New England Patriots
“It starts with me. I’ll have them better prepared.”
Mike Vrabel echoed a sentiment shared by most of New England after his team was thoroughly outclassed by the Jaguars on Sunday.
“Well, my concern level is very high for this football team,” Vrabel said.
Granted, most of that concern is rooted in Drake Maye — who has gone from MVP runner-up in 2025 to outright detriment through the first three weeks of a new NFL campaign.
Last season, Maye was the conductor of an explosive and efficient offense that spurred New England on an unexpected Super Bowl run — throwing 31 touchdowns and just eight interceptions.
Through three games this season, the 24-year-old QB has thrown just one touchdown and been knocked for six interceptions.
For all of the talk of Maye laboring without A.J. Brown or opposing teams scheming ways to counter Maye’s arm with a steady dose of zone defense (namely Cover 6), the Patriots’ franchise signal-caller is the primary culprit for New England’s offensive woes.
Be it overthrowing targets, telegraphing plays, or forcing throws into covered wideouts, Maye is seemingly lost at the wheel of Josh McDaniels’ offense after appearing to have all of the answers to the test in 2025.
“I think he knows what to do, we have to do it better,” Vrabel said of his laboring QB. “And again, we all want to make plays, we just have to make good ones.
“If it’s not there, we’ve got to make a great decision. I think, sometimes, you can want it too badly … and we can’t force anything.”
Getting Maye and the Patriots’ offense back on track stands as the top priority for a 1-2 New England club. But New England has plenty of issues beyond Maye’s struggles.
The onus might fall on Maye to take care of the football moving forward. But New England’s overall operation has been severely lacking to open the year, with the Patriots looking like a far cry from the buttoned-up grouping that defied expectations last year.
Many of these missteps stand as a telling indictment of Vrabel and his staff, with Sunday’s loss rife with undisciplined play from New England’s roster.
With New England’s margins being razor-thin amid Maye’s missteps, the Patriots can ill-afford penalty woes — with the Patriots getting knocked for nine penalties for 68 yards in Jacksonville.
Some of those missteps squandered prime opportunities for New England to put up points — with a holding call against Morgan Moses negating a 21-yard rushing touchdown from Maye.
On the next play, an offensive pass interference call against Romeo Doubs had the Patriots staring at a 1st-and-30 just a few plays after Marcus Jones seemingly swung momentum back in his team’s favor with a timely interception.
New England eventually had to settle for an Andy Borregales field goal, while the Patriots’ next red-zone sequence ended with Maye lofting in a pass that Jags corner Travis Hunter picked off in the end zone.
Beyond some ill-timed flags, the Patriots looked like a team that wasn’t dialed in, with critical execution lapses from several players.
Yes, the Patriots need Borregales to convert on a 38-yard field goal — instead of slicing it wide right.
They need defensive stalwarts like Robert Spillane to tackle and snuff out yards after contact/catch, with the Jags allowing 4.6 yards per carry.
Running backs Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon Henderson couldn’t alleviate some of the pressure on Maye — averaging 3.2 yards per carry. Both backs’ longest runs of the day were just five-yard pickups.
But what about veteran Mack Hollins, who picked up an embarrassing taunting penalty after making a nine-yard catch … while down 25 points in the fourth quarter? It was an awful look for a leader in New England’s locker room — turning a 4th and 1 into a 4th-and-16.
Or Kyle Williams — who made the ill-advised decision to field a kickoff from the nine-yard line instead of letting it sail out of bounds — and then inadvertently stepped out of bounds off of what should have been a 50-yard touchdown?
The Patriots need more from their players all across the depth chart. But they need to look more like the streamlined, dialed-in operation they were last year. And that starts with the head coach and his staff.
“We’re professional football players, we’re professional coaches, we have to prepare, we have to be willing to, like we said, prepared to start fast,” Vrabel said. “But you have to also be prepared to compete and take advantage of the opportunities — not miss kicks, score touchdowns in the red zone, get red zone stops.
“It just was everything, so. It starts with me. I’ll have them better prepared. I’m going to commit to improving this football team and the guys that we have here.”
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