So Predictable!

Yesterday, I mentioned it would take Shank a few losses by the New England Patriots for him to start ripping the team. Boy, was I wrong!

Patriots’ opener was supposed to supply some answers but instead left questions about Drake Maye

FOXBOROUGH — Can we blame this on Bill Belichick, too?

Pete Carroll and the Las Vegas Raiders beat the Patriots, 20-13, Sunday, in New England’s much-anticipated season opener at Gillette.

It rained all afternoon. Top draft pick Will Campbell got beat on a couple of bull rushes and committed a crushing pre-snap penalty late in the fourth. Mike Vrabel’s decision to punt from near midfield, down by 10 with 4:53 left, was right out of the Joe Judge-Matt Patricia playbook. New England generated virtually zero offense in the second half.

Oh, and after the Pats took a 10-7 halftime lead, second-year quarterback Drake Maye threw an interception that tipped everything in the Raiders’ favor early in the second half.

Let’s blame the Hoodie. Relations between the Krafts and the Belichicks are at an all-time low, and blaming Bill for everything always will be easier than swallowing the notion that this might be another long, sad football autumn in New England.

Next week's game against the Miami Dolphins (where they've tended to lose in recent history) will be a barometer for more Patriots bashing by Shank, who doesn't mind doubling his weekly column output if he can continue to take a proxy dump on Robert Kraft.

DHL Dan CCLXVII - Anticipation

In Friday's Picked Up Pieces column, Shank talks up the New England Patriots after a few years in the wilderness:

There probably hasn’t been this much anticipation for a Patriots game since Tom Brady left, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while noting that Tommy Cutlets wears the No. 16 for the Patriots once worn by Scott Zolak . . .

⋅ The NFL season is finally here and New England waits breathlessly for the beginning of the Mike Vrabel era, when the Patriots and Raiders kick off at 1 p.m. Sunday at Gillette.

Patriots Nation is agog. There probably hasn’t been this much anticipation since Tom Brady prepped for what would end up being his final Patriots game: a 20-13 playoff loss to Vrabel’s Titans in January 2020.

A lot of stuff has happened to the Patriots since that day. Most of it bad.

Brady bolted for Tampa in the middle of the pandemic and Patriots Nation subsequently endured a chorus line of QB castaways, wannabes, and never weres: Cam Newton, Mac Jones, Jarrett Stidham, Brian Hoyer, Bailey Zappe, Jacoby Brissett, and Joe Milton.

...

Those were the good old days . . . when the Patriots ruled the football world . . . when Wiggy would say, “They hate us cuz they ain’t us!"

It was great then. It could be great again. And Patriots Nation believes it’ll start this weekend against the Raiders at Gillette.

It's subtle, but still there - set up the team with high expectations so he can rip them down the road when they lose a few games.

DHL Dan CCLXVI - Shots Fired

In this weeks picked Up Pieces column, Shank looks at the bad blood between Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick:

The Robert Kraft-Bill Belichick divorce is as messy as any in our local sports scene, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting for Bill Belichick’s NCAA debut on Labor Day evening . . .

⋅ The NFL doesn’t start until the Cowboys play the Eagles on Thursday in Philly. Meanwhile, there’s a holiday weekend college football smorgasbord, capped with ESPN’s Monday night showcase: TCU at North Carolina — Belichick’s first game on the sideline since a 17-3 loss to the Jets at Gillette Stadium on Jan. 7, 2024.

It often ends badly with star coaches and athletes around here. Remember Roger Clemens vs. Dan Duquette? Rick Pitino vs. The Fellowship of the Miserable? Terry Francona vs. Chicken and Beer? Rafael Devers vs. Red Sox leadership?

Belichick vs. Bob Kraft ranks high on our list of local sports’ harsh divorces.

A few days after Belichick’s final Foxborough moment, we got the phony photo-op with the owner putting his arm around Bill and claiming their breakup was “mutual.” Belichick played along, calling his firing “a day of gratitude and celebration.”

