The New England Patriots dropped their Thursday night matchup with the New York Jets 24-3 at MetLife Stadium, falling to 1-2 to start the season.
New England's offense has looked horrendous through the first three weeks under offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt. And, while he hasn't exactly had the best talent to work with, he did admit that he regrets his game plan going into the primetime meeting.
“We were really just trying to marry the run game with the run actions, and it didn’t go the way we wanted to,” Van Pelt said. “And then by the time you get back out there, you’re down a couple scores and then you have to kind of abandon the run, unfortunately, at that point. But definitely in hindsight, looking back, we probably should have flipped that and run it more early to set it up later. You earn the right to run those actions when you’re running the ball well, and it didn’t go our way last night.”
The Patriots finished the day with 78 rushing yards on 5.2 yards per attempt, but the running backs only totaled 57 yards.
They didn't do much better throwing the ball, as Jacoby Brissett and Drake Maye combined to complete 16 of their 26 passes (61.5%) for just 120 yards while taking seven sacks for 59 yards lost.
New England does need to make more explosive plays and catch defenses sleeping, but they don't have much going for them at this point in the season.
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