Patriots News 9-8, Players To Watch, Predictions For Week 1
Follow us
Follow Us
🕑 Read Time: 9 minutes
Posted Under: Patriots Commentary
HOME > Patriots Blog > Patriots Commentary
Good morning. Here are your Patriots news and notes for September 8.
The 2024 NFL regular season kicks off in earnest today after two entertaining games on Thursday and Friday. However, as someone who has never been a fan of Thursday night games, let’s hope this Friday game was a one-and-done situation, but I think the league will look to doing this again. However, I digress.
The Patriots are sailing in uncharted waters for the first time in a quarter century. Bill Belichick is gone, and Jerod Mayo, Eliot Wolf, et al. will be judged on how they perform running the ship independently. Belichick was the best at game planning, and they will miss his ability to change the team’s identity to match up against an opponent.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the defense remains largely intact. Granted, Matthew Judon is gone, and Christian Barmore may miss the entire season, but this defense should keep the team in most of its games in 2024.
Their success or failure in 2024 will be judged by the offense’s performance. Jacoby Brissett has been handed the keys to begin the season. The team made wholesale changes at quarterback and wide receiver this spring. But everyone will be watching, and rightfully so, the offensive line.
This is Day 1 of a rebuild Year 1. I am excited to see how the new players and coaches do this year. It may take awhile… so patience is key here.
Let’s GO!
Bengals Banged Up: The Bengals have been notoriously slow starters the past few years. This year, they want to start quicker in 2024 and compete for the AFC crown. But the injury bug has hit hard this week.
Joe Burrow isn’t completely healed from his wrist surgery and has been wearing a glove to improve his grip. Although Burrow said he is the healthiest he’s been in Week 1 since his rookie season; he hasn’t had any contact yet.
Rookie RT Amarius Mims has a pec injury and is out this week. Rookie DT Kris Jenkins injured a thumb in practice. Initially, they thought he could play through it, but he needs surgery and will miss a few weeks. Ja’Marr Chase has been embroiled in a contract impasse with the team. He did return to practice this but is ruled questionable against the Patriots.
But the most significant blow to Cincinnati is the injury to WR Tee Higgins. He injured a hamstring on Thursday, and it got worse overnight. Higgins sat out Friday’s practice. He’s listed as doubtful to play on Sunday.
If he’s unable to go, it would be a big blow to the Bengals’ offense. As I’ve said, I expect Chase to play, but we’ll have to see later this afternoon.
Bill Belichick: This week, the former Patriots head coach praised retired Eagles center Jason Kelce. On one of his new shows, “Coach With Bill Belichick” on Underdog Fantasy, Belichick revealed the Patriots would gameplan around the center, an unheard-of thing that shows his respect for Kelce.
“We played you, and Kelce was a go-to guy, and I would say, ‘don’t let him pull; I don’t want to see him leading somebody around the edge. Cover him up, get on him, and if he pulls, grab him.’ You still pulled. It drove me crazy.”
Bill has been making up the time he missed all those years by appearing everywhere lately. There is some excellent content.
Eliot Wolf: Wolf was interviewed by the Herald’s Andrew Callahan this week, and one area of their discussion was on the subject of “tanking” this season in hopes of securing a better draft pick in 2025. Wolf, however, left no doubt about his feelings on the subject.
“I think tanking cheats the game. We would never get in a situation where we think that’s the right way to go. That’s not what the NFL is all about. That’s not what pro football is all about, and that’s not what we’re going to be about.”
“We still have a number of veteran players that we are expecting to contribute for us and veteran backups that we expect to contribute for us,” he said. “It’s not just throwing darts at a dartboard.”
Throwback Uniforms: The Patriots announced they will don the classic “Pat the Patriot” uniforms on two dates this season. The league specifies that teams can wear their throwback uniforms three times a year, but the Patriots only opted for two occasions in 2024.
The classic red uniforms will be worn in Week 6 (October 13th) against the Houston Texans and Week 13 (December 1st) against the Indianapolis Colts.
Patriots 4th & 2 Podcast: This past week, Derek Havens and I broke down the matchup with the Bengals and gave our predictions for the game and Thursday/Friday games. Please check it out. We also welcomed back former Patriot beat writer Mike Petraglia @trags, who now covers the Bengals on CLNS Cincy for some great insight on Cincy.