That was the end of the Kraft-Belichick decorum. Since then it’s been a series of heat-seeking salvos launched across multiple platforms — a full-fury-fusillade worthy of Gavin Newsom vs. Donald Trump, Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar, and/or Schilling vs. Shaughnessy.

DHL Dan CCLXII - High Hopes

In this week's Picked Up Pieces column, Shank's feel good team this week is... the New England Patriots?

Despite back-to-back 4-13 seasons, the Patriots are somehow the feel-good team of New England, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces on the road to Cooperstown …

⋅ The Patriots are coming off back-to-back 4-13 seasons. They’re working with their third head coach in three seasons and have a second-year quarterback with only 13 NFL games under his belt. They haven’t won a playoff game since Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and Ernie Adams copped Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta 6½ years ago.

And yet, they are the feel-good team of our traditionally cynical sports region.

True fact.

The Bruins are a mess and Spoked-B fans are calling for the heads of Cam Neely and Don Sweeney.

The Celtics won a championship a little more than a year ago, but Jayson Tatum is out for the year, two starters have been traded, another pair of regulars left via free agency, and the team is expected to sink to the middle of the Eastern Conference. The NBA’s dreaded “second apron” collective bargaining penalties have done more damage to the Green franchise than anything since John Y. Brown. Now Marcus Smart is a Laker. Mercy!

The interesting-but-annoying Red Sox gave us a nice summer lift with a Tomato-Can-infused 10-game winning streak, but they started their post-All-Star break by losing 4 of 6 to real teams, and now face the trade deadline. The Sox have not played winning baseball after the deadline since 2018. What other team can lose in extra innings without letting the opponent put a ball in play?

Shank sure loved the Red Sox... for an entire week!

Comparison Made

Leading up to the Super Bowl gives us many columns about one or both teams that'll be playing next Sunday night. Shank sets his sights on the Kansas City Chiefs and makes a comparison of them with... the New England Patriots!

These Chiefs will never be the Patriots, but it’s time for New England to embrace their modern-day dominance

Don’t fight it any longer, New England.

It’s time to adopt the Kansas City Chiefs.

They are you as you are they and you are me and we are all together. Kansas City’s coach, Andy Reid, is “The Walrus.”

There’s a lot of regional and national negativity directed at the Chiefs. Fans outside of Kansas City largely hate them. They win too much. They are always programmed in coveted prime-time slots. They get all the calls from the officials. They have an ever-clutch quarterback who’s constantly on TV selling us something. They are invariably lucky.

Sound like any team you loved from 2001-19?

Face it, Pats fans. Aside from the cheating and the paranoia, today’s Kansas City Chiefs are your New England Patriots in the first 18 years of this century.

DHL Dan CCXXXVII - Staying In The Past

Kind of sensing a theme with these last two columns...

It’s still weird, five seasons post-Brady, to be on the outside looking in during NFL playoffs, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while reminding myself that nobody knows anything when it comes to betting on the NFL playoffs …

▪ Five seasons into our post-Brady world, it’s still weird to be on the outside looking in during the NFL’s biggest weekends of the year.

I still have flashbacks of walking across the sprawling acres surrounding Arrowhead Stadium en route to the AFC Championship game in January 2019. Eyeballing thousands of festive/frozen Heartland fans, many barbecuing ribs and blissfully boasting about how they were going to beat the Patriots, I remember thinking, “Poor dopes and losers. These people have no idea what they’re in for. They think they’re Super Bowl-bound, but they don’t stand a chance. Something hideous will happen to their team at the end of this game and the Pats will prevail.”

Sure enough, that’s how it went. What appeared to be a game-losing Tom Brady interception in the final minute of regulation was negated because Chiefs pass rusher Dee Ford lined up offside. Ford’s transgression had no bearing on the turnover, but it gave the Patriots the ball back. Naturally, Brady tied the game, then won it in overtime when … you guessed it … the Chiefs lost the coin flip and never touched the football.

