When it comes to being an Offensive Coordinator, one of the first things that has to be done is establishing an identity. You look at all the players you have and you have to ask “What is our strength?” and then how do we leverage that. Since July, the Patriots and Matt Patricia have failed to even do that. There is no identity to this offense and the play calling can be classified as throwing darts at a dart board with your eyes closed in the dark. Why even close your eyes, its already dark! I guess Patricia just likes to make it harder than it has to be. Since Matt, Joe Judge, and Bill can’t find the identity lets try to for them, what do you say?

              What is the strength of this team? Well through 13 weeks the best players on offense have been in the running back room. Stevenson is leading the team in rushing yards and receptions while Damien Harris (when healthy) has been explosive. Easy to say that this is the strength of the team. We did that in what, two paragraphs and maybe the 30 seconds it took me to write it? Wow, already ahead of schedule in comparison to where the Patriots are. Now it isn’t that they don’t know this up there in Foxborough, its that they don’t know how to use it. Clearly the zone scheme can be trashed and its simply because they lack the offensive line talent to pull it off. That’s not knocking the OL, they just simply don’t have the skill set. The power gap scheme though has been the bread and butter for years and when ran with this team it still works. Why you ask? Its cause that’s what they are built for. We have identified the strength of the offense, best way to implement it, and its only been a few minutes max. So now we gotta look at formations and personnel to utilize this.

              Clearly, all Patriots fans have been clamoring for more use out of the TE room. Well one of the best ways to utilize a power gap scheme is 12 personnel. You want the biggest and most athletic players on the field for blocking and the Tight Ends the Patriots have fit that bill. Whether that is lining Jonnu Smith up as an in-line TE, having him in the FB spot, or having him flank Mac opposite of Mondre/Harris and having Hunter Henry either in-line or out wide, its 12 personnel. You can do a lot out of these different alignments. No huddle is still an option cause of how athletic these guys are, and it also gives you three different formations all of which can have multiple different plays out of them while employing your best players. This also allows for the implementation of play action. You know that thing that seems to work well for Mac and the offense, but they hardly ever do? Yeah, it works pretty well.

              Play action is probably where a decent majority of the best plays the Patriots have had this year comes from. Whether it was Mac or Zappe under center, the paly action game works for this team since their running backs are that good. I know what you are thinking. Why don’t they do more play action if it is something that works? Go back to the first paragraph and read the “they don’t know what the identity is” line again. In an early season article, Evan Lazar of patriots.com pointed out that after the Steelers game the Patriots had run pre-snap motion or play action on just 4.3% of their snaps. You can find the rest of that article here. This lack of motion and play action stresses the need for a world beater (WR1 anybody?) in the skill position players that the Patriots just do not possess. Quick fix: more play action and motion.

              Now you can’t just run play action to run play action. It doesn’t work with out a good setup. Obviously faking a run when your run game isn’t working is going to result in the defense not biting and probably a negative play. It also doesn’t work if you do it in predictable situations or out of formations that you don’t run the ball out of. If the Patriots run the ball with Mac under center and then go to a shotgun look and play action, it doesn’t do much. The defense looks at it and goes “They don’t run out of this look at all” and completely ignore it. Enter the 12 personnel. Each of the above-mentioned alignments can be ran out of with positive results and from those can expand into other positive plays and play action. The issue is that there has been no consistency in the alignments and the personnel for something like this to work in the Patriots offense.

              Now one thing that has happened and has been happening since 2020 is the loading of the box against the Patriots. In the week 13 matchup between the Patriots and the Bills, multiple times you could see the entire Bills defense within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. The Patriots attacked this to perfection on the Marcus Jones touchdown catch. That was the only time they did so. When the defense is that close to the ball, they are selling out to stop the run. Everyone is expecting you to run and do short passes when they line up like that. If you run play action in that situation, it freezes the safeties, and you have one on one’s on the outside. Burners like Marcus Jones and Tyquan Thornton are one on one beaters with speed and Devante Parker beats them with physicality. They have the play makers to make this work. If you think about it, it was one of the play concepts that made Bailey Zappe look as good as he did. He consistently hit Parker in one on ones out of this type of play action. They were some of the best plays they had all season and have been relegated to our memories and clearly removed from the Patriots play book.

              Some how through al of this the Patriots are 6-6 and still have hope to make the play-offs as a wild card team (yes, the division is out of reach). If there is a hard shift to more power gap scheme runs and the play action that comes out of these runs, then there is a chance to right the ship and go into the play-offs with an identity and momentum. Unfortunately for all of us Patriots fans out there, if they haven’t gotten it right since July, they probably aren’t going to get it right now.