The ugly, unspoken truth about the Patriots’ free agent deal with Jacoby Brissett last March was that the team would pay him $10 million to both play quarterback and be a piñata.
While much has been written about Brissett’s mentorship of rookie Drake Maye, as a well-traveled, respected journeyman, Brissett is here to protect him. His job is to lead the offense and take the inevitable punishment that comes with it until the Patriots believe Maye can protect himself.
On Sunday night, the Commanders’ substitutes needed six plays to find the piñata.
Washington defensive end KJ Henry fired unblocked from the right side and crushed Brissett, dropping him on his right shoulder and scoring a sack. Brissett winced in pain as he gathered the huddle after his third dropback. Three snaps later, he was done for the night.
This sack brought to light another unpleasant truth: The Patriots offensive line is a complete disaster right now.
Complete chaos.
In total, they received 10 penalties. In the first half alone, center Nick Leverett was involved in two botched snaps. Offensive tackles Chukwuma Okorafor and Mike Onwenu together incurred four penalties for illegal positioning. In addition to Okorafor, left guard Sidy Sow was cautioned for holding and later had to leave the field with an ankle injury. Sow’s replacement, Michael Jordan, was cautioned for holding almost immediately after entering the field.
Meanwhile, rookie right guard Layden Robinson – a rare emerging bright spot for this line – got a false start, was penalized once for holding and caused the sack on Brissett. On the play, Robinson was immediately driven back into Sow, who had been driving around to block Henry. The collision allowed Henry to break free.
Then Maye took over and promptly initiated an 11-play scoring attack, displaying agility and playmaking that now captures the soccer imagination of an entire region.
Could he start in week 1?
Is Maye already the future?
Have the Patriots finally found the rightful successor to Tom Brady?!
Not so fast.
Maye should sit out the first week. Scratch that. He has to.
The Patriots cannot leave the future of their franchise to an offensive line that is incapable of performing properly.
Even if they started Maye in two weeks, what would be the point?
Thoughts on every player on the Patriots’ 90-man roster before the cuts
Upset the Bengals and then throw him in the deep end for the next three weeks with no protection and water guns as weapons against two of the best defenses in football – the Jets and the 49ers? Cool.
Quinnen Williams would love the chance to break Maye – and the Patriots – before Columbus Day. So would Nick Bosa.
Once again, Washington benched its starters on Sunday night. The defensive backups of a team that received the No. 2 pick in April just crushed four of the Patriots’ best offensive players. Anyone eager to get Maye into the starting lineup as soon as possible is missing that detail and the bigger picture.
This is the first year of a major rebuild; the first post-Tom Brady season where the Patriots’ primary goal is not to win.
It’s about developing players like Maye, Robinson and other newcomers. But Maye will never develop and thrive if he never first survive.
No quarterback can win behind such a porous line against a real, scheming NFL defense. A Commanders second-division team with a simple coverage and front line doesn’t count.
After suffering from free rushers for so long, quarterbacks are starting to see ghosts. They also can’t tell the difference between ghosts and real danger. Just ask Mac Jones.
The good news is that new offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt seems unlikely to drag Maye into such chaos.
In a recent interview with Yahoo Sports, Van Pelt described Brissett as “significantly better prepared for Opening Day.” Van Pelt also said, “Jacoby is better suited right now with his skill set and his toolbox to deal with a lot of the issues that come up, and Drake is still learning that. You don’t want to put a player on the field who doesn’t know exactly how to protect himself from certain looks.
“So that’s the whole process right now. And I think at some point, if and when that happens, it will be obvious to everyone.”
Meanwhile, Jerod Mayo has repeatedly insisted that the Patriots have a legitimate competition for the quarterback spot, which supposedly wasn’t decided as of Sunday night. That claim never made sense considering the Patriots used Brissett in all three preseason games and gave him virtually all the starts in training camp.
Unless you remember why Brissett is here in the first place: to play and take the hits until the defense or Maye forces him off the field.
Just like Sunday night.
