Just rewatched the game. Our offense wasn't nearly as bad as it seemed watching it live. The offense moved the ball fairly well until the Cards' 30-40 yard line, then would have a couple of bad plays to kill the drive. This happened 4-5x, we put up a bunch of yards that translated to no points or long FG attempts. It really was just a matter of 2-3 bad plays in a row that kept killing drives.
Brady looked fine - short to intermediate accuracy was very good as usual (only the one bad miss on a Ridley screen attempt). On the 2 deep throws, he just barely missed Gronk and either missed Lloyd or had a miscommunication. Completion rate on those things is at best 1/3 or so, so that's not out of line. Occasionally he flinched at ghosts but only when it seemed he couldn't find a receiver open and had been sitting in the pocket for 3-4 seconds already.
Receivers / Gronk - seemed like the refs were letting the Cards be very physical with the receivers, but overall there wasn't much difference between how they looked here and how they normally looked. However, a few big drops at inopportune times killed drives (Welker on 3rd down, Lloyd wide open for a first down in the 4Q, Gronk in the end zone on the final drive that he made up for later).
Offensive line - they lost a few battles but it wasn't that bad, not constant pressure or anything like that. The biggest pass blocking mixup was on a stunt on the right side that Thomas and Cannon messed up. In terms of run blocking, it was also mixed - some big holes and some penetration allowed. Lots of room to improve, obviously, but not something that is necessarily going to gimp this team's ceiling.
Playcalling - it seemed like Josh McD was a little scared of the Cards (lack of trust in our O-Line). Higher mix of runs that would have been expected in the first half, especially of the draw variety (which were our weakest on Sunday), although it's possible Brady had the run/pass option and elected to run against a light front. Felt like they kept trying to set up the big shot, which Brady only had time to try twice (1 designed, 1 broken play) and neither of which hit. Things were much better when the Patriots attacked them in a no huddle / spread scheme, as the whole offense seemed to settle into a rhythm. I'd expect us to go with that more going forward, especially against an exotic blitz team like the Ravens.
Overall, lack of execution at inopportune times held back the scoring output. I don't see any long-term problems, as even the offensive line wasn't horrible and Brady threw the ball fine. They need to get Welker involved more - he added a lot of intermediate explosion to the offense when he got going. But just an accumulation of little mistakes that ended up in the L, nothing that would indicate this should be anything other than an explosive offense in the future.
