Bill O’Brien Takes Shot at Matt Patricia; Patriots Packers Thoughts

By: Steve Atkinson
Real offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien saw what that clown show was a year and has taken his own shots. Doesn’t matter what the morons say that fill in on The Sports Hub O’Brien doesn’t blame Mac Jones for last season. O’Brien blames rocket scientist Matt Patricia for setting Mac Jones back a year ago. Friday’s press conference was a clear indication of that when O’Brien was talking about Elliott.

O’Brien didn’t like Last Year’s offense

You know, it’s not rocket science,” O’Brien said of the Patriots’ offensive system. “You know, we’re not splitting atoms.”

The Murray’s on the Sports Hub probably didn’t like that comment because that gives Mac an out for last years outbursts on the sideline. I’ve said before I don’t care about his antics on the field last season to me it doesn’t count. All that counts really is that O’Brien is here to fix it.

O’Brien’s offense looked functional on Saturday

Getting to the game on Saturday the offense was functional. O’Brien has put in RPO’s and play-action which we saw none of last season. The only quarterback that saw play action was Zappe while Jones was in shotgun all the time. The offensive line is a problem and will be for the entire season the defense was pretty good.

Dermino Douglas is a stud in his short time in the game. He can get open and is really fast. I saw that in training camp too. Don’t let the Murray’s on the Sports Hub this week tell you otherwise Mac Jones played better on Saturday than Zappe did. Zappe finished with a passer rating of 77.3% playing with the backups while Jones finished with a passer rating of 81.7%. Jones was with the starters while Zappe was with the backups.

The Isaiah Bolden Injury

The Isaiah Bolden injury was a scary one and he has a concussion. The Patriots have canceled joint practice with the Titans for this week and will instead practice in Foxborough. The Patriots will fly out Thursday to Nashville for Friday’s game. Now, I know some will say the Patriots are soft, this is football, Bolden is fine etc. However, time has changed and more players have their voices heard more than ever before. If the team wanted to cancel joint practice and not let Bolden fly home on his own then that’s what they were going to do. Slater offered words of encouragement after last night’s game.

“I really appreciate what Coach Belichick did tonight. He took the initiative on [ending the game],” Slater told reporters. “This is not the AFC Championship. We’re not playing for records. This is preseason game No. 2. We have an injury like that, and it affects a lot of guys in a lot of different ways. Clearly our team was shaken by what happened.

“I think coach made the right decision. That was tremendous leadership by him. Honestly, that was one of the proudest moments I’ve had as a guy who’s played for him for now 16 years to see what he did. There was no hesitation. I appreciate Coach LaFleur as well for standing with him on that. I think everyone acted swiftly, and it was the right call in this situation.”

Even Bill Belichick didn’t want to talk about the game.

I think the last situation kind of in the bigger picture overrode the game so we’ll all say a prayer for Isaiah (Bolden) and we just released a statement with that, right, so that’s all the information. That’s the updated information that we have. I appreciated the way the league handled it. I think that was the right thing to do. Also saying a prayer for some of our players with their close friends and relatives in Hawaii that are going through some stuff out there. That’s really the bigger picture of it here. Kind of regroup and talk about the game later, but that’s kind of where things are right now. Competitive game, competitive week. Good week against Green Bay, just unfortunate what happened there at the end. Hopefully they say he’ll be alright and that’s really about all I’ve got.”

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