The New England Patriots have no one to blame but themselves for Wednesday’s collapse against the Seattle Seahawks. Yes, it’s the first game of the season. Yes, they were facing the defending champions.
Yes, there is plenty of room for them to turn things back in the right direction. No, none of that is a viable excuse for what happened. New England, for those who had work the next morning and haven’t bothered to go back and look at what happened, turned the ball over three times in the fourth quarter and blew the lead they had for the majority of the game to eventually end up on the losing end of an ugly affair.
Drake Maye will get the majority of the criticism for his terrible decision at the end of the game, as he floated a pass into the end zone that was eventually intercepted by Seahawks cornerback Josh Jobe — with anything other than an interception at least allowing for a 26-yard game-tying field goal attempt from Patriots kicker Andy Borregales. Mike Vrabel has also felt the heat for his conservative decision-making — he let the clock run out before halftime instead of taking a timeout and forcing a punt — and the fact that his team came out of the break looking worse off than they went in. Josh McDaniels, unsurprisingly, has been deflecting arrows for days for his overall decision-making and his inability to feature new wide receiver Romeo Doubs while over-relying on running back Rhamondre Stevenson.
Brown suffered an ankle injury that will keep him out for at least four weeks. Christian Gonzalez dropped an interception. Kevin Byard, Hunter Henry, and Christian Barmore were nowhere to be seen.
Will Campbell and Morgan Moses had zero consistency from rep to rep. It’s hard to find anyone within the organization who did their job… The Patriots failed, not only in their preparation for the opponent but in their preparation for the season. Maye and Brown’s inability to connect on anything of note before the latter’s timely injury will now be a story until he’s able to get back in the lineup.
Milton Williams and Cory Durden getting moved around all night led to the signing of veteran defensive tackle DaQuan Jones. Vrabel and his all-world coaching staff — at least in terms of experience — led the biggest turnaround in franchise history last regular season but have now been pantsed by Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald two games in a row and with major changes being made to the latter’s coaching staff between meetings. No, they’ll be favored in each of their next two games and are far from being booted from most people’s lists of contenders.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
