Not enough trust, too few

PATRIOTS-COLTS

The connective tissue of any elite NFL offense is always the same: trust.

Trust breeds timing, confidence. Trust allows a quarterback to rip a pass before the receiver snaps out of his break believing he’ll turn in time to catch the ball. It means calling a play believing the quarterback will read his keys correctly, hang in against pressure and deliver on third down.

Midway through the season, there is little evidence of trust within the Patriots offense. Unsure of his protection, Mac Jones is prematurely bailing from pockets and cutting off full-field reads. The playcalling reflects a lack of belief in him and said pass-blocking. The wide receivers have gone AWOL outside of Jakobi Meyers, who fumbled Sunday.

Nothing is good enough, because from the coaches to the quarterback, receivers and offensive line, virtually no one has proven themselves trustworthy. The only player whose performance can be trusted week after week is Rhamondre Stevenson, a tackle-breaking machine who ranks second on the team in catches and has single-handedly carried the Pats’ run game since early October. Over the past four weeks, more than half of the Pats’ hand-offs have been met at or behind the line of scrimmage, per Sports Info. Solutions.

Yet Stevenson persists, powers through and averages more than three yards per carry after contact. And he inhales most every target, too. So naturally, in critical areas such as third down and the tight red zone, Jones stared down his star running back Sunday, trusting he would come open.

And on one snap Stevenson did, catching a 3-yard touchdown in the second quarter, the Pats’ only touchdown of the game. But on three other targets, Colts linebacker Bobby Okereke had Stevenson blanketed, and Jones waited and fired at him anyway for three incompletions. Jones did so at the cost of his other receivers, including some who sprung free, because either he didn’t trust them to get open or believed he had insufficient protection.

But Jones was wrong. And on other snaps, he settled for checkdowns after missing open receivers downfield off play-action, potential explosive plays down the drain. Of course, those were just a few of the snaps when Jones was allowed to pass.

Against the Colts, who owned the NFL’s sixth-best run defense by DVOA, Matt Patricia called runs on eight of the Patriots’ initial 11 first-down plays. Two were successful and three went backwards. Meanwhile, Jones started 5-of-5 for 36 yards on first down, including a well-timed screen pass that sparked a scoring drive.

Overall, the Pats rushed on two-thirds of their first-down plays and gained 1.8 yards per carry, a pathetic average that routinely put them behind the chains. That inefficiency led directly to struggles on third down, where the Colts held a baked-in advantage, Patricia opened with a downfield screen on the Pats’ first drive and Jones ran into a sack that killed the second series. But set those issues aside for a moment.

Early downs are the safest time and place for a quarterback to throw because defenses play simpler coverages against the threat of a potential run. Patricia eschewed far too many of those opportunities to instead run into stacked boxes with an injured, subpar offensive line. Moving forward, the Patriots cannot neglect any favorable conditions for Jones to create explosive pass plays because the offense is not talented or trustworthy enough to generate them outside of structure.

“Every drive can’t seem like it’s so hard to get yards,” Jones said post-game. “We’ve got to be able to skip some third downs and move the ball and get explosive plays.”

The good news is some of these problems are fixable. Patricia has demonstrated some ability to scheme around serious roster deficiencies (see: 27-24 loss at Green Bay) and adjust mid-game (see: 38-15 win at Cleveland). Whether Jones can return to his rookie form within these circumstances remains to be seen. Surely, resting over the upcoming bye week will do him and his offensive line some good.

But the Patriots offense has regressed in a way that not even the return of center David Andrews or the emergence of a capable right tackle can cure. Because when building trust, there is never a quick fix.

Here’s what else the film revealed about Sunday’s win: