How to (completely) burn your offense to the ground.

foreign [Applause] do your job it's the thing all of us have heard for the last two decades as the Patriots devastating reign of terror completely engulfed the entire league but things have quickly changed as the Brady era ended and the Mac Jones era began obviously things were gonna be different but McCorkle Jones finished second in Rookie of the Year voting and then the off-season happened defensive coach Matt Patricia took over on offense and the reign of terror turned into a reign of error the bats plummeted from the 10th most efficient offense all the way down to the 26th they missed the playoffs and the entire unit took a major step backwards what does do your job mean when your job is undefined unreliable and underperforming that question haunted the Patriots as Patricia's scheme and philosophy had countless pitfalls so today we'll group all of his failures into three major categories the struggles with their Zone running game is lack of attention to detail in the passing game and crappy overall play calling Patricia's offensive scheme wasn't just bad his philosophy was too the Patriots have long been a gap scheme running team which is where the offensive line creates a specific gap for the ball carrier relying on their power and leverage to move Defenders away from that specific spot it's a this is where we're going try and stop it type of scheme where bigger more dominant offensive lines can push Defenders around and out of the way and is the type of scheme Josh McDaniels deployed for the last decade the Patriots called the most Gap scheme runs of any offense in McDaniels last year in 2021 but when Patricia took over this past season he scrapped most of their Gap scheme runs and in its place insult a Zone dominant system The Zone running game is less power and more speed finesse where linemen aren't assigned a specific Defender but adjusts to take on whichever guy comes into their area then the running back picks whichever hole comes open installing the zonedrun heavy scheme isn't inherently bad in and of itself the NFL has trended towards it for the last half decade but when you don't know how to install a Zone run which is much trickier to install than gaap since lineman's roles during the play aren't nearly as defined things can get messy too often the line would completely whiff on some of their blocks sometimes just from an execution standpoint they'd block the wrong guy letting linebackers flow through with ease and despite a talented group of backs with real Madre Stevenson Damien Harris Pierre strong their rushing efficiency also nosedive from 11th last year down to 29th one of the clearest examples to illustrate these issues is how they deal with two eye techniques which we've touched on before a 2i technique is when the d-lineman is lined up on the inside shoulder of the Guard it's a common adjustment against a Zone heavy attack since typically that D tackle in a four down front is lining up on the outside shoulder of the center The Zone Run game is all about creating double teams on the defensive line then comboing up to the linebackers to make sure you get a hat on a hat so what the 2i adjustment does is make it harder for the offensive line to get off that double team a good Zone running game as one of either David Andrews or Cole strange move up to Denzel Perryman after contacting balal Nichols so depending on who's taking on more of the block the other guy can move up to Paramount however the 2i makes it really challenging to come off that block since if strange comes off of him it's hard for Andrews to get across his face and make sure he doesn't penetrate into the backfield and if strange stays on him Andrews has to either cover all this space to help with a double which would leave paramin free or he can't double Nickels at all if he wants to move up way too often the pets wouldn't get to the backer so Defenders float straight through clean as a whistle and at times the o-line looked like they had no idea how to do their job the answer to this 2i problem is using funny enough more Gap scheme runs since they give the offensive line better leverage against certain techniques instead of Andrews having to try and double the 2i then comboing up to the backer he just has to down block on him which is super easy since he's already positioned there and ramadri Stevenson has a breakaway Gap scheme touchdown where everything works perfectly according to my friends at the 33rd team his 6.4 yards per attempt on Gap scheme runs ranked eight in the NFL but he had just 3.7 on Zone runs which ranked 74th the patch just kept banging their heads into the wall by calling Zone run after Zone run so they turned to other more gimmicky designer type Concepts like this gunjet sweep where instead of putting Jacoby Myers in motion where he's running at the snap he stops then starts so he slows down and Robert Quinn just flies up the field and boom when running these type of jet sweeps you're usually leaving this D end unblocked since you don't need to waste a hat on him so you Arc your tackle out but because Patricia misses these little details the ground game never got going this obviously affected the passing game since instead of second and third and fours they had second and third and elevens which are way trickier on the quarterback their third down conversion rate fell from 10th to 27th which makes sense since every little detail matters when defenses know exactly where you need to get to on third down take this example on the first third down of the Bears Monday night debacle where Mac has to run for his life due to poor play design taekwon Thornton is running this 13 ish yard curl against op Zone coverage