A Check In With the Post-Tom Brady Patriots
For the New England Patriots, life after Tom Brady got off to a rocky start in 2020.
The Cam Newton experiment didn’t go particularly well, they finished below .500 for the first time since 2000, and their roster was sorely lacking high quality talent. There didn’t appear to be a clear direction or vision this franchise was working towards, and witnessing Brady win a Super Bowl in his first year with the Bucs only added salt to the wound.
Following the disappointing season, Bill Belichick — who acts as both the Patriots’ general manager and head coach — decided to go on a bit of a spending spree. The Patriots are typically a team that avoids dishing out lucrative contracts in free agency, but in 2021 New England dished out a record-setting $159.6 million in guaranteed money.
The spending spree was a clear sign that Belichick and the Patriots organization were not happy with the roster they had last year, so they opted to blow up their entire roster and essentially start from scratch.
The offense is now brand new, the defense is brand new, and maybe most importantly, the face of the franchise is brand new as well.
We’re now a quarter of the way through the 2021 season, and we’re starting to see how these drastic changes are shaping the future of this franchise.
During the Tom Brady era, the Patriots never finished worse than 12th in the NFL in points scored.
In their first year without him, they ranked 27th.
While Cam Newton was largely viewed as the scapegoat for last year’s underwhelming offense, he wasn’t exactly provided much help.
Newton’s options in the passing game made up arguably the worst group of skill position players in the league, and the Patriots’ roster was devoid of players capable of providing a spark for their offense. Second year wide receiver Jakobi Meyers showed some promise, but he was the team’s leading receiver despite only accumulating 729 yards on the season.
Belichick and the Patriots’ front office acknowledged this weakness in the offseason and chose to completely revamp the group of pass catchers on their roster.
Nelson Agholor and Kendrick Bourne were both signed via free agency this offseason to help stabilize the wide receiver room. While neither of these two are Pro Bowl talents, they’ve raised the floor for this passing offense and have slotted in nicely as the number two and three receivers respectively.
While Agholor and Bourne were relatively low-profile signings, one area where the Patriots opted to make a bigger splash was at the tight end position.
The Patriots signed not one, but two of the top tight ends on the market when they inked Jonnu Smith and Hunter Henry to a combined $56.25 million in guaranteed money. Tight end isn’t necessarily one of the highest value positions in the NFL, but the Patriots disagree with consensus here and saw value in spending big on a position they tend to feature within their offense.
Signing two big-ticket tight ends brought back memories of the 2010–2012 Patriots where Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez fueled one of the strongest offenses in the league.
So far in 2021, Smith and Henry haven’t been nearly as dominant.
This season, the Patriots are running 12 personnel (1 RB, 2 TEs, 2 WRs) on just 25% of their snaps — a hair above the league average rate (22%).
Why spend so much on two tight ends if they aren’t going to play featured roles in this offense?
Versatility.
Bill Belichick loves to be unpredictable, and he’s a mastermind when it comes to varying his game plan and personnel groupings from week to week. Through 4 weeks, the Pats have opted to run 12 personnel at drastically different rates from one week to the next (49%, 23%, 10%, and 15% respectively).
Last year the Patriots’ leading tight end (Ryan Izzo) played on just 62% of the team’s snaps and New England ran 12 personnel just 2% of the time. For a coach who loves tight ends as much as Bill Belichick does, that 2% number showed a lack of trust in the 2020 tight end room.
One of Belichick’s biggest strengths is his ability to generate diverse game plans that make the Patriots’ look like a completely different team from week to week. Even if they aren’t featured in the game plan each week, having Smith and Henry on the roster provides Belichick with the flexibility he needs to keep his opponents on their toes. He doesn’t care if he beats his opponents with two tight ends or with five wide receivers — as long as the end result is a win, Belichick will be happy.
Now that he has a pair of tight ends and a trio of receivers he can rely on week in and week out, Belichick possesses the roster versatility necessary to attack his opposition however he sees fit.
Through four weeks, the results on offense have been largely underwhelming, but the vision this team had in the offseason is becoming clearer and clearer with each passing week. None of the new signings in the skill position room have emerged as stars in this New England offense, but they’ve provided Belichick with options he was sorely lacking last year that can help unlock his creative genius.
It’s also important to remember Mac Jones is a rookie under center with just 4 NFL starts to his name. The Patriots offense doesn’t look like they’ll be taking the league by storm at any point in 2021, but early signs indicate a foundation has been put in place that this team can build off of moving forward.
While most of the headlines surrounding the Patriots these past two decades have been focused on Tom Brady and the offense, the defense has oftentimes been the best aspect of this team.
