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The New England Patriots' performance in the 2022 preseason was underwhelming, to say the least. However, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick isn't giving a final assessment of their performance.
In his weekly interview on WEEI's “The Greg Hill Show,” Belichick was asked how he would grade his team's performance after the starters on both sides of the ball struggled against the backups of the Carolina Panthers and Las Vegas Raiders in consecutive weeks. Belichick said the preseason isn't about grading your team.
“Preseason is preseason. Preseason is about developing your team for the season and evaluating the players,” Belichick said. “If you look at the playtime in our games, and any other games, I don’t know, I don’t think Las Vegas played 30 players. I don’t think Carolina, it must have been 30 players that didn’t play in their game [against us]. That’s not really what preseason is about. Preseason is about evaluating the players that you do play and taking the practice time, in joint practices or whatever time you have, to prepare your team for the regular season.”
Belichick said that he could give his team a grade a bit into the season.
"I obviously got to do a better job. It starts with me."
Bill Belichick reacting to the #Patriots preseason loss to the #raiders pic.twitter.com/2c0bRxUmNo
— NBC Sports Boston's Patriots Coverage (@NBCSPatriots) August 27, 2022
“When everybody is [prepared], we’ll see after five, six weeks of the regular season. That’s when we’ll know [how well we're performing],” Belichick said. “I don’t think preseason games are a real big indicator of what the team is or isn’t, one way or another. That’s not about us, it’s about the NFL. But you get a great chance to evaluate players.”
Now that the early evaluation stage is behind us, it's on to finalizing the 53-man rosters. The Patriots, along with every other NFL team, must cut their roster down to 53 players by 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday. Belichick went through the process of how he determines who makes the cut and who doesn't, but also noted that they can always make changes along the way.
“I think that will be the focus this week of the 1,000 or so transactions that take place across the league: Is there a way you can improve your team?” Belichick said. “Does somebody want to improve their team by adding one of your players? You can’t have depth everywhere. So you have to choose what positions you want to have depth at on the roster, what positions you want to have depth on the practice squad, assuming you can get all the players you want — which, usually, you can’t. So that causes some other adjustments.
“That’s kind of what this week is about: setting your roster, figuring out how you want to try to play the season, and then there will be a lot of adjustments along the way. But you have to start somewhere.”
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A big area the Patriots need to make adjustments in after evaluating the preseason is their offense. New England scored just twice in the seven drives that Mac Jones and the rest of the offensive starters played in games against Carolina and Las Vegas.
Jones was constantly under duress through those seven drives, especially when from under center, getting sacked three times and getting pressured several more times. He completed most of his passes when working out of the shotgun, but finished the preseason completing just 13-of-21 passes for 132 yards and an interception.
In addition to the unimpressive air game, the Patriots' ground game might have been worse. The three stretch runs the Patriots ran with the first team as part of their new zone scheme against the Raiders either resulted in stuffs or penalties. They had some success running up the middle, with Rhamondre Stevenson gaining 11 yards on two rushes between the guards and adding 13 yards on a pitch rush. Damien Harris ran for 18 yards on three carries up the middle, too.
With Josh McDaniels gone, the question of who replaces him has been the major focus on the Patriots in the preseason. They never named a successor to McDaniels, but offensive line coach Matt Patricia appears to be the play-caller while quarterbacks coach Joe Judge seems to have a big role on the offensive coaching staff, too.
Belichick downplayed the preseason results once again when asked about the coaches.
“The play-calling hasn’t been a problem,” Belichick said. “Again, there’s no game-planning. We’ve been running the plays we’ve run all training camp. The preseason and game-planning for regular-season games is two different worlds, so it’s really not comparable.”
The Patriots will take the field again on Sept. 11 against the Miami Dolphins to begin the 2022 regular season.