to try and pick up the first down and one thing we know about off Zone coverage is that you're conceding anything underneath right when Thornton uses his insanely fast forward to weight speed Kindle vendor really has no choice but to honor that and get depth so he doesn't get beat over the top the issue is Jaquan brisker the safety is rotating down and Nestles right into that space underneath so Mac has to take off and run with his not 428 speed the issue here is that Patricia failed to Conflict brisker by not vertically stretching him a curl flat concept is as old as time itself but while it's fine that Patricia has Hunter Henry chipping to buy time for the downfield concepts Henry has to Sprint outside to force brisker to come down into the flat to open up Thornton if brisker sticks back and stays on Thornton well now we have Henry in plenty of space to operate what makes this even worse though is that Patricia's switch releases him in Stevenson so it takes even longer by the time Matt gets to the top of his drop brisker needs to feel the threat of the underneath route so he'll run away from the curl but because it's Stevenson who's going to the flat brisker isn't threatened at all and can just sit back in the window they struggled even more against man coverage on third down where play design has to be even more meticulous since you're trying to use formations and rub routes to create even one more blade of grass worth of space here they have a pick play to Devonte Parker where Thornton tries to pick off Parker's Defender by running a fade so he can come open underneath but because it's all 181 pound taikwon Thornton instead of like Hunter Henry Parker himself would have been better a bigger body to run Kyler Gordon right into Jalen Johnson would have created more Separation on a play that still would have been broken up struggling with putting the right receivers in the right place was an issue all season and instead of creating space like offensive coordinators are supposed to Patricia took it away this is a common concept but out of the wrong formation Drive dagger is a combination of two concepts where Drive is an underneath shallow route with a dig behind it which is designed to beat its own coverage if this linebacker pulls out of the window for the shallow Mack can progress behind him and then even to take it a step further dagger has another receiver coming behind him in case the defense overplays both the shallow and dig I'll also add that Devonte Parker is running this big post an alert route where he's not in the progression but if everybody collapses down on the concept Matt can forego all of this and just throw the big boy up top anyways cuz Patricia calls us out of a tight Bunch formation there's not enough space to stretch the defense Johnny Smith needs to tighten down his route because this linebacker does carry the shallow but with Thornton right behind him the defense is stressed at all and has four guys to guard two Mac needs to hang in the pocket and try and hit the Deep post but with consistently terrible play design he can't do his job because he doesn't trust anything when you don't trust the play design or the play calling it's hard to want to hang in the pocket and we saw Patricia struggle with both throughout the year I realize how completely Fish Out of Water this man was in the Vegas game when he tried to take a play call that Kyle Shanahan had used just a few days earlier on Thursday Night Football it's a good call in theory this misdirection screen but you need to have Direction before you have misdirection this fake to both Flats left and right worked for Shanahan against the Seahawks because he had studied their film the week before against the Panthers and knew they were gonna practice and prepare for a team to use this look again the Panthers threw this motion screen to the left like five different times he knew the moment the Seahawks saw that they'd Panic knows he's known for dialing a place that tricked the defense so they'd rally quick to the second fake and then he'd hit him with the third well Patricia saw this go down Thursday night said okay we'll plop this in the game plan we'll just plug that in ourselves for Sunday and we can be cool kids too but nobody had run this motion against the Raiders Patricia had one little call built into the game plan early on that didn't work whatsoever but still he went ahead with it and it completely blew up in his face the year of using him is both their offensive coordinator and their offensive line coach the only team in the league to have somebody do both by the way is over Patricia has moved on to the Eagles in comes Bill O'Brien who ran the Patriots offense in New England during the Brady days and some balance will be restored we didn't talk about Mac Jones much in this episode I do think he'll bounce back a bit but my main takeaway is that he is not an overly talented quarterback he needs a very detail-oriented structure so that he can play to his strengths his timing and anticipation to execute a high efficiency offense where he has a Mastery of the scheme on everything single play he can do his job we saw that last year he just needs a job that is defined refined and sound that is the only way he can win and the only way the Patriots have won for the last two decades when you bring in a non-offensive coach who doesn't adhere to the Patriots philosophy and doesn't have clearly defined jobs for each individual player on each individual play well you see what happens now that they have a familiar face and are leaning back into their old philosophy and scheme they should be back on track and when they can redefine what their jobs are moving forward for them anything is possible [Music]