-A for all I care as long, as they make it hard for opposing coaches to gameplan for them. That too, has been a minute around here.
--The offensive was far from perfect. In fact, they played worse as the game went along and Vegas started going deeper into their pass rush packages. Especially Campbell, who committed two false starts. The first on the opening play of a drive. The other on a late 4th & 5 from midfield that forced a punt. He also gave up the Malcolm Koonce strip sack. That led to a chorus of boos from the few people still in the stands at that point, which was their way of saying, "If we wanted this we could've kept Chuks Okorafor and drafted Tetairoa McMillan." But - and I'm trying to look at this through the rosest colored glasses I can - this O-line is, in fact, an O-line. They all took 100% of the snaps. There was no shuffling the deck chairs like we've seen nonstop these past few years. And it was a return to the starting five we saw through most of camp, with (L to R) Campbell, Jared Wilson, Garrett Anderson, Michael Onwenu and Morgan Moses. The way Doug Marrone drew it up. Moses more than held his own against Maxx Crosby. At least a couple of the Raiders 4 sacks were just Maye stepping out of bounds a yard shy of the line of scrimmage. And they more or less held their own for 3.5 quarters of football. Which, according to my calculations, isn't enough to win. But it's an improvement over the 0.5 quarters we were lucky to get last season.
--Circling back to something I said earlier, Gillette was lousy with Raiders fans. But the Las Vegas Raiders fan is a different species alogether than the Oakland branch of the family tree we're accustomed to. Further along the evolutionary path than their Bay Area ancestors. Less menacing. No face paint or shoulder pads like they're looking to score some petrol in a post-apocalyptic Australian Outback. These people all look like they're trying to score some Bloomin' Onions at the Randolph Outback. The most intimidating thing you'll see from one of them is a Charles Woodson jersey and a thick plastic novelty chain around their necks. I think they were more scared of our army of cute Metrowest girls in throwbacks and Julian Edelman jerseys who are pissed they shelled out for season tickets again but it feels like Mac Jones never left. That is a subset of our culture that's in no mood for what they're still being subjected to.
--It's taken me this long to get around to the defense, pretty much by design. What can be said about a unit that let Geno Smith put up 362 yards on them? That gave up 11 - let me repeat that for emphasis - 11 plays that were 19 yards or longer? That came out unprepared for the Raiders' opening drive, and their first possession of the 2nd half? That let Vegas average 6.3 yards per play. Yes, they made adjustments as they went. The last three Raiders possessions of the 1st half resulted in three 3 & outs and -5 total yards.
--Lineup wise, it was a heavy dose of the front-4 of Harold Landry and K'Lavon Chaisson on the ends, with Milton Williams and Christian Barmore at DTs. In short yardage, they'd bring in Khyiris Tonga to add some two-gapping beef over the center. And managed to blow up more than a few Fantasy teams by holding Ashton Jeanty to 2.0 YPA on 19 carries, though with a touchdown. What we can deduce from one game is that Terrell Williams style is as advertised. He was constantly mixing up pressure schemes, like this sack where Landry ran a stunt behind Williams:
And Chaisson confirmed our eyes weren't playing tricks on us when we thought we saw him move up the depth chart all summer:
--But for all the disruption they generated in the backfield and at keeping Jeanty in check, Smith still had targets running free in the secondary all day. Ja'Lynn Hawkins and Craig Woodson are your full time safeties, together in split safety packages and switching off between which drops down to the linebacker level in single-high. And while Carlton Davis III did a hell of a job staying close and getting a hand on this one:
… it's all a waste of everyone's time and energy if you can't stop the explosive plays. With or without Christian Gonzalez. Seeing how they respond to getting torched all day by Brock Bowers, Jakobi Meyers and Dont'e Thornton next week in Miami is going to foreshadow what the rest of this season is going to look like.
--No, it's not lost on me that Las Vegas drafts a WR named Thornton in the 4th round, and he already has as many 45-receiving yards games in his career (one) than our 2nd round Thornton had in his Patriots career.
--This Week's Applicable Movie Quote: "Look, I'm not a statue! I'm a human being!" - Uncle Frank, Home Alone
--To kind of bottom line this, Drake Maye right now feels like he knows the mechanics of what is his fourth new offensive system in four years, going back to UNC. But like someone trying to learn to drive a stick, he doesn't have the feel for it yet. That sort of innate sense you get of how many RPMs to put on the engine before you shift gears and exactly where the clutch engages. That only comes with time and reps. For now, they've kept the same five linemen in front of him and the same three receivers on the outside for him. And with a little continuity, a lot of coaching and hopefully a ton of improvement, this can be something resembling what it hasn't been in a long time. An offense actually capable of carrying this team to a win, even if nothing else goes right. Until then, everything has to go perfectly for them to even stay in a game. And we haven't seen perfect in a long time.
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Just on a personal note, and I don't want to belabor this point, this is the start of the first season since I lost two brothers, one of whom was my very much my Patriots football Obi Wan. That tailgate scene was the happiest of my and Jack's Happy Places, going all the way back to the first game the older guys took me to when I was a kid. Walking through some of the pop-up tents in the parking lot, I spotted a guy who looked remarkably like Jack. Same setting. Same beard. Similar Patriots gear. Same exact way of carrying himself - and his beer - while having a great day with fellas. It really hit hard. It brought back a lot of sense memories as I shook it off and kept walking. Anyway, I bring this up here to remind you how special it is that we get to do these things. To form friendships around these teams. And also how blessed we are to have had this run of success over the last 25 years. So try to rememeber to appreciate this and all the good time. Most of all, call your brother. Thanks for letting me work out my unresolved grief. Requiescat in Pace. Slainte. Go Patriots.