FOXBORO – A short walk from the shadow Tom Brady’s statue now casts outside their doors, the Patriots took yet another first step Friday into what they hope will be a brighter future.
They sprinted, then stumbled.
Started again and took off, running away with a 48-18 blowout of the Commanders.
Welcome back, football.
We missed you.
Of course, real football remains weeks away, and who the Patriots become under Mike Vrabel will be unknowable for months. For now, the Pats are just a collection of players and coaches building an identity around the same list of football adjectives cited around the league: tough, smart, physical, explosive. You know the rest.
But damn, if Friday night didn’t feel a little different. A departure from the uninspired slog we’ve watched the last five years. A buzz we’ve not felt inside Gillette Stadium. Not in August, anyway.
“It felt like a real game atmosphere,” said Drake Maye.
Perhaps Friday was, finally, a first step taken in the right direction.
How about TreVeyon Henderson exploding for a 100-yard return touchdown on the opening kickoff?
What about Drake Maye creating something out of nothing, scrambling for a 5-yard score to cap his second drive?
And only two accepted penalties for one of the dumbest and least disciplined teams in the league last year?
Once the games count and stats like these matter, the Patriots will have a runway to sprint again, but this time to a potential playoff berth.
Their schedule is soft. Three of their first four games are at home, as are three of their last five. Maye is the best quarterback they’ve fielded since Brady. Vrabel is the best head coach they’ve had since whatever happened to Bill Belichick late in the 2021 season; the last time we believed the Patriots were rebooting without Brady, and the last time their roster was this talented.
Before Matt Patricia became offensive coordinator, Mac Jones melted into a puddle of panicky picks, and Jerod Mayo talked and coached his way out of a job in a matter of four weeks. Again, you know the rest.
This is what the Patriots know now.
“Since Tom’s departure, we’ve been reminded just how difficult it is to win consistently in the NFL,” Robert Kraft said Friday before the statue’s unveiling. “But during his time here, winning didn’t just become the expectation. It became the norm.”
The norm.
The norm in the NFL is every team crashes in due time, dragged down by the gravity of the league’s competitive life cycle. It took the NFL more than 20 years, but they finally put the Patriots in the dirt, where the franchise has been flailing for years. If the Pats dust themselves off and rise again this season, they should look a lot like they did Friday.
Running hard, averaging 4.9 yards per carry around four rushing touchdowns. Winning on special teams, with one kickoff return going for a touchdown and another 62 yards. Benefitting from quarterback play that can thrive within the structure of Josh McDaniels’ system, and outside of it when necessary.
Because if the Patriots instead fall short, you already know the how and why of their failures: the offensive line.
The Patriots fielded three rookie starters against the JV Commanders — who sat virtually all of their starters and upwards of 30 veterans — and immediately paid for it. Maye lost a fumble to end his first drive, a bad decision prompted by pressure that slipped between rookie left tackle Will Campbell and rookie left guard Jared Wilson.
Maye should have thrown the ball away, but instincts told him he could overcome his circumstances and throw through an impeding sack. He was wrong. At least on that drive.
Maye later escaped pressure and crossed the goal line on a five-yard touchdown to push the Patriots to a 14-0 lead midway through the first quarter. His play on the move might, in fact, be the ultimate bellwether for this offense and team. But ideally, Maye can hang in the pocket and dice defenses like his indirect predecessor did; the man who’s cast a shadow over the franchise ever since he left five years ago, well before the Patriots erected a statue of him outside the stadium.
While Brady was honored before Friday’s game, several former teammates sat smiling in the crowd. Vrabel was one of them.
Vrabel’s hiring last January represented the Patriots’ latest attempt to reach into their past for a solution to present-day problems. But Vrabel is not here because of the player he was; rather the coach he has become.
And if Vrabel’s Patriots succeed, they will resemble the team that flashed Friday night; not the past champions honored with statues and banners and memories of players no longer here.
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