Patriots Had ‘Zappe Fever’ In Cleveland

By: Steve Atkinson

The Patriots as expected blew out the Cleveland Browns today to go 3-3 on the season. Bill Belichick has now 324 wins in his career tying George Halas for second place on the all-time wins list as a head coach. He has the chance to pass him next Monday night against the wretched Chicago Bears. Today Bailey Zappe was all over the place making plays and being a great game manager. He is so poised in the pocket and is very mobile and threw for 300 yards against the Browns defense. The tight ends even got involved today! Jonnu Smith had the longest run catch and run as a Patriot today.

Belichick spoke after the game about tying for second place on the all-time win list.

“You can’t win games in this league without good players,” Belichick said Sunday when asked about the accomplishment in his postgame news conference. “So I’m very fortunate to have coached a lot of great players and had a lot of great coaches on my staffs through the years. A lot of those guys have gone on to have tremendous careers. And the players, obviously, many of them are Patriots Hall of Fame, NFL Hall of Fame or gonna be. It’s really — winning games in this league is about players, and I’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of them. Had them at New York. Had them at Cleveland. Had them here.”

Zappe Fever Take over for Patriot Fans

I would say the Zappe Fever is lukewarm for me. I don’t think he took Mac Jones job yet because we really haven’t seen what Mac is capable of this season. If Jones starts next Monday night and has a bad game, then I would consider starting Zappe because I wouldn’t be sure Jones has bought in. You can’t blame Jones for having a bad start to the season with Patricia calling the plays and having Joe Judge be the quarterback’s coach. He got off to a rocky start.

His best game was against the Ravens before getting hurt and Zappe has impressed early on. He’s 2-0 against both bad teams. People seem to forget Mac Jones also beat the bad teams. He did only throw for 198 yards last season in the win over the Browns, but they did score over 40 points. We haven’t even seen Mac’s celling yet and people are comparing this to 2001. Not even close Drew Bledsoe was in the league for 20 years and was a turnover machine. This is only Mac’s second year in the league. Zappe beat two bad teams and if he starts next week against the Bears he will beat three bad teams.

Before you say there’s a quarterback controversy you have to say the quarterback room is solid. Again, we don’t know how far Mac can go and if he can continue to pull out wins if he starts against the Bears. Here is one thing he should do, starting with the Bears game. They should be 6-3 heading into the bye. Again, if Mac struggles against the Bears, Jets, or Colts then I would strongly consider changing the quarterback and we have ourselves a controversy. But not yet it’s too soon.

Patriots’ rookies had a day on Sunday Tyquan Thorton had two touchdowns in the win over the Browns. Zappe found the guys that were open to get the ball and create plays. The defense remains the story and are very solid across the board. Judon is the MVP of that defense Jack Jones and Kyler Dugger are solid in the backfield. They just have to keep the train moving and get wins.