Russ Francis/Chuck Fairbanks: The former Patriot tight end and head coach should be in the Patriots team Hall of Fame, and the fact that Francis isn’t in is an absolute travesty. Francis and the Raiders’ Dave Casper changed how teams used the tight end position. This will be discussed in our Sunday posts until it happens. Casper is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Francis’ numbers stand up well against Casper’s, yet he isn’t even in the team’s HOF.
The Patriots and Bengals face off at 1:00 p.m., and Cincinnati is very excited. They believe they’re ready for a deep playoff run.
For the Patriots to pull off a big upset today, they’ll have to play a clean game with good execution with no mental mistakes. They’ll have to run the ball effectively and hit some shots with play-action.
Defensively, Burrow has a very talented arsenal to call upon. However, Tee Higgins will probably miss this game, and Ja’Marr Chase is considered a game-time decision. It will bear watching for certain.
But here are our Patriots’ players to watch in today’s game.
This is the most critical group this week. In our matchups article on Thursday, we talked about Trey Hendrickson (17.5 sacks) and Sam Hubbard (6 sacks), who provided more than half of the Bengals’ sacks from 2023.
Keeping them off of the quarterback is essential this week. They can wreck a game plan by blowing up plays in the backfield and getting after the QB. Hendrickson mainly rushes off the left side, and with LG Sidy Sow already ruled out of today’s game and Vederian Lowe questionable, the left side of the OL will bear close watching.
The best way to slow down the pass rush is to run the ball. Cleveland has had success running right at Hendrickson. But would they trust that with possibly two backups in the game?
Fans and media alike have been critical of Mayo’s decision to start the veteran over Drake Maye after preaching patience all spring and summer. Granted, Maye outplayed Brissett the last two weeks of training camp/preseason.
Now is Brissett’s chance to quiet the critics and upgrade the team at the most critical position in the game. If he has time to go through his progressions, he’ll need to make the right decisions and operate AVP’s offense as he did before this when he was in Cleveland.
Pressure? You bet. He already has people calling for Maye before the season’s first snap. So, while this isn’t a do-or-die situation, he’ll have to start on the right foot to keep the critics at bay.
In Van Pelt’s offense, the tight end plays a crucial role in attacking the seams in play-action passing. And Henry was kept in bubble wrap during the preseason. Mitchell Wilcox (practice squad) played the most snaps during the preseason.
But Henry is the go-to guy at tight end. He’s been productive when the Patriots got decent quarterbacking, and he resigned this spring to help the offense get back on track.
Look for Brissett to target him… a lot, attacking the seams to keep the chains moving. I believe Henry, Antonio Gibson, and Demario Douglas will see the most targets in this one.
The Patriots want to run the football, and Stevenson is the main man they need to do so. Of course, the Bengals know this and will prioritize stopping him and forcing Brissett to throw to beat them.
Stevenson can generate a lot of yards after contact, but last year, he and Ezekial Elliott were hit in the backfield far too often. Stevenson has excelled in the gap scheme the Patriots ran for so long. Now, with the zone-blocking schemes of AVP, we’ll see how well he has adapted.
As much as we discuss quarterback play, Stevenson and the running game are arguably even more critical to the team’s success this season.
We’ve discussed the Year 2 jump for Keion White a lot this summer. There have been encouraging signs from Oshane “OX” Ximines, the outside linebacker who was all over the field disrupting plays in the preseason. Josh Uche and Deatrich Wise also figure to be big parts of the pass rush in 2024.
Christian Barmore will be missed, but Daniel Ekuale and Jeremiah Pharms are expected to be productive, at least to the extent of aiding in that regard. But in the preseason, defensive coordinator DeMarcus Covington showed some aggressive tendencies where the team dialed up the pressure by sending blitzers from all different points on the field.
Look for Covington to get creative with his pressure packages this week.
Honorable Mentions: Christian Gonzalez will probably have help this week with Chase if Higgins is out. Tyquan Thornton… is this the time he shows that he was worthy of his draft status? Rookie WR Ja’Lynn Polk and TE Jaheim Bell: will they be used much in this game?