Read on for unsurprising digs at - you guessed it - Robert Kraft. Talk about never letting go!

Where Past Is Prologue

Shank has a few thoughts about the New England Patriots new head coach, and dates himself in the process:

Mike Vrabel is another former Patriot, but now they need to let go of the past and let him truly run the show

I love the past and am not an agent of change.

Just like the Patriots.

I have a land line in my 125-year-old house. Also a VCR, CD player, Rolodex, and weekly calendar where I scribble appointments and to-do lists. I have never Tik-Toked, still carry cash, and own shoes older than Globe Patriots beat reporter Nicole Yang.

I read printed newspapers, seven per day, and Monday those ink-stained rags featured these headlines:

“No surprise, Patriots turn to their past and hire Vrabel as next head coach,” The New York Post

“Vrabel is Returning to New England as Patriots Head Coach,” The New York Times

“Glory daze,” The Boston Globe

Beautiful. The Patriots love the past. They can’t let it go. They love anything and everything that reminds them of their great triumphs in the first two decades of this century.

The Patriots aren't the only ones that can't let things go...

If You're Not First, You're Last

Here's Shank on the firing of New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo:

In Jerod Mayo’s case, nice guys really do finish last

Weep not for nice guy Jerod Mayo. This wasn’t his fault.

Smart, sensible, stoic, Mayo will be a coveted commodity for many decades as an NFL assistant coach, commentator, or just about anything he pursues. He may become an NFL head coach again, perhaps a good one. He is only 38 and it’s all ahead of him.

Mayo was fired as head coach of the Patriots, less than two hours after the hapless Patriots beat the playoff-bound Buffalo Bills, 23-16, in New England’s season-finale “Stupor Bowl” at Gillette Stadium Sunday afternoon.

It was a “win” that cost the Patriots dearly, dropping them from first to fourth in the NFL’s annual April meat market. The hollow victory supplied the perfect coda for Mayo’s disastrous single season as Patriot head coach:

The 2024 Patriots: even when they win, they lose.

It’s fair to state that Mayo’s disastrous one-year reign was an ownership blunder, residue of Bob Kraft’s considerable hubris and pain from the final years of Bill Belichick’s quarter-century at the helm. Mayo should never have been handed the job in the first place and likely was promoted out of sheer loyalty to the boss. After 25 years of perceived disrespect from Belichick, Kraft wanted a head coach who was polite and beholden to the boss. The result was abysmal. Mayo was wildly inexperienced and unprepared for the lofty position.

Another Patriots column for which the real primary target is Bob Kraft.

Losing By Winning

If it weren't for the fact there's always a losing team, Shank would have nothing to write about.

One of the best comments ever at Dan Shaughnessy Watch, and the theme of Shank's second column from Sunday:

Patriots lose big (No. 1 NFL Draft pick), even in victory

Say it loud and say it proud. Print bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The 2024 Jerod Mayo Patriots: Even when they win, they lose.

Through the decades, we’ve seen some unforgettable teams here in Greater Boston.

The 1967 Red Sox were the “Cardiac Kids,” who forged “The Impossible Dream.” Our Causeway Street skaters of the 1970s were the Big Bad Bruins, who later ceded to “The Lunchpail A.C.” We had the “Cowboy Up” Red Sox of 2003, and the Curse-bustin “Why Not Us?” Sox of ‘04. Kevin Garnett led the “Ubuntu” Celtics to the NBA Championship in 2008.

Now we have the ‘24 Patriots who gave us a 17-game clown show festooned with turnovers, pre-snap penalties, and embarrassing losses from September though the holidays. Going into Sunday’s season finale, their 3-13 record put them in dandy position for the No. 1 pick in the entire NFL draft. All they had to do to secure the top spot was lose to a 13-3, playoff-bound Buffalo Bills team.

DHL Dan CCXXXV - The Axe Falleth?

Just an hour before Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo became former Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo, Shank was thinking ownership will do nothing:

The Patriots need to do right by their fans and fire Jerod Mayo, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if Route 1 will be easy to navigate Sunday . . .

