For the sake of redundancy (and my own sanity), no preview is needed this week. I thoroughly went through the roster in my Week 2 preview against the Patriots, and while both teams have changed in complexion, many key matchups remain similar. This week, I’ll take you through what I believe has changed from the previous preview in a list of however many things have changed! First, a table!
| Projected Record | 8-9 (Currently 2-5) |
| Offensive DVOA* (2023) | 20th |
| Defensive DVOA* (2023) | 17th |
| Players Added from Last Matchup: Patriots | Trent Brown T, Sidy Sow IOL, Anfernee Jennings EDGE, Jonathan Jones CB, J.C. Jackson CB |
| Players Added from Last Matchup: Dolphins | Jeff Wilson Jr. RB, Robbie Chosen WR, Chase Claypool WR, Robert Jones IOL, Jaelan Phillips EDGE, Jalen Ramsey CB, Nik Needham CB |
| Last Result | Dolphins 24-17 |
Injury Report
Players on Patriots IR: Riley Reiff T, Tyrone Wheatley Jr. T, Daniel Ekuale IDL, Matthew Judon EDGE, Christian Gonzalez CB, Marcus Jones CB, Isaiah Bolden CB
New Thing 1: Improvement in the Red Zone, But Disaster Elsewhere
Much of what I said about Mac Jones in Week 2 remains true: Mac has struggled to showcase dynamic play, been an absolute turnover machine, remained startlingly aggressive yet disastrous against pressure, and faced down calls for his job all year. The total team offensive efficacy can be demonstrated pretty clearly in a place where I was wrong this year: the Patriots offense in the red zone. Jones’s Patriots currently sit at 4th for red zone TD percentage, converting 67% of red zone attempts into TDs (Miami still sits at 1st with 78%). Mac has 6 TD tosses in the red zone, while Ezekiel Elliott and Rhamondre Stevenson have 2 TDs each. Chad Ryland has also hit 2 FGs from the red zone. This is scoring efficiency. The downside? The Patriots have only been in the red zone 15 times in 7 games. The league-leading Bills have been there more than twice as much (32 times) and the only teams worse are all AFC North teams struggling to find their footing offensively (Browns, Steelers, Bengals). When a team gets a top 5 red zone efficiency mark and a 2-5 record, you can bet that sample size is the issue. Efficiency elsewhere on the field is hard to come by, as Mac himself has given up 30 points to opposing defenses (4 pick six throws and a safety). Only Chicago has given up 4 TDs to defenses, and one of them was by an undrafted free agent replacing Justin Fields. The Patriots offense has been a play away from disaster all year.
Thing 2: Bill Belichick Won’t Be Breaking Don Shula’s Record This Year (Or Next?!)
While I’m not surprised at all at fan vitriol toward Mac Jones, there is a storm coming for Patriots legend Bill Belichick, and it is shockingly strong. At 2-5, Belichick’s chase of Don Shula’s record is in limbo, and reports that he may be fired lingered for weeks before the Patriots released a statement that, actually, he signed a lucrative contract offseason, why do you ask? Tensions in the building have been documented for years, especially in the discontent between Robert Kraft and GM Bill Belichick (Coach Belichick typically has received less scrutiny). Belichick has surely entered the end stages of both his career and his time with the Patriots, and every game now is a referendum on if he should still be making decisions. He came into the year 18 games away and is now 16. At this pace, the Patriots might win 3 more games this season, and the coach would need four more years to break the record. Belichick may not even be able to survive a single 5-win season. Does Kraft have the power to demand seismic shifts, and does Belichick love his place in history enough to simply acquiesce? Perhaps the larger looming question: could sidelining Bill Belichick from organizational duties and relegating him to figurehead even improve a team that has made so many bad roster decisions? If the Patriots end up in a position to draft a franchise QB, Belichick needs to be able to point to his own support staff and say that they can launch the rookie to higher heights. After Year 3 of Mac Jones, it may be a hard sell. The most tantalizing option for Belichick’s replacement, the brain trust on defense, has been unable to muster anything above average this year, especially after injuries took a blowtorch to the enterprise.