Bills safety Damar Hamlin will make his first start since suffering cardiac arrest on the field against the Bengals in Week 17 of the 2022 season.
In a scary moment, Hamlin made a tackle of Tee Higgins and then stood up and passed out, falling backward on the field. Emergency personnel performed CPR on Hamlin and restored his heartbeat before transporting him to a nearby hospital. Hamlin returned in 2023 and played in just five games, but now he’s ready for a full-time return to game action.
“What else can’t this young man do? He went through what he went through on the field; you guys have written about that over and over, and to come back from that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “It’s one thing to return from an ACL or a broken bone. It’s another thing to come back off of what he came back off of, right? Let alone just to decide to play football and contact football in full pads at the NFL level. I don’t think I need to say anything more. It’s incredible.”
The New York Jets, the media darlings once again are roundly picked to go on a deep playoff run, start off the season against the San Francisco 49ers.
And Aaron Rodgers, who missed all but four plays in 2023, is very confident. In fact, he “expects greatness.”
“I have a lot of pride in my performance, so when I take the field, I expect greatness because I’ve done it before,” Rodgers said on Thursday. “So that’s the kind of standard I hold myself to.”
The Jets brought in edge rusher Haason Reddick this spring, but he’s been MIA since his initial press conference. Reddick wants a new deal in the final year of his contract that pays him $14.5 million in 2024. But rumors persist that it will be done soon, and he’ll make his first appearance soon.
______________
Week 1 Predictions:
Thursday Night Football:
Baltimore over Kansas City 0-1
Friday Night in Brazil:
Eagles over Packers 1-1
Sunday, September 8:
Pittsburgh over Atlanta
Cincinnati over New England
Buffalo over Arizona
Houston over Indianapolis
Chicago over Tennessee
Miami over Jacksonville
New Orleans over Carolina
Minnesota over NYG
LA Chargers over Las Vegas
Seattle over Denver
Dallas over Cleveland
Tampa Bay over Washington
Sunday Night Football:
Detroit over LA Rams
Monday Night Football:
San Francisco over NYJ
2023 Season 178—94
2022 Season: 178—92—2
2021 Season: 183—88—1
2020 Season: 169—86—1
2019 Season: 162—93—1
______________
“It means a lot. It means a lot. I always talk about the story of when I became a captain in my second year in the league. My first year as a rookie, at times – this was when we had two-a-days and all of that stuff too – the guys would send me in the coach’s office, and people were kind of, not scared to go in there, but said, ‘Let’s send Mayo in there.
“I would go in there and say, ‘Coach, the guys are tired. They can’t be in pads today.’ A lot of times, he would send me out and be like, ‘Whatever. We’re going to do X, Y, and Z.’ But there were the few times where he was like, ‘You know what? You’re right.’ I would go back to the locker room, and I think the guys recognized that I cared more about them than my feelings.
“I would say it’s the same thing here coaching. I care more about their growth and their development more than anything. I say players win games, and coaches lose games. I’m going to do my best not to lose those games and put those guys in the best position to be successful.”
Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo, after he was told that Davon Godchaux had stated that the players would run through a wall for him. He was then asked what this meant to him.
_______________
“Talent sets the floor; Character sets the ceiling.” Bill Belichick
Follow me on Twitter @SteveB7SFG or email me at [email protected]
Listen to our Patriots 4th and 2 podcasts on Apple and YouTube as Russ Goldman, Derek Havens, and myself from PatsFans.com discuss the latest Patriots news and game analysis.
From our archive - this week all-time:
April 2 - April 17 (Through 26yrs)
Join 2,000+ fans getting exclusive stats, analysis, and insights delivered straight to their inbox every week. Never miss a play.
Tanking. To me there’s no way Callahan should even be asking a GM about tanking before the season even starts for a team that Vegas has with 4.5 wins and a high pick anyway. There isn’t even a generational QB like Andrew Luck in this draft where you direly need a QB. There’s no basis accept…. the drama treadmill and negativity as a media weapon. It’s sad. Interesting in Boston sports, is you don’t see that crap in many other sports market. NYG stinks, do you think their media is talking “tanking” this week. No.