Fan Notes from the New England Patriots’ 20-13 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders

No need to watch any more football until February; we know all we need to know already. The Chiefs are cooked. The Ravens will never beat the Bills when it matters. And the Patriots haven’t got a chance of winning another game this season.

Starting 0-1 is never great, and there’s no denying that New England underwhelmed yesterday. But that’s alright. Plenty of season left, and maybe things aren’t as bleak as they seem.

Right?

I would imagine that this loss isn’t what’s bothering folks this morning. Depending on who you talk to, this is a 6-9 win team any way you slice it. But what is probably bothering folks, though, is the way they lost. The Patriots never came out of the locker room at halftime and there were a few questionable coaching decisions that is giving people strong 2024 vibes already.
And seeing as how Week 1 of the 2024 season represented the highlight of the whole year, it’s easy to feel a little down today.
I’ll start with the good, because it’s a relatively short list.
I was actually happy with the pass rush overall. There needs to be more consistency there, but their four sacks on the day would have been enough for the 2nd most in a game all last season. Harold Landry seems to fit it well in the scheme, and the team dialed up a fair number of strong blitzes. Now that pass rush needs to show up all game and not disappear for such long stretches.
Morgan Moses had himself an introduction by lining up across from Maxx Crosby, and considering the caliber of player, I was impressed by Moses’s footwork and lateral mobility.
Kayshon Boutte was the best LSU receiver in the NFL yesterday. A single game does not a season make, but getting a 100-yard day out of a Patriots receiver is more rare than a news story that starts with “Florida Man” that you’d feel comfortable reading out loud to your kids.
A lot of the stats on how many yards the defense gave up are misleading, as there were a number of chunk plays that came on broken coverage and bad reads. Surrendering chunk plays consistently, especially on 3rd and freaking 20 with time running out to more or less ice the game, is a horrible look, but those are the kind of things that are a lot more forgivable this early in the season. If you see me writing something similar in October, come at me all you want.
The offensive line was much better in pass protection than run blocking, as can be expected. The unit is still new and needs to continue to gel.
We saw RPOs, naked bootlegs, motions to diagnose coverage, and ajustments based on previous mistakes. The Josh McDaniels offense is in there, Peter Banning just waiting to find his inner Bangarang. Hopefully we see those training wheels continue to come off.
I always thought that the word “bangarang” deserved a stronger cultural foothold. Hook is an all-time great movie. But while the movie holds up to this day, I guess the kids were too busy imitating Bart Simpson in 199X to bangarang it up.
Now, on to the bad…
I don’t think that the Raiders are an overly talented team, but they were the best team on the field today by a not-insignificant margin. They made plays when they needed to, picked up yards, and embraced the wildly controversial but obviously effective strategy of playing two halves of football. That’s not what you want to see out of a Patriots team you were hoping to play better than last year.
I don’t want to get too nuts on the lack of discipline that shone through at times, but that was one area of this 2025 unit that I likely had the most unrealistic expectations for. Everything about this offseason, from team building to draft to practices to press conferences, all seemed drastically different from the Jerod Mayo era, and the one area that I was really, really hoping wasn’t going to cost the Patriots games was sloppy penalties and undisciplined play. It’s too early to go too nuts, but I can’t say I’m happy about it.
I think that Will Campbell played fine. He wasn’t awful and he wasn’t spectacular. He had a fine day. Nothing wrong with that.
In what is probably my Overreaction Mondayest overreaction of the year – Drake Maye is frustrating. When he’s good, he’s great. He extends plays, throws lasers, sees the full field, and commands the offense. But he has also picked up right where he left off last year on poor reads, bad overthrows, missing open guys, and holding the ball too long. That’s something you want to see steadily improve from the first start of your career to the first start of your second season, and it was a lot of the same yesterday.
I also wonder if Josh McDaniels will find a way to cater his offense to Maye’s skillset. Maye seems to be at his best in a moving pocket where he can take some risks and throw it down the field. The death by a thousand cuts offense is an incredible way to control the clock, tire out the defense, put points on the board, and limit scoring opportunities for your opponent, but it also requires a certain kind of QB. I don’t know; I’m overthinking this. Again, it’s Overreaction Monday.
You don’t want to see your rookie kicker shank a 40-yarder to start off his career.
The unit everyone was the most excited about – the running backs – did a whole lotta nuthin’ yesterday. And a big part of that was because of fairly atrocious run blocking. That’s one area of the offense that I know is going to improve, but I was just so excited for a grind-em-out opening day win led by a strong rushing attack and an efficient passing game, that maybe I’m feeling a little bitter today.
Note to Coach Vrabel: when you’re doing nothing on offense and you’re down 10 with less than five minutes to play and your defense has been blowing coverages and you aren’t overly confident in getting a quick stop, I’m OK with you going for it on fourth down. I’ll add that the distance doesn’t even matter there, you have my full blessing. Great, good talk.
Where the team goes from here is going to say a lot about what we’re in for this season. I’m not expecting a win down in Miami. But I don’t want to see the Patriots lose like this twice in a row.