Thing 3: The Patriots OL is a liability
Yes, in my last preview, I covered the Pats OL as a unit to be exploited, but I attributed that to multiple injuries. The Patriots have now recovered from the bumps and bruises, but poor play has really sputtered the offense. Mike Onwenu has regressed from rising star to barely league average; he’s been a deficit in both the run and the pass. David Andrews is still a decent anchor in the run game, but the Patriots don’t have the explosiveness or help needed to turn the run game explosive. Instead, the team is forced to pass and the interior line is folding badly, sending Jones scrambling to make the worst plays known to man. There simply is not a LG or RT on this team, no matter how hard you squint. Trent Brown is the only player who is playing up to standard, and what a standard he has set: PFF’s best offensive tackle, he’s reminiscent of Laremy Tunsil on those Texans lines, battling alone on a little island, keeping his side of the street clean while a fireworks factory explodes on the other side of the street. If this year was the evaluation year for Mac Jones, he’ll have plenty of excuses to point toward as he looks for another starting job.
Thing 4: There Is No Rhyme Or Reason To The Skill Positions
Let’s play “Who does PFF think are the best Patriots skill position players?” In the last preview, I wrote at length about Mike Gesicki, Hunter Henry, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Kayshon Boutte, and Kendrick Bourne. Only Bourne makes the list of PFF’s top 5 Patriots skill players. Pharoah Brown, Demario “Pop” Douglas, Ezekiel Elliott, Rhamondre Stevenson, and the aforementioned Bourne round out the list. Henry is second on the team with 210 yards and 2 TDs, but he’s not a difference maker. Henry and Gesicki have 1.1 and 1.03 yards per route run* respectively, good for 44th and 46th among all TEs. Meanwhile, in 31 snaps with a route run, Pharoah Brown has 5 catches on 5 targets for 137 yards and a game-winning TD against the Jets. He should be starting. As Jakobi Meyers makes big plays for the Raiders after finally getting his shot at free agency, Kendrick Bourne is the next who must be freed. He has 51 targets and 34 catches, but the scheme is so frustratingly vanilla and popgun that he still has not cracked the 2 yards per route run threshold (nearly 30 players have) and ranks 45th. His YAC* average, meanwhile, is 5.7 yards per catch, which ranks 10th among all players. Stop making Bourne do all the work! Get this man some schemed yards! No Patriot is on pace for a 1000 yard receiving season. 22 of the 32 NFL teams have a player on pace for 1000, though only one has a guy on pace for 2000 and it isn’t the Eagles…
Thing 5: Some Players on Defense, but Depth Overrated
I discussed the Patriots defense as a deep and rotation-heavy monster in my last preview, consistent with preseason predictions that the Patriots could be a top 5-10 unit by analysts. No such thing has materialized, but there are still some awesome players. At safety, the combination of Jabrill Peppers and Kyle Dugger is allows for multiplicity, with the veteran Peppers snatching a game-changing INT against the Bills last week. At LB, Jahlani Tavai has been everywhere, already logging a career high in pressures, an INT and pass breakup with just 37 yards allowed in pass coverage, and 2 missed tackles to 41 logged tackles. What can’t he do? Ja’Whaun Bentley has struggled with missed tackles, but he is still a talented LB who completes his assignments. Upfront, the Patriots are fairly disappointing: Josh Uche, Deitrich Wise, and Christian Barmore have all taken on greater importance with injuries to Matthew Judon (DL) and Christian Gonzalez (CB who was allowing for more blitzes to help them out). Not one of those players has cracked the top 66 in pressures. Judon was on pace to be a top 10 guy before he was shelved for the year. A trade for J.C. Jackson was predicated on the idea that he could step in as a lesser Gonzalez, but if the Buffalo game was any indication (he allowed 7 catches on 10 targets for 61 yards and a TD), he’s always a good mark. Tua will love seeing him again after beating him for 3 catches for 99 yards and a TD, not to mention a game-changing PI call at the end of the half. The Patriots defense is average incarnate, and we’ll see if they can put together even a shadow of the predicted dominance.
