The damage caused by his stint as OC is still being seen and felt. That decision helped ruin Mac and set the offense back a few years.

I thought that once he was replaced, things would improve, but as we have seen the hangover effect has lasted.

Maybe next year things will look a little better, but it’s going to take a lot of fixing both in personnel and scheme.

No. the Rod Rust team was the worst Patriots team of all time.

A 100% completely dysfunctional operation from the owner on down to the water boy, without any positive aspects whatsoever. Poor effort, poor execution, poor roster building, poor coaching, terrible discipline, cancerous locker room notorious for sexually harassing a female reporter, which the owner handled by calling her a “classic bitch”.

They didn’t just lose games, they lost their humanity. It was a collection of malcontents and assholes, and everyone was to blame.

This team has a decent defense, that plays hard, and while the offense is completely broken, players are still trying to play well and don’t appear to have completely given up.

The coach/GM is certainly up for criticism but is probably getting as much out of this terrible roster as is possible.

I’d say 70% of the destruction of Macs career is on the organization.

You’re right. Mac has even looked like a serviceable QB at times this season. It wasn’t until everything and everyone around him started looking like the worst OLine and WR corps in the NFL that Macs limitations became a real problem.

If the line was even an average unit, if his WRs were even close to average, he would probably be doing decently. However, having little time to allow his piss poor WRs get open, and having them drop far too many catchable balls, the dreadful drive killing penalties, and of course the obvious poor decisions and bad throws that are on Mac, you’ve got all the ingredients for a sputtering offense and a QB that looks terrible.

Yes, Mac needs to go, but I don’t believe any QB could have made this team competitive. There are just too many problems in every position group to make a functional offense…

They need…at least 2 blue chip starters on the OLine. They need a legit threat beyond Stevenson to catch the ball out of the backfield, they need to completely retool their WR room…dropping Parker and JuJu, and replacing them with at least 1 WR1 and a very solid if not great WR2. They need a move TE that can function as such in this offense, (not Geiseki), and then, with those additions, six guys at a minimum, they would ready for a QB to have a chance at succeeding.

Without all of that being done, I don’t think it matters who they bring in as QB. They’ve got to build a solid foundation before putting some rookie into the system. I hope they trade down and gather a ton of picks and then use those picks to fill as many of those slots as possible, and then using the cap space to sign some FAs to round things out.

Sign a bridge QB or even send Mac out there and see what happens for next season, knowing full well that it’s going to take at least two years to get this team out of the ditch they’re in.

Drafting a super amazing rookie with all the tools won’t help the team if they get their confidence ruined by not having anyone around them to help them succeed.

If you’re building a house, you don’t put a fancy penthouse on top of it all without all the proper framing and a solid foundation to support it. Same with a football team.

Sorry…I’m trading that pick to load up on OLine and WRs. Sign a veteran QB and draft a rookie QB in the mid rounds to develop. Picking a QB 2nd would be a disaster without substantial improvements to the parts around the QB.

Meh… best case scenario really. There was no good reason to win this one.

“He only does it against shit teams”

Is anyone suggesting that Mac hasn’t sucked right along with everyone else?

It’ll be 6-3 at the half, and then the second half will be a shootout.

B, but it will never happen. So in that case, I’m going with the status quo….the old one last chance type deal.

I’m for trading back to stock up on core positions that are currently among league worst…we need at least two high caliber NFL starting tackles. They need to add at least one high caliber NFL starting WR, if not 2, and that is just the basic foundation. They still need a pass catching playmaker RB to complement Stevenson. Are they gonna resign Gieseki? Henry?

There are so many positions of need beyond QB, that if they aren’t addressed first , will only result in another failed QB prospect.

The immediate goal should be to build up a core of offensive players that can make it through one typical set of downs without failing to block properly, without repeated, predictable penalties, With pass catchers able to run their proper routes, make the easy catches and take care of the football. Having dependable plays for players that are capable of executing the plays on any given down and distance.

If they can’t reform the entire identity of the offense, or even find ANY identity other than being a bumbling, undisciplined inconsistent and mistake ridden group that does nothing well as a unit, well then a rookie QB is not going to succeed, period.

I believe the rebuild is restarting, and we are gonna need two years of establishing a solid offensive identity before finding a real QB prospect would be justified. Welcome to the suck, we never really left it in the first place.

Love this!

How is New England not lower? They have looked incredibly bad all season.

They completely failed Jonnu Smith. It’s as if they hadn’t watched his tape or analyzed how he would be best fit the Patriots. They failed to put him in position to use his unique skills, and then, gave him sparse targets and never schemed him into the game plan. The one time they seemed to try to feature him, (the Saints game), he had a bad drop, tipped a ball into an INT and had a couple penalties….that was it, the coaches stopped trusting him and that was pretty much the last time anyone made any effort to turn it around with him.

Then he goes to Atlanta and pops off like a top 10 TE and looks like a beast. His experience with NE is a great microcosm of just how dysfunctional things have become in NE.

He’s a great weapon and for once the Pats made a great call signing him, but then just dragged him down and made it look like he failed, when it was a complete failure by the team.

He is owed an apology from BB and Co. for what they did to him while he was here. I’m glad he got the opportunity to show the world how badly he got screwed here.

Mac is on track to be the David Carr of his generation. Leaving everyone wondering if his development got completely screwed up by being on a shit team with shit everything.

I think there is just as high of a likelihood that BB and his system trashed AJ browns early career and he ends up bouncing around the league as a bust.

He played for the Pats one season, didn’t do very much, but had a game against Miami that included one of the best, most devastating blocks of all time and an all time carrying the entire defense for a TD in the same game!

Too late, the Patriots offense already did that for me.

BB is staying. Mac is most likely staying as well. If they draft a QB with their 1st or 2nd round pick, then Mac’s status for next season is fully questionable.