NFL First Thoughts: New England Patriots
Brutal schedule could sink Pats' hopes for rebound season.
Below is a transcript from The Simple Handicap podcast (listen here), presented by Right Angle Sports. We’ll be doing a first-look preview of all 32 NFL teams, followed by more complete team previews prior to the season. Interested in signing up for the RAS NFL service? Join here.
It’s still unclear what the circumstances were that led to Joe Judge, a special teams coach, and Matt Patricia, a defensive coach, being co-offensive coordinators for the Patriots last season. But it ended as expected. It was a complete disaster.
In 2023, Bill O’Brien returns. He has his critics, but he’s an accomplished coordinator who has overseen some good offenses, not just in his prior stint in New England, but also during his run as head coach of the Texans and in two stops in college.
O’Brien’s offense will be much more simplistic than whatever they were trying to do last year. Mac Jones finally will be able to fit in and fully understand an offense. O’Brien, one thing he does well, is call plays in a simplistic fashion. His players have always described his offense as easy to learn and easy to run. The Patriots have two very good tight ends, and in a run-based scheme, that opens up opportunity for play-action, and lots of opportunity to add extra protection for Jones.
The addition of JuJu Smith-Schuster, along with DeVante Parker who was added last year, will finally give the Pats two quality wide receivers that they’ve been looking for. There’s a lot to be excited about with this offense.
Then you start to look at their season win total, and their divisional odds, and you say, “OK, this is as low as I’ve seen the Pats in years in terms of price! The offense is better, it can’t be worse than last year. O’Brien is getting praise. The team is still trying to win, it’s not a tank year. There’s a lot of good!”
But it all falls apart with the schedule. There’s no breaks in this schedule. They face the Eagles, Dolphins, Jets and Cowboys to start. All four of those teams are going to be improving and progressing in 2023. The Pats also have a stretch where they face Chiefs, Broncos, Bills and Jets. All are improving teams or among the elite. This schedule is 17 games of hell. One of the ‘easy’ games is a trip to Vegas to face the Raiders, and even that will be a potentially challenging game given the familiarity Josh McDaniels has with the Patriots and their personnel. Their biggest layup, a game against the Colts, will be an international game. A highly winnable game against the Commanders is preceded by a trip to Miami, where the Pats always seem to struggle.
The Patriots are going to need a whole lot to go right to exceed expectations in 2023.