Make New England Great Again: Patriots Offense Has Missing Piece

It’s too early to be giving out report cards, but one thing that has become clear early in the Patriots’ season is that Bill O’Brien is starting to get the offense back on track.

The unit hasn’t been great, we know, but stick with us.

O’Brien took New England’s offensive coordinator job with the near-herculean task of correcting the mistakes made by Patricia in his lone season as offensive play caller. The biggest mistake — which was made by not only Patricia, but Bill Belichick — was changing their primary gap/power-run blocking system to a zone-blocking scheme. In making that change, the Patriots did away with the fullback.

In the immortal words of Julia Roberts: “Big mistake. Big. Huge!”

New England has been forced to rely on tight ends Hunter Henry, Mike Gesicki and Pharaoh Brown to lead the way on power runs. The results are about what you’d expect from a pair of receiving tight ends and a guy who has been on the roster for a month.

The Patriots don’t have a fullback, so they’ve used their tight ends as lead blockers on a few occasions.

We’ve seen Hunter Henry, Pharaoh Brown and Mike Gesicki lead the way 13 times this season (by my count) and it has NOT gone very well. pic.twitter.com/ne4Wv9j4O5

    What do you think?  Leave a comment.

— Keagan Stiefel (@KeaganStiefel) September 29, 2023

The Patriots have traditionally run a version of the Erhardt-Perkins offense under Belichick, which allows them to run multiple plays out of each formation and relies heavily on that power blocking scheme. That’s the offense O’Brien ran during his first stint in New England, adding wrinkles in his stops at Penn State, Alabama and with the Houston Texans.

So, when he returned to New England, O’Brien reinstalled those power schemes alongside the zone schemes to give the Patriots multiple looks. That’s classic E-P stuff, but it doesn’t work when you don’t have a fullback — or at least a tight end that can block.

Things haven’t been disastrous on the ground. Ezekiel Elliott came out of his bunker, combining with Rhamondre Stevenson for 157 rushing yards against the New York Jets on Sunday. The Patriots saw most of that production come out of single-back or shotgun formations, however, using either a pulling guard to lead the way or running a zone scheme.

Their inability to get consistent movement from under center happens to have a negative effect on the screen game, which the Patriots relied heavily on over the first few weeks of the season. It also limits the effectiveness of play-action passes, which is what the entire passing game should be built around.

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So, what’s the solution?

There isn’t a ton on the table, save for going out and finding a really good fullback. The Patriots did have Andrew Beck on the roster in 2019, but he was a tight end back then and is currently returning kicks for touchdowns for the Texans. Jakob Johnson was turning into a great option at fullback, but was allowed to follow Josh McDaniels to the Las Vegas Raiders when New England made its offensive change.

Derek Watt is available and also plays special teams. We’re sure that would get Belichick’s juices flowing.

The most likely option for New England is keeping Brown in the role and hoping he develops. In the six plays he lined up behind the line of scrimmage Sunday, three went for positive yardage. That’s an okay start for someone who’s never played the position before. The Patriots are just going to need to see quick improvement if they want the offense to fire on all cylinders.

If not, those new sweatshirts Joe Judge gifted the team could be wrong.