Bill Belichick was understandably upset with his team's performance in Friday's preseason finale.

Not only did the Patriots lose to the Raiders, 23-6, but they also played most of their starters for a quarter-plus and failed to do much against Las Vegas' backups. When starting quarterback Mac Jones left the field for the final time in Friday's game, the Patriots trailed, 10-3, with 9:15 remaining in the second quarter – and New England had one more possession than Las Vegas at that point.

Jones just completed the Patriots' first scoring drive of the night at that moment, too. In the prior three drives, the Patriots' starting offense had two three-and-outs with a Mac Jones interception sandwiched in between.

The Patriots' backups didn't have any more luck when they entered the game. Bailey Zappe threw a pick and rookie running back Kevin Harris fumbled as part of New England's 273-yard defensive performance.

Defensively, the Patriots' starters gave up 72 passing yards to former New England backup Jarrett Stidham on six passes. Las Vegas ended with 281 yards on the day, though it had a short field to work with following the two interceptions, leading to two touchdowns.

After having a strong bounce-back joint practice with the Raiders on Wednesday, Belichick was blunt in his assessment of the Patriots following the uninspiring loss.

“We didn't really have a real good night tonight in any phase of the game, that's obvious,” Belichick said. “We might have left it on the practice field on Tuesday and Wednesday. We certainly practiced a lot better than we played tonight. I think we obviously need to clean up a lot of things here. We didn't play well in any phase of the game, didn't play with any kind of consistency. There were a couple of touchdowns called back. We turned the ball over. We didn't play good defense.

“I obviously have got to do a better job. It starts with me. We'll get back to work this week and work on the things we need to work on. Like I said, it's disappointing because we did things better against the Raiders in practice than we did tonight. Hopefully, we can regain that execution and performance.”

The run game came into question again following Friday's loss. While New England's running backs rushed for 91 yards on 15 attempts, 33 of those yards came on one rush from Harris against the Raiders' third-stringers. The Patriots' top three running backs ran for just 33 yards on eight carries, with most of them being stuffs.

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When asked if there's anything he's seen that's wrong with the Patriots' top group of running backs so far, Belichick said that his team lacked consistency on Friday.

“We had several good runs in practice this week,” Bill Belichick said. “You could say that about [a lack of consistency in] every part of the game tonight. There wasn't anything that was consistent.”

The Patriots' top rushers notably had better success on inside runs than outside runs on Friday. New England's first three rushing players were stretch runs, with one resulting in a tackle for loss, another resulting in a stuff at the line of scrimmage, and the third being negated due to a holding penalty.

New England's top running backs ran better on inside runs, rushing for 14 yards on such rushes, with Rhamondre Stevenson adding another 13 yards on a pitch.

Belichick rejected a reporter's idea though that certain plays are more dependable than others.

“I don't look at it that way,” Belichick said. Some plays work against some defenses against certain things and some things don't. I wouldn't say one play is graded against everything. I have a hard time [agreeing] with that. I'm sure there are other people who think differently, which is fine.

“I think you need to execute what you need to be able to execute to win in that situation against that opponent in that game. It changes game-to-game for me. I think's hard to do just three things in this league and think that's going to be good enough to win.”

Mac Jones, Bill Belichick and the Patriots will need to execute in two weeks, when they open the regular season against the Dolphins.