▪ Welcome to the Stupor Bowl. Sunday in Foxborough we get the 13-3 Buffalo Bills, a playoff-bound team with absolutely nothing to gain against a 3-13 Patriots team that has much to lose by winning.

Ugh. Wake me when it’s over.

When this finale mercifully concludes, Bob and Jonathan Kraft — visible this season only when network pals featured them rattling jewelry from a cozy midfield suite — need to do right by fans and fix their mess of a football team.

Regrettably, I can pretty much guess how this is going to go: Bob will send out his now-annual letter of apology, telling fans they deserve better and promising a better product. The Krafts will feebly fire a coordinator or two, Bob will reluctantly take a few questions, and announce that Jonathan is busy elsewhere at a very important corrugated cardboard meeting.

I'm getting the feeling Shank doesn't like the Kraft family a whole lot...

DHL Dan CCXXXIV - On The Hot Seat?

There's a great deal of speculation about the future for first year head coach Jerod Mayo. Even with a current 3 - 13 record, Shank thinks he'll stick around because of Bob Kraft:

Bob Kraft is stubborn, so it’s doubtful that he fires Jerod Mayo after this dismal season, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while roasting chestnuts and listening to Mitch Miller carols . . .

▪ Any chance Bob Kraft fires Jerod Mayo at the end of this terrible season? Doubt it.

Kraft is stubborn and unlikely to admit he acted hastily and erred hiring Mayo one day after firing Bill Belichick in January.

We all know Mayo inherited a terrible roster. This sorry season has been torpedoed by poor drafts, second-tier assistant coaches, and the team’s failure to spend.

Every coach deserves more than a one-year tryout, right? Bill Parcells wasn’t let go when his first Patriots team started 1-11. Belichick was retained after going 5-11. Both got plenty of slack.

Bring Back Rod Rust?

With the New England Patriots losing on Sunday, it brings back some bad memories for Shank:

Jerod Mayo’s powerless, flat Patriots channeling every bit of the bad old days

GLENDALE, Ariz. — These are games we mocked not so long ago: A 3-10 team against a 6-7 team in mid-December. A couple of Tomato Cans duking it out in a quiet stadium while Football America was riveted to Bills at Lions (48-42, Buffalo) on CBS.

If you were home in New England, forced to watch Patriots-Cardinals ahead of the true Game of the Week, too bad. Instead of a possible prelude to this year’s Super Bowl, you were hostage to the Dumpster Fire In The Desert. It was just like the bad old days of 20th century Patriot-watching.

Under the robin’s egg blue skies of State Farm Stadium’s open roof, the Cardinals pantsed the moribund Patriots, 30-17, Sunday. Jerod Mayo’s 11 dropped to 3-11, clearing the way for 3-14 and another top three pick in this spring’s draft.

New England showed little sign of life, and Bob and Jonathan Kraft looked pretty unhappy in their midfield thrones. Maybe deciding to hire Mayo five years ago because he demonstrated good manners on a trip to Israel wasn’t such a great idea.

When local teams are at their worst, Shank's writing comes alive. Funny how that works...

No, You're The Soft One!

Now that the 2024 New England Patriots are firmly below .500 for the season, Shank the Knife returns to his Patriots bashing form:

Jerod Mayo once called his Patriots soft, but he is coaching in a similar fashion

Butch Hobson. Dave Lewis. Rod Rust. M.L. Carr.

Soft team?

How about “soft coaching”?

Patriots rookie sideline boss Jerod Mayo made headlines last month when he termed his team “soft” after a 32-16 loss, its sixth consecutive defeat, against Jacksonville in London.

Highly insulting. There’s not much worse you can say about an NFL player or team. “Soft” is a highly charged word in professional sports, especially football. It’s like telling a Fox News host that he or she is “woke.”

