Normally, teams that end up picking in the top 3 are horrendous in all three phases of the game. Not the 2023 Patriots.
Right after the loss to the New York Giants that all but ensured any remaining Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge would be casualties of Patriots Nation eating our feelings, Adrian Phillips let a quote rip that wouldn’t be out of place for us after one of our high school games.
“We gave up 10 points, and lost the game two weeks in a row,” he told the Boston Herald after Sunday’s 10-7 loss to the Giants. “So now, we’ve got to give up zero; whatever we can to get our offense the ball back and get a chance to win. If 10 ain’t enough, then we got to bat 1.000, and give up zero.”
And instead of how a fanbase watching a functional football team works, where a line like that would result in “…..who exactly TF do you think you are??”, our collective reaction was, “Yeah, I mean, hey, when you’re right, you’re right”.
The Carolina Panthers may have a worse record, but the 2023 New England Patriots are somehow even worse at a pretty important part of football: scoring points.
New England’s offense ranks dead last in offensive points per game, at 14.6. The Panthers, Giants, and this week’s opponent, the New York Jets, are 31st, 30th, and 29th in the NFL with 14.8, 14.9, and a whopping 15.7 offensive points per game, respectively.
And as a result, the Pats are currently locked into a top-5 pick in the 2024 draft, with a chance to get as high as the second overall pick if they catch a few breaks this weekend. So, if you believe the old Parcells-ism that you are what your record says you are, the Patriots will finish the season as the second, third, or fourth/fifth-worst team in football this year.
But you already knew all that. You know that scoring a lone touchdown this year has getting-lucky-at-the-bar odds. You know that we’ve gotten enough Bill Belichick “FML” faces and gifs and clips to last a lifetime, and that’s just counting his meme-able moments during the Cowboys game. And you know the defense has been balling at such a high level that Adrian Phillips wasn’t even exaggerating when he said the defense frequently holds the opposing offense to such a low point total, it looks like the football we watched in the 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust era. He was just stating how it started, and how it’s going.
That anomaly — having a defense that’s objectively one of the NFL’s best by almost any metric while the offense can’t find their own ass with both hands and a lighter — is what’s interesting, in a “How did you get the beans above the frank?!” sort of way.
Anecdotally, if you think back to the teams that are getting a top-5 pick in the draft as a result of their nightmarish performance, they’re the kind of team you normally think of as “start all your fantasy players if you see _______ on the schedule”. They can’t do anything right. They let up 30+ points a game and typically feature a quarterback who couldn’t hit water throwing out of a boat. Technically speaking, they could screw up toast.
So, I wanted to compare the 2023 Patriots to some of those teams that are truly an insult to the sport of football itself that typically ended up picking in the top-3 of the draft, and see if there are any recent examples of a team who was this bipolar — as opposed to being comically bad at basically everything.
To do that, we turn to our favorite nerd metric – Football Outsiders er, sorry, FTN Fantasy’s DVOA, which, if you’re not familiar, is an acronym that stands for Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average. In terms for those of us who passed Stats in college with a D+, it measures how good or bad a team’s down-to-down performance is compared to the league average, and it also takes into account the in-game situation and quality of opponent. The stat’s available for both offense and defense, so, with all due respect to special teams, the following is comparing how really, really bad teams from years past stack up to the ‘23 Pats.
We’ll throw in a few anecdotes about the teams we’re discussing below too, partially to Remember Some Guys, and mostly to remind us all of those dumpster-fire teams that the New England Patriots are suddenly in the same company as.
Going in reverse chronological order: we begin with last season, and the crème de la……uh, whatever the opposite of crème de la crème is. We’ll be referring to the worst team in the league that year as first in the draft, even if they didn’t end up picking first (if they traded or otherwise lost the pick), the second-worst team as second, and so on.
(also FYI: FTN’s DVOA only goes back to 2020, so, that’s as far as we can go here)
(also also FYI: each year’s draft is based on the previous season’s result, meaning 2023 represents the 2022 season, and so on)
2023 NFL Draft
1. Chicago Bears: Offensive DVOA: 24th | Defensive DVOA: 32nd
2. Houston Texans: Offensive DVOA: 31st | Defensive DVOA: 28th
3. Arizona Cardinals: Offensive DVOA: 27th | Defensive DVOA: 26th
I know it seems like we’re constantly on fast forward these days, but last season wasn’t that long ago. Kliff Kingsbury and Lovie Smith both got fired, Kyler Murray tore his ACL after signing a $230 million contract extension after famously getting roasted by his own team for playing too many video games, and meanwhile Da Bears hired Matt Eberflus, couldn’t stop a nosebleed on defense, and locked up the first pick with a 3-14 record, which they’d trade to Carolina for… well, you know how that’s gone.
