It is utterly insane that the Patriots were in a position to win Sunday’s game at all. With five turnovers — most of them being of the devastating variety — they had no business having a chance to steal a win against Aaron Rodgers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Yet there they were, facing a fourth-and-1 at the Pittsburgh 28-yard line, trailing by seven with 67 seconds left to play. The Patriots had gone 4-for-4 on fourth-down conversions to that point, including one on their own 15-yard line. Now with the game on the line, this one figured to be the biggest.
The end result was some bad football.
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The Steelers blitzed, sending rushers off both edges of the line. Drake Maye knew he had to release the ball quickly, so he looked to Pop Douglas, who had lined up in the left slot. Douglas planted himself at the line to gain and turned his head, and though Jalen Ramsey’s pressure affected Maye’s throw, the quarterback was still able to get the ball to Douglas.
Douglas made the catch and should have known that, with defenders flying toward him, he had one mission and one mission only: fall backward, absorb whatever contact might await, pick up the first down, live to see another day.
But Douglas didn’t do that.
Douglas made the catch and tried to run backward to get around linebacker Patrick Queen, unaware that cornerback Brandin Echols was in pursuit. Echols wrapped up Douglas by the ankles, and just like that, the comeback bid was killed.
Douglas was asked postgame if he knew where he was relative to the line to gain when he caught the ball.
“I knew I was somewhere by it,” Douglas told reporters after the 21-14 loss to the Steelers, “because we only had two yards.”
In this case, “somewhere by it” was simply not precise enough for a team that since the offseason hiring of Mike Vrabel has been tasked with the goal of taking advantage of bad football. Far too often on Sunday, the Patriots were the team authoring that bad football, and Vrabel didn’t hide the fact that he wished his receiver made a different choice on that play.
“Probably have to just drop step and be able to knife, and know that those are going to be bang-bang plays and just try to split them and get the first down,” Vrabel said. “It’s hard to circle around some defenders. I didn’t have the best view of it. I would say that the decision that Pop made wasn’t the right one there just because we didn’t get it. Gotta try to either drop step or make ’em miss.”
Douglas did neither, and the result was a turnover on downs.
Maye himself expressed regret for not reiterating the mission in the huddle before the play, which came following a Pittsburgh timeout.
“I wish I would have told those guys, fourth-and-1, just try to catch it and get up field. I wish I would have told them that in the huddle,” Maye said. “Those little things go a long way. Yeah, nothing Pop did wrong. Just, he was trying to make a play.”
While Maye could have issued that message before the play, it’s also the National Football League. Such reminders shouldn’t be necessary. And as so many of us saw for so many years in New England, excellent football teams execute in such moments. This one did not. The route was sloppy, not crisp, and knowing that he was “somewhere near” the line to gain just was not enough.
Yet of course, a team with five turnovers does not lose a football game because of one failed fourth-down play, so let’s hit on all of the leftover thoughts from the excruciating home loss at Gillette Stadium.
— Big picture, you can’t feel good about the fact that the Patriots have lost twice to teams that are clearly not very good. The Raiders have lost two straight after winning in New England, getting outscored 61-33 and losing to Washington backup QB Marcus Mariota on Sunday. The Raiders are not good.
The Steelers are 2-1, but the other win came against the Jets, who are 0-3. Pittsburgh forced a ton of turnovers — due to the “ball search culture” Mike Tomlin is instilling in them — but gained just 203 yards of offense and could have easily lost a game in which they led the turnover battle 5-1. Wherever you want to put them on the scale of bad to mediocre is irrelevant; they’re not very good.
And so with the Patriots appearing to have made some progress with a win in Miami last week, Sunday was a reminder that that progress is not linear.
— The start of the game did make you have to pull the E-word — embarrassment — out. There’s no other way to describe what took place. Rhamondre Stevenson’s fumble on the third play from scrimmage, jumping offside on Aaron Rodgers’ first snap, zero defensive resistance on the ensuing drive, an end-zone pass interference penalty on third down, and a touchdown allowed on the next play was how the game started.
Then the Patriots allowed a third-down sack ont heir next drive, got a 39-yard net punt from Bryce Baringer, negated a third-down sack with an admittedly questionable defensive holding penalty, followed that up with an unnecessary roughness penalty, took another third-down holding penalty on a third-and-short, and then gave up a touchdown to D.K. Metcalf.
