Patriots Suffer Biggest Loss of the Belichick Era, 38-3, in Dallas

It's safe to uncover your eyes now. What an embarrassing effort, and I use the word “effort” loosely. The Patriots went down to Dallas as tourists, because they sure didn’t go down there prepared to play a football game. For the third time in four games, the Patriots fell down double digits right out of the gate. This time they weren’t able to mount a comeback to make the game entertaining at the end like they did against the Eagles and Dolphins.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the Patriots’ humiliating defeat, but it all starts with the coaching. Bill Belichick and his crew got badly outcoached by Mike McCarthy. Mike McCarthy! The Patriots’ slow starts has to be traced back to the coaching staff not having the team ready to go right from the start. The Patriots’ defense has been the strength of this New England team. However, Steve Belichick and Jerod Mayo’s defense gave up drives of 10 plays, 70 yards and 10 plays, 75 yards on the very first two Dallas drives.

After Mac Jones was strip sacked for a touchdown, the Patriots were down 18-3 early in the second quarter. Following that touchdown, special teams coaches Cameron Achord and Joe Judge were caught with their pants down on the extra point when the Cowboys faked the kick and threw the ball to a wide open lineman wearing the number 99 on his jersey and watched him rumble ten yards, slowly, into the end zone uncontested. To summarize, the Cowboys ran a fake kick for a two-point conversion for no reason in the second quarter, just because they could.

Bill O’Brien was dreadful as well. The honeymoon period may be over. On the first drive, with a 3rd and 1 at the Dallas 6 yard line, O’Brien called a pass play. Aren’t these the situations the Patriots brought in Ezekiel Elliott for? Then on fourth down, in a game in which it was a pretty sure bet would require 24-plus points to win, Belichick went for a chip shot field goal. Belichick was thinking this would be something like a 17-14 type game. That just isn’t the NFL in 2023.

The Patriots’ second drive ended on a pathetic quarterback sneak on fourth down by Mac Jones. Quarterback sneaks, commonly referred to nowadays as "tush pushes," are almost automatic in the NFL, but not for Mac Jones and the Patriots. They failed last week on one. And, against the Cowboys, Jones basically fell straight to the ground when he got the snap instead of plowing forward.

Demario Douglas had an electric 42-yard reception on the first drive. He would touch the ball only one more time the rest of the game. Douglas needs to be on the field for more than 33% of the snaps. Instead of lining up Mike Geseki, Pharaoh Brown (who wasn’t even on the team during summer camp), and Hunter Henry on the outside at the same time, which they did numerous times, down double digits, how about infusing some speed. Douglas got four less snaps than Brown!

Even Ty Montgomery would be an interesting wrinkle. Why is Montgomery even on the roster if he isn’t going to be utilized? Can the Patriots not find somebody else on the active roster to stand at the goal line and watch kickoffs go soaring over their heads?

There is such a glaring talent gap between the Patriots and other teams in the NFL. Watch the Dolphins-Bills game for five minutes on Sunday and tell me if the Patriots are even close to matching up with those teams. Chargers? Browns? Bengals? Even the Raiders and Broncos have more talent. All those teams have one, if not two, explosive wide receivers. The Patriots have had four seasons since Tom Brady to rebuild this team. Instead, they are getting worse.

The Patriots didn’t have any wide receiver with more than two receptions against the Cowboys. Going into the fourth quarter, none of them had more than one. The Patriots haven’t had a player this year with a 100-yard receiving OR rushing game. The Patriots haven’t scored 30 points in a game since Week 6 last year, and that was with Bailey Zappe at quarterback. A Mac Jones-led team hasn’t scored 30 points since Week 17 of the 2021 season. The Patriots have scored 20-plus points in only 5 of the last 11 games.

You’ll hear talk this week about the Patriots entering the soft part of their schedule. Going into the season, the Indianapolis Colts looked like the surest victory for the Patriots. The Colts, with a rookie quarterback and without their All-Pro running back, have scored 20-plus points in all four of their games. They scored more than 30 once. The Patriots can't do that.

I haven’t even talked about Mac Jones’ pathetic performance - a game in which it appeared he quit on his team. He appeared happy to be pulled for Bailey Zappe late in the third quarter. Jones’ mistakes immediately led to 14 points for the Cowboys. This is what can lead to in-fighting between an offense and a defense and can split up a locker room, when a defense busts their butts to keep points off the board and the quarterback serves up 14 points for the opposing team on a silver platter.

The play that causes one to question Mac Jones’ future in this league was the throw he made across the field, as he was rolling out to the right, and throwing it back to the left boundary. The throw was easily picked off and returned for a touchdown. Just a few plays before that, Jones made the exact same ill-advised throw, completing it to Kendrick Bourne. He got away with that one, but he didn’t learn his lesson - a lesson a high schooler knows.

To make matters worse, the Patriots' defense lost Christian Gonzalez and Matt Judon to injury, probably for lengthy periods. The Judon injury happened in the fourth quarter with the game well out of hand.

Belichick refused to admit Jones was benched for his performance. He said he saw no need to continue putting Jones in harm’s way with the Patriots down by so much. He had no answer when the follow up question was why was Judon out there then.

The margin of defeat was the biggest for the Patriots in the Belichick era. The Patriots lost the season opener in 2003 to the Buffalo Bills, 31-0. The Patriots would end that season by beating the Bills by the same 31-0 score on their way to a Super Bowl championship. It was representative of the improvement of that team over the course of the year. Those Belichick teams were famous for getting better as the season progressed.

This year’s team has looked worse week after week, culminating with this 38-3 loss in Week 4 to end, roughly, the first quarter of the season. Instead of things getting better, they are getting worse.