2022 NFL Draft
1. Jacksonville Jaguars: Offensive DVOA: 28th | Defensive DVOA: 30th
2. Detroit Lions: Offensive DVOA: 29th | Defensive DVOA: 29th
3. Houston Texans: Offensive DVOA: 30th | Defensive DVOA: 24th
Before the Lions were everyone whose team doesn’t have a playoff shot’s favorite team, they were what you though they were — the team that hadn’t won a playoff game since Nirvana released Nevermind, which is now playing on classic rock radio stations. And that wasn’t even the most embarrassing thing that happened this season; the Jaguars hired Urban Meyer! And he didn’t even last until Christmas as head coach! After he was gifted Trevor Lawrence first overall in the draft!!
Meanwhile, in Houston, this was the season where Deshaun Watson sat out the entire year and was replaced by a platoon of Tyrod Taylor and Davis Mills at QB. Patriots legend Rex Burkhead was also on this team.
2021 NFL Draft
1. Jacksonville Jaguars: Offensive DVOA: 27th | Defensive DVOA: 30th
2. New York Jets: Offensive DVOA: 32nd | Defensive DVOA: 21st
3. Houston Texans: Offensive DVOA: 12th | Defensive DVOA: 31st
The Jaguars defense of yore (and by “yore” I mean 2017) was long gone, and this Jags team was quarterbacked by Mike Glennon and Gardner Minshew. Meanwhile, for the New York Jets, only two words are needed. And those two words are “Adam” and “Gase.”
The Houston Texans unloaded DeAndre Hopkins in the offseason because of Bill O’Brien’s reasons, as far as any of us know, and it ended up being J.J. Watt’s last season as a Texans legend as well. Somehow, they still finished 18th in points scored with another Patriots legend, Brandin Cooks, as the ostensible WR1, and a running backs and tight ends depth chart that even a fantasy football pervert would find hard to love.
That’s as far back as FTN will let me go. So how do the Patriots stack up?
Offensively, and this is the key takeaway here, the numbers match the eyeball test. The 2023 Patriots are 29th in offensive DVOA, and when you square that with the 32nd in offensive points scored stat we discussed earlier, 29th almost seems a bit generous, in a “At Least You Tried” sort of way.
The Pats defense, though?
Ninth.
As in, the ninth-best defense in the entire NFL, when you factor in quality of opponent, and — let’s remember the important part — game situation.
Like when Mac Jones and/or Bailey Zappe turned the ball over for the third time that weekend and gave (insert opponent here) the ball on the 17-yard line.
Or when the offense went three-and out and made Bryce Baringer punt from the 2-yard line and he does his best, but still (on average) ranks 20th in the NFL in punt distance.
Or when Chad Ryland bombed another field goal attempt like Wild Thing pre-glasses, the opponent got the ball back, and… well, you already know where this is going.
The takeaway here, if you can still believe good things can happen to you, is that the 2023 Patriots are in the same boat they were in last year, just exponentially more so; if the offense can just be league average, and not an accident waiting to happen, this defense is playing so well that without Matthew Judon, Christian Gonzalez, or Marcus Jones, they’re still good enough to give even the best of the best offenses the NFL has to offer a hard freakin’ day at the office.
And here’s the thing; earlier this year, losing safety Kyle Dugger and/or edge Josh Uche in free agency felt like the worst-case scenario, but honestly, even if that happens, the return of some combination of Judon, Gonzalez and Jones should more or less keep a very, very good defense rolling at full steam.
This team can get better basically overnight if they a) stop turning the ball over, and b) find a way to keep the chains moving and/or find an explosive play or three a game. That’s not even optimism, it’s just, “What if we sucked a moderate amount less?”
Bad teams aren’t supposed to be this good on one side of the ball. In recent history, they never are. It’s not normal to be this proficient at almost skunking opponents on defense, while barely being able to move the chains on 3rd-and-short on offense.
Regardless of who’s the coach, GM, QB, or anything else when the 2024 season kicks off — the 2024 Patriots may be closer to chugging a Red Bull and getting back into being taken seriously than we all think.
If you’d rather be pessimistic, well, I’m sure you can find Buzz Killington at the bar somewhere.