On the one hand … that was as horrific a start to a football game as anyone could dream up. On the other, the Patriots actually kept their heads and played a somewhat solid football game after that. They had a chance to win.
— Of course, fumbles, fumbles, fumbles, batted INTs and more fumbles were the story of this game. Though zero hardo high school coaches would ever agree, there are in fact some times when ball carriers can be forgiven for fumbling. Whether it’s a Peanut punch, a well-hidden sneak attack from behind, or a well-placed helmet separating the ball from a body, sometimes you do have to “tip your cap” to the defense for making a spectacular play.
Three of the Patriots’ four fumbles on Sunday would not fall into that category, though.
Rhamondre Stevenson was just sloppy with the football. Plain and simple. Running through the line of scrimmage, a veteran running should probably know that some arms will be swinging toward him and it would be advisable to hold on for dear life. Likewise, that same running back should probably be aware after already fumbling that if he’s running toward the goal line, the same principles apply.
Stevenson was hard on himself after the loss, saying, “If I can’t hold the ball, then they don’t need me.” So it’s not as if he doesn’t get it. Just a truly confounding situation.
— Drake Maye wasn’t blameless for his turnovers, either. Far from it, actually.
On the end-zone interception, Kayshon Boutte was running himself wide open — wiiiiiide open — in the back corner of the end zone. Maye should have gone with a touch pass to that back corner. It should have been an easy play to make. Instead, he went with the fastball, which was tipped at the line by Cam Heyward and subsequently intercepted by Chuck Clark.
Even if Heyward hadn’t tipped it, Clark would have had a chance to get a hand on the pass to break it up because of the unnecessarily low trajectory.
And Maye’s fumble was a case of the second-year quarterback trying to do too much. The play was dead twice, and it was time for Maye to take his medicine and get ready for a second-and-long. Instead he tried to create something that wasn’t there, and he ended up coughing up the football at a time when the Patriots were driving to take a fourth-quarter lead.
Vrabel was critical of that turnover.
“Just understanding that you don’t have to win it all on one play. There’s opportunities to move on and save the day the next play,” Vrabel said. “You just can’t put the ball in harm’s way at that position.”
— Five turnovers. FIVE TURNOVERS! In a football game. That is bad. OK, moving on.
— I do wonder how the game shakes out if Harold Landry’s foot doesn’t accidentally kick Jonnu Smith’s fumble toward the sideline. Having just scored the game-tying touchdown and with momentum all the way on their side, the Patriots would have had the ball at the Pittsburgh 35-yard line. The place would have been juiced. A go-ahead score of some variety would have been likely. But I guess we’ll never know.
This close:
(The Patriots could have just as easily committed another turnover after that recovery, for all we know.)
— Pop Douglas now has five receptions for 13 yards and a touchdown this season. Thirteen receiving yards is often accumulated in one reception, not over the course of three games. This is not promising, and is sure to lead to some calls for Efton Chism to get his shot after a strong spring and summer.
Yet the production overall out of the receivers has been surprisingly low, considering that Drake Maye has been good. Stefon Diggs has 13 receptions for 112 yards, Mack Hollins has six receptions for 38 yards, and rookie Kyle Williams has two receptions for 20 yards. Kayshon Boutte leads the group with nine receptions for 147 yards and a touchdown, but 70 percent of those receiving yards came in Week 1; he has 44 yards on three receptions over the past two weeks.
Four of Maye’s top pass catchers thus far are tight ends (Hunter Henry, Austin Hooper) or running backs (Stevenson, TreVeyon Henderson), which is … fine? But also strange.
— Diggs found an alternative way to contribute, though, when he showed some veteran savvy to set a legal pick within a line of scrimmage to spring Stevenson for a huge catch-and-run to convert a third down. It was evidence of Diggs being willing to do some dirty work to help the team, even if it doesn’t help the stat line.
— This week in our “Football Hurts, Don’t Play It, Do Anything Else Other Than Playing Football segment”:
Ouch.
— A weird day to offer too much praise, but I thought this was an excellent day for Josh McDaniels. An EXCELLENT day. I don’t particularly hold him singularly responsible for players being careless with the football, though he’ll perhaps have to touch on that subject once or twice this week with the team.
But in terms of play-calling and making life easy for Maye, McDaniels had himself an afternoon.
I didn’t like his early third-down play that led to a sack. A tangled mess of a route concept, too slow to develop, nowhere to go with the football. But that might be the lone complaint.
