FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The New England Patriots offense is accustomed to breaking records under the leadership of quarterback Tom Brady, but the 2014 version is performing and sounding more like a broken record through the first three games.
Following Sunday’s 16-9 win over the Oakland Raiders (0-3) in the Patriots’ (2-1) home opener — one coach Bill Belichick described as “grind it out” while veteran cornerback Darrelle Revis said was simply “ugly” — the story was once again about a passing attack that just can’t find any consistency or traction.
“We’re going to try to keep making improvements,” Brady said shortly after stepping off the field Sunday evening. “I don’t think anything is perfect out there. There are some teams that are playing really well already. We’re not really doing that offensively yet.
“Defensively we played great but it’s a team sport. We’ve got to handle our business and do our job, whether it’s situationally, whether it’s scoring when we need to score. Not turning the ball over has been good — I think we’ve done a good job of that. We’ve just got to score more points. Especially getting down to the red area and having opportunities to score and not being able to do it.”
In the victory, Brady finished completing 24 of 37 passes for 234 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions for a 91.5 passer rating. He was sacked twice — hellacious hits from rookie Khalil Mack and veteran Justin Tuck — and hit six times.
Brady’s protection has been a major problem. But so, too, has his rapport with his receivers. Julian Edelman was once again the top target, catching 10 of the 13 passes thrown his way for 84 yards.
Even Edelman, who leads the team with 22 catches and has accounted for 260 of Brady’s 632 passing yards through three games, knows the passing game just isn’t where it needs to be as a collective unit.
“Not good enough; 16 points,” Edelman said of the offensive chemistry at this point. “Everyone has to get better. There were a couple plays where we weren’t on the same page, and we have to have better chemistry, so there you go.”
With a night to sleep on the seemingly somewhat unfulfilling victory over the visiting Raiders, Brady didn’t feel much better about his group, other than his slot receiver who has basically carried the load and been the team MVP.
“I think that there’s not one person on our team that has good individual statistics this year,” Brady said in his weekly Monday morning appearance on WEEI radio in Boston. “If we want to look at individual statistics for running back or receiver, tight end, quarterback — our offense hasn’t been producing, so no one’s going to have good statistics. That’s just the way it is. It’s not an individual problem. It’s a collective problem by our entire offense, the reason why we’re not producing more and producing better.
“We’ve all got to figure out how to do a better job of that. It’s not one person. It’s not singling any person out to say, ‘Wow, if this person were out, or if this person were in,’ or … I mean, if we had 11 people on the field that were producing like Julian Edelman, we’d have a pretty good offense. We’ve got one guy.”
That has been good enough to win two games through three weeks. But it’s not nearly good enough to meet the high expectations everyone in New England, including Brady, have for the Patriots passing game.
New England’s passing attack is a work in progress. But so far, that work has seemingly led to little progress.
“We just need to do a better job in a lot of areas; just keep working to improve,” Belichick said Monday. “I thought we did some things well but not consistently. We’ve just got to keep working to get to a higher level all the way across the board in all positions, all the units, coaches, players — all of us. We just have to keep working harder to improve and be more consistent.”