Inspired by the insult and the play of rookie quarterback Drake Maye, the rebuilding Patriots won two of their next three games. They might have won three in a row but were restrained by their hesitant head coach in Tennessee when he ordered a point-after kick after the Patriots cut the Titans’ lead to a single point at the end of regulation.

It's a bit early with the Rod Rust / M.L. Carr comparisons, isn't it? And Shank's then beamoning other people on 'insulting' remarks?

DHL Dan CCXXX - Grogan's Heroes

Shank takes a look back at the last New England Patriots quarterback who ran a lot:

Steve Grogan can tell Drake Maye all about a scrambling quarterback, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while laughing at reports that the Red Sox “have interest” in Juan Soto . . .

▪ Before Tom Brady was born, Steve Grogan was the Patriots’ franchise quarterback. And he ran with the football. A lot.

Tough guy Grogan gave the Patriots 16 hard-nosed seasons, running amok, throwing his body on the line, and living to play another week. When he retired in 1991, Grogan was the Patriots’ all-time passing leader, and his 35 rushing touchdowns still rank fourth in team history.

Like Drake Maye, Grogan was not a fan of giving himself up at the end of a run. There was no “slide rule” to protect quarterbacks in the first decade of Grogan’s career, and when the rule was introduced in 1985, Grogan didn’t like it.

“I only slid once in my career,” Grogan said from his Missouri home this past week. “It was in Pittsburgh. I got hit under the chin and got a concussion and woke up in the shower. I don’t think they even threw a flag on that play. That was the last time I slid.

I think Grogan could've played a few more years with the new rules. I remember he used to get the crap kicked out of him every other scrambling run. Here's hoping Drake Maye's a bit more judicious with his running and sliding.

The Real Deal?

That's what Shank's wondering after last week's New England Patriots loss to the Tennessee Titans:

Love or hate the Drake, you will always remember Maye’s Music City Miracle — and he looks like the real deal

NASHVILLE — Drake Maye did it all Sunday in Tennessee.

All except for the winning part.

One week after being sidelined by a concussion in the first quarter against the Jets, New England’s new franchise quarterback made his fourth career start and did a lot of everything.

With little concern for his personal safety, Maye ran the ball eight times for 95 yards, eschewing the safety slide on most occasions and coming within 5 yards of being the first Patriot quarterback in 48 years to rush for 100 (Steve Grogan, 1976).

Love the Drake!

He completed 29 of 41 passes for 206 yards and orchestrated two second-half touchdown drives.

Love the Drake!

He fumbled twice (losing one) and was intercepted twice.

Hate the Drake!

Time To Tune In

Last week the New England Patriots announced Drake Maye as the starting quarterback. Shank's happy that he can now tune into these games:

Thanks to Drake Maye, there’s finally a reason to watch these Patriots

We have seen Patriots Future and its name is Drake Maye.

Fifty years ago, The Real Paper’s Jon Landau famously wrote something like this about Bruce Springsteen and the future of rock and roll.

So let’s give it a shot now. Barring injury to Maye, or other unforeseen catastrophe, those of you who filled rainy, raw Gillette Sunday are going to be able to say you were there for the beginning of the next Patriots playoff run.

We are natural-born cynics here in New England. We have standards. We are not yahoos.

So why does a 41-21 home-field beatdown at the hands of the Houston Texans feel so good? (Yikes, who gave Rochie my laptop?)

Seriously, folks. The last-place Patriots are 1-5. They are 7-23 since November 2022. They have lost eight consecutive games at Gillette. Bob Kraft is needier than ever (CBS, please stop with shots of the owner high-fiving after TDs!) and there is little to indicate that rookie head coach Jerod Mayo or retread offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt know what they are doing.

Well, having a chance to take shots at Bob Kraft's another reason for Shank to tune in...

Starting Time

The 2024 New England Patriots are 1 - 3 at this point of the season. Shank wants to throw caution to the wind:

We have seen enough: Drake Maye should take over as the Patriots’ quarterback. Now.

MayeDay! MayeDay!