Four fourth-down conversions can’t happen without an offensive coordinator who has a deep, deep bag of tricks on two-point/short-yardage plays. He sprung Hunter Henry wide open running against the flow of one play for an easy gain. He had the right calls to combat Pittsburgh’s blitzes, like the one that led to Henry’s touchdown catch.
And he ran an offense that gained 369 yards and should have won the game if not for two turnovers in the end zone and two more fumbles on the Steelers’ side of the field.
It was a truly bad, bad day for the New England Patriots, but a promising one for the future of McDaniels and Maye.
— Huge poise play from Drake Maye here:
The turnovers were bad, but as Vrabel said after the game, there was a ton of “good” in Maye’s game in this one. (His best play might have been sliding short of the sticks instead of getting lit up in the middle of the field. Last year, he’s probably lowering a shoulder there and getting sent to the locker room immediately.)
He did have one notably bad misfire, though, throwing behind Douglas on a shallow crosser with a lot of green around him on a second-and-13, two plays before the ill-fated fourth-and-1 attempt.
— Maye was also the Patriots’ leading rusher with 45 yards on the ground. That’s going to happen when your running backs keep putting the ball on the ground. Henderson had 28 yards, Gibson had 28 yards, and Stevenson had 18 yards.
— Can we take a moment to acknowledge the fact that Mike Vrabel went for it on a fourth-and-1 at his own 15-yard line? That is madman material. Just a chaotic move that you have to appreciate for the entertainment factor alone.
It worked (on a play call that chaotic in and of itself, with Maye flicking the ball out to Stevenson deep in the backfield), but then Maye threw an interception on the next play. But then replay showed that wasn’t an interception. And then Hunter Henry fumbled on the next snap. But he was ruled to have never caught the ball before fumbling. And then a 17-yard pass to Douglas was negated by Mike Onwenu wandering up the field before the pass. And then Maye hit Boutte for a 20-yard gain on a third-and-13. Only for Maye to throw an end-zone interception.
That drive was madness. Pure madness. No fan deserves to have to live through that.
— After Aaron Rodgers threw a horrific interception, I called him Aaron Rodgersaviloa. It was a hilarious joke. Everyone laughed and rejoiced.
All hilarious jokes aside though, Rodgers was awful for 90 percent of this game. He was great on the game-winning drive, which I suppose carries some weight. But he was bad.
— One of Mike Vrabel’s first points of order at the postgame podium was to complain that Carlton Davis’ pass interference penalty was not a foul. I don’t love that.
“You’d have to tell me that that penalty on Carlton Davis is actually defensive pass interference. That’s new for me,” Vrabel said.
Was it a ticky-tack call? Maybe. Was the pass uncatchable? Surely, but that never matters in the NFL. But the Patriots forced a Pittsburgh punt three plays later, and they also benefited from a similar call when a third-down pass to Boutte fell incomplete.
It just feels like the head coach of a team that turned the ball over five times would have bigger fish to fry in his postgame remarks than one inconsequential penalty call.
— With the whole football world flipping out over Tom Brady’s conflict of interest as Raiders owner and FOX broadcaster, it felt odd that J.J. Watt was assigned to call a game featuring his brother, T.J. Watt. With everyone worried about Brady stealing state secrets in his Zoom meetings with coaches and players during game prep, you’re saying J.J. wouldn’t be telling T.J. anything he gleaned from his own prep work on an upcoming Steelers opponent?
I’m not saying the Watt thing is a big deal or a scandal or a controversy, which tells you that — as is usually the case — Brady’s CONTROVERSY has more to do with the man himself than the matter at hand.
— That being said, I was flabbergasted when J.J. Watt agreed with the complaining T.J. Watt that a holding penalty had been missed. Stunned. Floored. Aghast. (He also could have mentioned that No. 90 lined up in the neutral zone fairly often.)
— The Patriots were expected by pretty much everybody to go 2-2 or 3-1 in September, owing to the ease of the schedule. Well, 3-1 is out of the picture, and 2-2 … well, it’s not looking like a cinch. The Panthers, who visit Gillette next week, speed-bagged the Falcons on Sunday to the tune of a 30-0 win. The Panthers did that despite just 224 yards of offense, a 3-for-11 conversion rate on third down, and three turnovers.
An anomalous-looking win, perhaps. But the first two home games have proven that the 2025 Patriots can’t feel superior to any opponent, and they’ll need to button up their ball security to have a chance to at least salvage a .500 opening month to the Mike Vrabel era.