Paul Perillo of Patriots.com joins the show every week to discuss the latest on the team. This week, Paul gives his thoughts on the Patriots struggles and the Bill Belichick / Mac Jones situation.
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TRANSCRIPT:
JIM MURRAY: So much criticism has been pointed towards the coaching staff, specifically Matt Patricia. He’s the play caller. We all know this, but I get the feeling that you feel like maybe the quarterback is skating a little bit when it comes to the criticism and how the offensive.
PAUL PERILLO: Yeah. And just because I think all of the reasons that people are giving Mac Jones a pass, a valid I think they’re all valid. You know, we talked about this. We all talk about it every Wednesday. All the way back to the spring. It was, I think, a foolish plan. It was destined to fail. And then for once, all the media was pretty much in agreement that it would fail. And the media was right. It almost never works out that way. Usually when we’re all in agreement, we lose.
ADAM JONES: And you guys could see it from, like, day one of training camp.
PAUL PERILLO: Oh, absolutely. The offense never really looked cohesive. You heard the offensive linemen, you know, David Andrews specifically expressing frustration with how the execution wasn’t there. Mac Jones was in a bad way. This was destined to fail. And by the way, it has failed. So I think all of those reasons to defend Mac are valid, and I’m using them as well. However, just because you have a bad hand dealt doesn’t mean you have to, you know, put all your chips in the table and lose it all. Like you can sort of mitigated a little bit by playing well. I don’t think he’s played very well. I don’t think 13 for 31 is all because of Matt, Patricia and their inability to get a play in on time. And I loved Adams, you know. Did you validate your research yet? I know we’re a little.
ADAM JONES: Yeah.
JIM MURRAY: Well, it’s called NFL penalties. Dot com.
ADAM JONES: Yes. Ahead of the penalties dot com. How could that be wrong?
PAUL PERILLO: It’s a similar amount of delay, a game penalties last year with an outstanding offensive coordinator in this year with a defensive coordinator calling plays so. Maybe. Does Mac have some responsibility for that? It’s not just, you know, a lack of organization getting everything in. So I don’t think Mac has played really well. More importantly than the play, I don’t think Mac has conducted himself very well. And this goes back to what Adam said at the training camp. And we saw it, we heard it. We could hear the frustration that fanned the flames. And I think it was intentional. I think they wanted I think he started that way. And then he has gotten more people sort of behind him to deflect the criticism, deflect blame. It’s not us, it’s them. And I think that that’s been part of the problem is their unwillingness to buy in. Okay. It’s not a great plan. I have no doubt that Matt Patricia is not as good as Josh McDaniels. But you don’t have to tell us that every game.
ADAM JONES: Yeah, I mean, I just. There’s plenty of good quarterbacks with bad coaching who can figure it out. Like, you know, the guy who normally sits there hates Mike McCarthy. And not that like that’s been on the biggest hitter of all time, but like, the cowboys are fine. The cowboys are good. You can overcome Bozo coaching if you’re good. And how about you get win it all those. Yeah, great point. Right, exactly. So, like, maybe you can’t win a championship every year with a bozo, coach. I’ll grant you that. The coach probably matters somewhere along the way. Somewhere on the margins, the talent starts to level out the further you go in the playoffs and you need the coach. But like, I don’t know, good players overcome bad coaching all the time. Daniel Jones I see this example all the time. Oh, look at what Daniel Jones did with Joe Judge. Look what he’s doing now with the ball. He’s not that good. He’s not even that good. He’s got a better coach now. It’s that he can’t play. And that’s my fear with Mac Jones. And I absolutely think he’s skating. And I’m happy you keep beating that drum, Paul, because it doesn’t mean Patricia and Judge are good at their jobs.
PAUL PERILLO: They stink. My biggest disappointment with this season is I feel like you have an opportunity when you have a young quarterback who plays right away to sort of get that groundwork set and figure out where exactly you’re going. And in order to do that, you need clarity. So by the end of year two, heading into year three, now after year three is when you need to make the decision on a fifth year option down the road. So it’d be nice to know definitively what you have, you know, as you start to get to that 48, you know, you know, somewhere between that, you know, that 32 will now it’s, you know, 34 games for two seasons, you know, in the in the 50. I don’t think that they have any more idea today than they did, you know, heading into the season, you know, whether or not this is a guy we want to invest in. I think that’s the biggest disappointment. Yes. I think there are a lot of mitigating factors that defend Mac Jones and I would certainly use a lot of them. But at the same time, seven touchdowns and eight interceptions that I mean, that’s speaks volumes. The offense has been terrible every single game, you know, with maybe three exceptions.
JIM MURRAY: And so. Do you agree. And Mike and I, you know, after we did the postmortem on this game on Monday that like that there at the first and goal the two yard line on Sunday against the Raiders and what happened and how that devolved from there they end up with a field goal like do you feel like that’s kind of a microcosm of just the whole operation this year?
PAUL PERILLO: Yeah, and that’s what we do. And I thought that, that that was examples of you could, you know, if you wanted to blame the coaching, well, you had the examples of the timeouts and the not having the right personnel in and the indecision on fourth down and all of that. So you have to have coaching to to pick at if you if you’re one of those that thinks it’s, it’s Mac Jones and it’s all him he’s got an open Geno Smith break into the corner and throw it you know you know way to the side. I thought the slant hasn’t gotten much attention because the lower one, the one of hands up, I thought that was very fortunate not to get picked off. I thought the I think it was Robertson for the Raiders broke on it in a very similar fashion to like Malcolm Butler only he didn’t get the inside position to pick it and he was coming from the other side. Everybody’s talking about Raymond Ray Stephenson being sort of in the way, Yeah, he’s probably in the wrong spot, which speaks to the lack of cohesion with the offense. But I thought there was a little something for everyone there to pick at. Right down to the fourth down play. He’s calling for the snap before Geno Smith is done with his motion. That you can’t do that as a quarterback.
JIM MURRAY: Well, I think he had lost his mind there, like in between that, like he was just like rushed to the line, didn’t make you know, did make sure they were set. And then, of course, you have the false start or whatever it was. And it’s like that’s because he was so sped up and like and that he’s the these antics have continued this far into the season. Like I just think this is who is he is I don’t know if you can change that.
PAUL PERILLO: Yeah. I mean you start, you start to think about like Nick Saban and that joke that we, you know, we kind of laughed about. Well, he’s a tennis kid. You know, he was growing up. He was a tennis guy. And Saban used to call him McEnroe because he would be prone to these fits. Yeah, well, I’m not so funny anymore. Well, we’re seeing him every single week. You know, it’s not a cute story, you know, in the pre-draft process.
