The New England Patriots lost their season opening contest in Week 1 of the 2023 season against the Philadelphia Eagles by a score of 25-20. That much wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that the Patriots ended up largely outperforming the reigning NFC champions in the Eagles for much of the afternoon, but saw their efforts come up just short once again.

Since Mac Jones took over at quarterback for the Patriots in 2021, this has been a similar theme for New England. Fall behind early in a game, play strong football to make things interesting, and then fail to put the finishing touches on a standout comeback victory. The Pats have shown an ability to hang with the best of the best, but they still cannot get over that final hump.

There's no shame in losing to a talented Eagles squad, but it's clear that this was another game the Patriots very easily could have won that they didn't. And while losses like these have become New England's bread and butter over the past few seasons, it's clear that there are quite a few reasons for optimism surrounding the team after their season opener.

Why the Patriots loss to the Eagles wasn't all bad

The excitement and intrigue surrounding the Pats 2023 campaign seemed to be crashing down in humiliating fashion early on in this game. Thanks to a pick-six that went off the hands of Kendrick Bourne and a fumble from Ezekiel Elliott, New England was down 16-0 before the first quarter even ended. Heck, the Eagles had the ball again when the quarter ended, so things could have been even worse.

There's no question that every team in the NFL is not going to be playing their best football in Week 1. The Eagles offense looked out of sorts for much of this game, which isn't totally surprising given how their best players didn't touch the field during preseason. The Patriots had an awfully slow start, but once they woke up, they thoroughly outplayed the Eagles in this game.

The offense didn't wake up until midway through the second quarter, when they largely decided to abandon the run game, and it ended up resulting in a standout performance from Jones under center. Jones had virtually no run support to speak of, and was missing two of his starting offensive lineman against one of the best defenses in the NFL, but still ended up having one of the better games of his career (35/54, 316 YDS, 3 TD, 1 INT).

New England would obviously like to run the ball a bit more than they were able to in this one, but it was great to immediately see the difference in the offense with Bill O'Brien calling the plays rather than Matt Patricia. Jones was given an opportunity to air the ball out in this one, and he carved up one of the top defenses in the league for much of the day.

Furthermore, the Patriots offensive line turned in a great outing, despite being without both of their starting guards in Cole Strange and Michael Onwenu. Rookies Sidy Sow and Antonio Mafi had huge debuts, as Jones only got sacked twice against a defensive front that racked up 70 sacks last year, which is the third highest total in NFL history. Add in Calvin Anderson, who started at right tackle after spending all of training camp on the non-football illness list, and it's safe to say this was a resoundingly successful performance from the o-line.

For the most part, we knew New England's defense was going to be good, but they bottled up Jalen Hurts and company for pretty much the entire game. When previewing the game, I noted that the Patriots were going to have to limit Hurts' tendency to put together explosive plays, and they did just that, as the Eagles high-powered offense only scored one touchdown and had just one play that went for more than 20 yards on the day.

In the front seven, the Patriots sacked Hurts three times, and held the Eagles to just 3.9 yards per carry on the ground, which was a huge win. Philly had nothing going down the field thanks to some exceptional zone coverage schemes by the secondary that kept A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith under wraps, and the only touchdown they allowed to the offense came on a short field after Elliott's fumble.

A quick look at the box score will show that New England outplayed Philly in this one. If they didn't shoot themselves in the foot with early turnovers, costly penalties, some poor coaching decisions to not kick field goals, and a pair of unlucky failed toe-taps from Kayshon Boutte, they probably win this game easily. Sure, there's a lot of ‘ifs' there, but they really only needed one of those things to go their way in order to win.

The Patriots need to start putting together wins in these sorts of games if they want to take the next step forward in their development. But in terms of losing a game, this was fairly encouraging. However, the bar needs to be raised sooner rather than later, and it's not as if they have many easy games on their schedule coming up. There are positive developments New England can build off of from this game, but they need to start translating these moral victories into actual victories if they want this season to be different than last year.