The Patriots found themselves in a huge debacle this week, as one in-game decision branched off into a litany of questions, deflections and bouts of self-defense.
Is anyone shocked?
New England, as many of you will remember, needed just one yard to set up a goal-to-go scenario to cut into a two-score lead on Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals. Patriots offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt was given two chances to convert but opted against running a quarterback sneak on both plays, resulting in a failed conversion and turnover on downs.
Jerod Mayo clearly didn’t agree with the approach, drawing attention to that decision with a passive-aggressive comment that essentially placed all the blame on Van Pelt.
Mayo, as he’s one to do, walked it back later in the press conference and in following media obligations, but the damage was done. Van Pelt hadn’t received an opportunity to respond to those comments publicly until Thursday, where he essentially defended his reasoning for the calls and opted not to address his boss’s weirdly hostile response.
“I think we can sneak with Drake. He’s done it in the past. I’m not fearful of that as much,” Van Pelt said, per ESPN’s Mike Reiss. “Really just focusing on keeping him out of harm’s way and getting him through these last three games healthy.”
OR!
The Patriots could just use Jacoby Brissett, their 6-foot-4, 235-pound backup quarterback, who was brought in a few weeks ago to (successfully) run a short-yardage play.
Brissett is quite literally one of the best ever at running that sneak play, converting at a 93 percent clip entering this season. It’s not like they’d even need his prowess, either, as sneaks have a conversion rate of about 88 percent, 20 percentage points better than the inside zone, and 15 percentage points better than the next closest play call to a running back, per ESPN.
New England could have avoided this entire mess by using common sense.
We wouldn’t expect that, though, would we?
