These Patriots Underwhelmed In First Game Without Patriots Captain

The New England Patriots sorely missed their leading tackler during their one-sided loss to the New York Jets on Thursday night.

Patriots starting linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley, who reportedly suffered a season-ending injury, was not patrolling the second level during New England’s 24-3 loss at MetLife Stadium. And his replacements including Jahlani Tavai and Raekwon McMillan failed to step up in his place.

“I mean, I don’t want to deal with hypotheticals, but Bentley is a huge piece of the defense, communication, tackling, physicality, all those things,” Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo told reporters, per a team-provided video. “I have faith in those other guys. I have faith in Raekwon, I have faith in Jahlani and the rest of those guys to get better. It’s a learning experience. Once again, we have to learn from this loss. Bentley is not coming back any time soon, and that’s the message.”

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Tavai got off to a bad start as he got swallowed up on an early run by running back Braelon Allen, was flagged for unnecessary roughness and was the closest defender when Rodgers hit tight end Tyler Conklin for a huge gain to set up the Jets on their first touchdown drive.

McMillan missed a few tackles, too. McMillan and others got the Jets rushers in the backfield, but failed to make plays in space and allowed modest runs to turn into chunk plays.

New England’s defense missed 14 (!) tackles and gifted New York 100 yards of offense on those misses. The Jets recorded 400 yards of offense in the game.

“Very uncharacteristic,” Mayo said in reference to the missed tackles. “That’s one of the things I’m very disappointed in as a defensive-minded coach. Especially the second level, we struggled all day as far as tackling.

“Even when we hit them in the backfield, the lack of fundamentals, the lack of discipline and the lack of execution definitely didn’t show up.”

The Patriots entered their contest against the Jets with one of the best run defenses in the league. That wasn’t the case as Gang Green compiled 133 rushing yards on 4.0 yards per attempt.