Bill Belichick is a defensive minded coach, and we have to go all the way back to 2011 to find the last time one of his defenses finished outside the top 10 in points allowed.
His defense performed well once again in 2020 (ranked 7th in points allowed), but poor play from the front 7 meant they finished the season as the 26th ranked rushing defense. Unsurprisingly, improving this group was a high priority for the Patriots this offseason.
The first defensive signing the Patriots made this offseason was bringing in Davon Godchaux, a 311 lb nose tackle who can gobble up space at the line of scrimmage and make life miserable for opposing run games. For a team that struggled against the run, bringing in an absolute mammoth of a man to line up directly across from the opposing team’s center seemed like a logical fix.
Godchaux wasn’t necessarily a big name on the open market, but he possesses a skillset that was desperately lacking on this Patriots’ defense and has filled the void admirably so far.
New England knew adding one body to their front 7 wouldn’t be enough to turn this defense around, and next up came the most expensive signing of the Patriots’ offseason.
After an impressive start to his career in Baltimore, the Patriots inked edge rusher Matthew Judon to a 4 year deal with $32 million guaranteed. Judon’s not a guy who’s going to stuff the stat sheet and finish near the top of the league in sacks every year, but he’s an extremely well rounded player who can rush the passer well, establish the edge in the run game, and drop into coverage when necessary.
Just like he does with his offense, Bill Belichick likes to have a defense that possesses enough versatility to keep his opponents guessing not only from week-to-week, but from snap-to-snap as well. Judon’s well-rounded game has been a fantastic fit in New England, and early signs indicate this signing was nothing short of a home run. When watching the Patriots’ defense square off against Brady and the Bucs’ on Sunday night, Judon made his presence felt on seemingly every snap. He logged the Patriots’ only sack and consistently filled gaps and wreaked havoc in the Tampa Bay backfield.
In addition to Judon and Godchaux, two more free agent signings have found their way into the Patriots’ starting lineup. CB Jalen Mills and MLB Kyle Van Noy were brought in this offseason on relatively inexpensive deals, and they’ve both carved out nice roles for themselves on this defense.
Just like they did on offense, the Patriots identified the weak links on their defense and used free agency to help fill the gaps. Their investment on defense — especially their front 7 — has been rewarded so far this season as the run defense has improved drastically, and the defense as a hole is allowing just the 5th most total yards in the league.
So with all the new faces in the fold in 2021, what have the Patriots actually accomplished?
In an offseason where COVID caused the cap to decrease for the first time in over a decade, the Patriots capitalized by spending aggressively while other teams stayed back and proceeded with caution. They didn’t go hunting for big stars, but instead opted to take a volume approach and filled a number of holes on their roster by signing numerous starting caliber players.
There likely won’t be many (if any) Pro Bowlers out of this group of free agent signings, but plenty of new faces are already making a positive impact on both sides of the ball. The ceiling may not have been drastically raised for this Patriots roster in 2021, but the floor absolutely was.
The roster changes this offseason had to be made with a big question mark surrounding the quarterback position. Free agency occurs before the NFL Draft, and New England had to make all these signings before they knew Jones would even be on their roster — let alone their starter.
Jones has looked every bit like an NFL starter through his first four weeks, and it’s highly unlikely New England enters 2022 with questions surrounding the quarterback position. With Jones under center for the foreseeable future, the Pats have the luxury of trying to build a contender with their starting quarterback still playing under his rookie contract.
Over the next 4 years, Jones will never account for more than $5 million against the cap. Compare this to the $25+ million even league average quarterbacks are making these days, and the Pats are in a great position to capitalize on the massive bargain they’ll be getting at the quarterback position during their young signal caller’s early years.
With a foundation in place, the Patriots can use the rest of Jones’ rookie year to find out who he really is as a player and how he fits within their organization. As New England continues to identify his strengths and weaknesses, they’ll be able to attack free agency aggressively once again in 2022 with a game plan specifically catered to Mac Jones.
Jones is extremely poised for a rookie, and through four games he absolutely looks like he belongs in the NFL. He doesn’t have the strongest arm, but he’s been accurate and makes quick decisions that allow him to dice up defenses in the underneath areas of the field. It’s a style of play that looks all too familiar for Patriots fans.
When he plays, Jones looks eerily similar to Tom Brady from a play style perspective. Predicting he’ll ever reach Brady’s level of success would be foolish, but his style of play has clearly been successful in New England in the past. Working with a coaching staff that spent multiple decades formulating game plans for the greatest quarterback of all time should do wonders for Jones’ chances of success in New England.
Only time will tell if Belichick and the Patriots’ organization are ready to build another dynasty without Brady under center. Early signs indicate they’ve already got a solid foundation in place, and it’ll be exciting to watch where they go from here.