Thing 6: The Patriots Are Coming Off Their Best Game of the Year
You can’t really talk about the success of the last game without exploring the futility prior. The Patriots surrendered 79 unanswered points in their nightmare stretch, the NFL’s longest such streak since 1999. Before snapping that streak during a 21-17 loss to the Raiders, the Pats lost to the Cowboys 38-3 and the hapless Saints 34-0. And then they beat the Bills. The offense was fantastic, finally springing backs in the run game. Onwenu, Andrews, and RG Sidy Sow finally got push in the run game, which did not translate to much yardage but kept the offense on time. Mac Jones was also excellent: he posted a line of 25/30 passing for 2 TDs and 272 yards. He also had his lowest depth of target of the year, peppering the cover 2 defense with well-placed targets that allowed for solid yards after the catch. While the defense allowed the Bills to move the ball well, they also pressured Josh Allen a whopping 26 times, all while giving up just 11 pressures themselves. While both teams only allowed 1 sack, doubling the other team’s pressures is a great recipe for discomfort. There may not be a recipe here for a turnaround, but the Patriots running an efficient offense sans explosiveness and a frustrating defense sans dominance will set them up to be a tough out.
Game Prediction
The Patriots are still not a good football team, but they’re certainly grasping for answers. Onwenu is out in space at RT by necessity, as no one else has stepped up. With Sow proving himself to be a decent third guard, some stability has returned. This is true throughout the Patriots roster, where some roles are being defined now to create a stronger construction. Both teams have a Pro Bowl-roster full of talent on IR, but the Patriots are the team forced to accept reality, as theirs are not returning. The injury report is quite long for both teams, with plenty of “Questionable” tags. Many of the best players on both teams finished the week with limited practices, including Jevon Holland, Xavien Howard, Alec Ingold, Raheem Mostert, Jalen Ramsey, and Connor Williams for the Phins and Christian Barmore, Trent Brown, Deatrich Wise Jr., and Jonathan Jones for the Pats. Are the Patriots prepared for the speed the Dolphins have to offer? Are the Dolphins able to avoid the trap game concerns and contend with a physical team that needs this game a lot more than they do?
While the Dolphins are the better team in a vacuum, the Eagles offered the first glimpse at the new Anti-McDaniel weapon: run defense. Part of the success on the ground this year has been a built-in personnel mismatch. Miami has forced teams to keep an extraordinary amount of DBs on the field because of the reputation of their ridiculously explosive 2022 passing attack, but the Eagles lined up to stop the run. They were perhaps the first team to understand that Miami is using their prior reputation to build a rather traditional offensive structure: play action and short passing built off of an explosive run game. So have the Eagles created the Staley Plan of last year that brings Miami down to Earth? McDaniel’s goal has been to become a 3D (or, more aptly, 5D) team that is able to win in any way it has to. This goal is closer to fruition in terms of the peaks of the season, but the games in which the Dolphins primary plan has been stymied (Eagles, Bills), the Dolphins have not constructed a Plan B that met muster. Of course, the Dolphins have won two one-score games (Chargers, Patriots Rd. 1), but both of those opponents have struggled to just 2 wins. The Dolphins may not gain any national media points for wiping the underdog Patriots at home, but they have a chance now to build on some of their weaknesses (building out their secondary, grinding out consistent drives even when the big play is lacking) before a marquee matchup in Germany next week.
The Dolphins will win. They’ve been too good at home, and the chance to hold the division with a widening division games lead over the Bills is too important. But what else will we see? Are Connor Williams and Jalen Ramsey able to play and look the part of top-shelf starters after long layoffs? Are Nik Needham and Brandon Jones finally ready to play important roles after their injuries from the previous year? How vulnerable are the Dolphins to a team that is willing to take short passes all day? As a Dolphins fan for the last two decades, it sure is fun to go into Patriots Week thinking about trap games and dress rehearsals rather than just how bad a beatdown we might receive. Football life sure is fun these days!
Game Prediction: Dolphins 27-20
Season Record (Taylor Picks): 6-1
NEXT WEEK: Kansas City
* = See Glossary
