Friday Patriots Notebook 6/7: News and Notes
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Some Patriots news and notes on this Friday:
Former Patrtiots running back Damien Harris made some interesting comments on Thursday, with Harris sitting down in an interview with TheAthletic’s Robert Mays to talk about his time with the Patriots and the state of NFL running backs.
In the interview, Harris believes that when it came to his time in New England, it’s really simple. The Patriots had a good thing going up until Josh McDaniels departed for Las Vegas, and that’s where it all began to break apart.
“There were guys like Matt Patricia, like Joe Judge who left and went other places and whatever, how ever their situation worked out, they ended up coming back, and all of a sudden, Matt Patricia goes from defensive coordinator to offensive coordinator,” said Harris. “Well, why is that? It’s because we’re all just pawns in Bill Belichick’s game of Monopoly. We can all be moved, we can all be interchanged.”
“Like, ‘Okay, well you coached here all your life? Screw that. You can go coach here because as long as you apply and instill what I am teaching, what I am coaching, then the team will have success.’ And I think that is what led to kind of the trouble starting to … the tide starting to turn, trouble started to arise.”
Harris strongly believes Belichick’s plans for how he handled things heading into 2022 was the beginning of the end, and he strongly believes that what happened to Mac Jones was not something that stemmed directly from his former terammate.
“I’m going to die on this hill, and people might be upset with me, people might be happy with me, people might be somewhere in-between. What happened to Mac Jones in New England was not because of Mac Jones,” said Harris. “What happened in New England to Mac Jones was because of the fact you took away an offensive coordinator who coached him to be a Pro Bowler and almost coached us to winning our division with a rookie quarterback in his first year.”
“And then you take – whenever Josh McDaniels left – Matt Patricia, who has coached defense his entire life, and Joe Judge, who has been a special teams coach, coached receivers at some point. And then you just throw them in there and say, ‘Coach this kid up, he’s a first round pick but as long as you teach him what I say, everything will be fine,’ and s**t wasn’t fine.”
Harris also feels that a lot of the problem stemmed from Belichick being stuck with having a set way of doing things, which set up the issue of not looking outside the building for help from a new offensive coordinator, believing that he himself could make things work.
One other interesting note was Harris providing some insight on the addition of Cam Newton in 2020, which happened at the end of June. That move came barely a month before the start of training camp, and it apparently had players dumbfounded. He also believes that things should have been handled differently as it pertainted to Jones, which he feels the sequence of events that unfolded backs that up.
“Now Mac Jones is in Jacksonville, now they’re on to Drake Maye,” said Harris. “It’s like the breath of Mac Jones in New England, it came and went and it shouldn’t have [gone] the way that it went. And the only reason that it did is because Bill Belichick, being stuck in his ways, was very much so like, ‘As long as I am here, as long as I am – along with Robert Kraft – the top dog at this organization, no matter who, no matter where, what position, where they coach, whatever, we will have success.'”
“I think that kind of started with the Cam Newton situation when we brought in Cam Newton because everyone was like, ‘What the f**k is this? Why Cam Newton?’ Bill thought that he could make it work. It didn’t really work.”
“Then we drafted Mac, we had a hell of a year that year, my third year in the league, his first year, had a hell of a year, went on a 7-game win streak, started out rough, started off kind of rocky, went on to win seven straight. At that time, we were kind of looking at ourselves like, ‘We might have a Super Bowl run right here, as long as people keep playing well.'”
“And then the next year after that, like I said, Josh McDaniels, with Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, and then look at the year we had that year and then the following year and now Mac Jones all of a sudden gone, I think that everybody can look at what I just said and ultimately look at it and just watch it for what it was and kind of say maybe Bill Belichick didn’t do right by Mac Jones.”
Harris also didn’t hold back when it came down to the comments on Jones. Obviously, a lot of the conversation locally centered on the lack of receiver talent in 2022, with the thought that had they had more explosive players, things might have been different. Instead, Harris believes the obvious is more accurate, which he still feels falls on Belichick’s shoulders.
“It’s the same dudes that he was throwing to the next year when everybody was talking about ‘He didnt have any help,” said Harris. “Everybody made every excuse in the book for why Mac Jones was not having success other than, what can be the obvious, right? Bill Belichick, whatever that was. Like I said, from one year to the next, nothing changed except for what Bill Belichick did.”
He believes that after losing McDaniels, the club should have potentially looked for another coordinator, even if it meant exploring the college ranks.
“Obviously, we lost Josh McDaniels. That was beyond our control,” said Harris. “But how many great offensive coordinators could we have gone out and gotten? Like, how many? Count them.”
“You could have even gone down to college. There’s guys from college that get brought up all the time. But then you bring a defensive coach, a special teams coach, and it was a debacle.”
The former running back also admitted that the concern among players continued to increase the longer things went ahead of that 2022 season.
“We knew before our first game. We knew during training camp,” said Harris. “We knew.”
He also recalled a story where the players talked and the key question was simply how they were going to approach Belichick about it.
“I remember, OTAs, minicamp, we were having these meetings,” said Harris. “We were sitting around talking amongst each other like, ‘How are we going to tell Bill that this s**t ain’t working? How are we going to tell Bill this s**t is not working at all?’ I’ll tell you a true story, me and my running backs coach got into it at the time. It was training camp and we were having – I think this was right before our first preseason game going into my last year in New England – we were practicing and the defense was kicking our ass. And not just every play, every practice. Every time we stepped on the field, the defense was kicking our ass and it was just day after day and we were just getting tired of it and we were getting tired of it on offense and I just looked at everyone and I’m like, ‘What the f**k are we doing?'”
Overall, it was just a bad situation. Obviously, Belichick is gone and as Harris pointed out, Maye is here and they’re now hoping to start a new chapter that hopefully has a better ending than the last one.
The Patriots reportedly added a receiver on Thursday, with the addition of 6’2″, 190 pound receiver, JaQuae Jackson. The former Rutgers wideout caught 22 passes for 361 yards and a TD last season. … In another transaction, they also reportedly parted ways with T.J. Luther. Luther joined the club early last season and spent most of 2023 on the practice squad. … The addition of Jackson is interesting, as his addition adds another wideout after the club also signed David Wallis this week. … A little irony as one year ago today, Bill Belichick talked to reporters and was pleased with how things were going, obviously not knowing how things were going to end. “We had a good day yesterday, a big day yesterday,” said Belichick. “Did some teaching, get some situations handled that we feel like we need to get handled today, and then push it back up on Thursday. Trying to put one foot in front of the other here, move forward every day, and take it one day at a time. Long way to go, but moving forward.” … Fast forward to now, and Mayo has been upbeat but also fairly measured, likely knowing that after being on that staff last year and seeing what transpired, this is a team that clearly has a long way to go before they really start to have a feel on what type of team they’ll actually be heading into this season.
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