The SS Kraft is taking on water. The good ship and crew are in peril and the gales of October may come early.

Serious football scholars insist we’re not supposed to talk about playing Drake Maye over Jacoby Brissett because the rookie quarterback would be permanently damaged if he were thrust into the starting role Sunday against Miami at Gillette Stadium. The No. 3 pick in the 2024 draft needs to learn by watching and it’s too much to ask him to start his NFL career behind the Swiss Cheese Five, a.k.a the Patriots’ offensive line.

We don’t care. We have seen enough. And it just keeps getting worse.

Remember Steve Martin playing Neal Page in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”? After many hours enduring John Candy’s Del Griffith character (the boring shower curtain ring salesman), Neal finally explodes and says, “I could tolerate any insurance seminar! For days, I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They’d say, ‘How can you stand it?’ I’d say, ‘Cuz I’ve been with Del Griffith. I can take anything.’

DHL Dan CCXXIII - Back To Earth

It's safe to say any buzz there was over the 2024 New England Patriots has worn off, with a brutal loss to the New York Jets on Thursday night:

We knew it was going to be bad for the Patriots this season, but not this bad, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while noting that the NFL’s new “dynamic” kickoff rule has basically changed nothing . . .

▪ The moribund Red Sox got shut out and managed only one hit Thursday against the Rays at the Trop.

And still . . . they gave us a better offensive show than the Patriots.

Yikes. We have to watch 14 more of these?

The final score was Jets 24, Patriots 3. Bigly misleading. It might as well have been 73-0. The Patriots were thoroughly pantsed by the Jets.

That’s right. The (gulp) Jets; the team New England beat 15 straight times before last year’s season’s finale. The Jets: the Sultans of suck, the masters of the buttfumble, the team that hasn’t been to the playoffs in 13 years, the team that’s riding a streak of eight losing seasons, the team Bill Belichick hates with the power of a thousand suns.

The Sultans of Suck - I'm stealing that one!

Can You Feel The Excitement? No?

Two weeks into the 2024 season, Shank thinks a certain element is missing from the New England Patriots:

After two games, it’s clear that something is missing from Patriots game plan: excitement

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The Patriots play the Jets at 8:15 Thursday night.

Pretty late, don’t you think? How are we supposed to stay awake after halftime if New England’s rookie coach, Jerod Mayo, keeps game planning as if he’s Amos Alonzo Stagg?

We are two games into the season, and the good news is that the Patriots are 1-1 and could easily be 2-0. The defense is pretty good. They’ve not turned the ball over, they’ve dominated time of possession, and they haven’t committed many penalties.

But would it be OK to maybe throw a deep ball one time? Or try a little trickeration? Maybe some play-action? Perhaps just open things up a little?

The Patriots are Mr. Play-It-Safe. They buy their groceries at Safeway. They buy Safety Insurance. They’ve made Gillette Stadium a safe house. They are fail safe, safe at home, and better safe than sorry. They do the Safety Dance while listening to “Safe European Home.”

I didn't say it was going to be good...

Stunning

You turn your back for a week, and what happens? You miss a slew of Shank columns! Let's check them out, including the New England Patriots' Week 1 win over the Bengals:

The Patriots, with new coaches and a new QB, looked like the good old Patriots in stifling the Bengals

New coach.

Old school.

Great result.

Playing a near-perfect 60 minutes of football, the much-maligned, heavy underdog New England Patriots stunned the Cincinnati Bengals, 16-10, at Paycor Stadium Sunday afternoon.

It was the debut of 38-year-old head coach Jerod Mayo — the first Patriots game not coached by Bill Belichick since Jan. 2, 2000 — and Mayo’s players sparked memories of the good old days for the full four quarters.

“We’re going to enjoy this one,’’ said Mayo, who was presented with a game ball by owner Bob Kraft. “I’m very proud of my players . . . Walking off the field, you get in that victory formation . . . and I’m going to enjoy this one. We’re still not where we want to be, but we’re headed in the right direction.’’