Everything to know about the New England Patriots in 2024

Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

By Granite Post Staff

July 30, 2024

The New England Patriots will look different this year. Here’s everything you need to know.

The last time the New England Patriots were coached by someone other than Bill Belichick, Bill Clinton was President of the United States. New Hampshire’s governor was Jeanne Shaheen. The top song in America was “I Knew I Loved You” by Savage Garden.

Now, after six Super Bowl victories, nine AFC championships, and 266 regular-season wins, Belichick is gone, replaced by his former player and assistant coach, Jerod Mayo.

In the four years since Tom Brady’s departure from New England, Belichick’s tenure with the Pats has been uncomfortable. They made the playoffs once, but never emerged as a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

Now, Mayo is tasked with rebuilding the Patriots and returning them to greatness. With the 2024 NFL preseason right around the corner, we’re breaking down the biggest storylines around the New England Patriots.

The Offense

The Quarterbacks

There’s no nice way to put this: The Patriots offense has been bad since Brady left for Tampa Bay. Quarterback Mac Jones showed flashes as a rookie in 2021, but regressed in each of the two following years. Last season, New England’s offense looked as bad as any in the league, prompting the Pats to move on from Jones at the same time they’re parting ways with Belichick.

The offensive rebuild started with bringing in the team’s fourth offensive coordinator in as many years. This time, it’s Alex Van Pelt, who held the same position for the Cleveland Browns. He’s known around the league as something of a quarterback whisperer, even elevating a 38-year-old Joe Flacco to a Comeback Player of the Year Award last season.

And he’ll have a few quarterbacks to work with. The first is Jacoby Brissett, who started his career with the Patriots and returns after a journeyman’s path. Brissett played for Van Pelt in Cleveland in 2022, and he looked good, throwing for a dozen touchdowns and more than 2,600 yards over the course of 11 games.

But Brissett will be 32 years old before the season’s end, and his best days are likely behind him. The Patriots brought him back to be a competent bridge quarterback, someone who understands Van Pelt’s offense and can play relatively mistake-free football while mentoring a younger passer. That younger passer is this year’s first-round draft pick, Drake Maye of North Carolina.

Maye’s college tape is not perfect – he made mental errors at times, and at others, missed what looked like easy throws. But the good always outshined the bad, and there’s no denying that his arm talent is nothing short of spectacular. Plenty of analysts argued that Maye deserved to be the top overall pick of the draft, ahead of fellow quarterbacks Caleb Williams of USC and Jayden Daniels of LSU.

There’s no question that Maye is the quarterback of the future, but it’s not clear when he’ll become the starter. Right now, Brissett is listed at the top of the depth chart, and that could continue while Maye develops.

One thing to note is that New England’s opening schedule is a bit of a murderers’ row in terms of defenses for a young quarterback to face. They kick it off against the Cincinnati Bengals, who may have the weakest defense of their first four opponents, but can still cause problems. From there, they host the Seattle Seahawks, led by new head coach Mike Macdonald, whose confusing defensive schemes have tormented opposing defenses in recent years. Then, they take on the New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers, who might be the two best defenses in the NFL.

It only gets slightly easier from there. Their Week 5 opponent is the Miami Dolphins, who boast a slew of pass rushers like Bradley Chubb, and in Week 6, they face the Houston Texans, whose Will Anderson just won Defensive Rookie of the Year. To make matters worse, the Patriots don’t get a bye until Week 14.

So there are a few lines of thinking in terms of when Maye will take the reins:

He could start Week 1 and take his lumps against top-tier defenses
He could take over in Week 5 against the Dolphins
He could take over in Week 7 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, whose defense should be a step below everything the Patriots face in the first six weeks
He could learn from the bench until after the Week 14 bye
He could essentially “redshirt” his rookie season and become the starter next year

There’s just no way to predict how a first-time head coach will approach the development of a rookie quarterback.

It’s also worth at least noting, however, that Maye wasn’t the only quarterback the Patriots drafted this year. In the sixth round, they took Joe Milton of Tennessee. Milton has an absolute canon of an arm, and has plenty of NFL-friendly tools, but he’s very raw. It’s an unlikely scenario, but there is a possibility that Milton learns the pro game quickly and becomes a viable candidate for the job at some point this season, especially if Brissett and Maye both struggle.

The Playmakers

Whoever is under center for the Patriots, they’ll have a major problem to contend with: This looks like one of the worst receiving units in the NFL. Wide receiver Kendrick Bourne looked good in 2021, but has failed to emerge as a true #1 since then. Maybe he can do that this year, but a receiving corps led by Bourne doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Luckily, the Patriots drafted pass-catchers early and often in this year’s draft. Wideout Ja’Lynn Polk of Washington was overshadowed by his teammate Rome Odunze, but is a great physical receiver in his own right. Polk’s specialty is the contested catch, which might make him exactly the kind of receiver a young quarterback could most use. Fellow rookie Javon Baker played a similar role at UCF. Polk and Baker have both flashed in training camp, and both have a chance to claim starting spots by the end of the preseason.

At tight end, Hunter Henry may not be exciting, but he’s been as consistent a playmaker as anyone for the post-Brady Patriots. And it’s worth keeping an eye on rookie Jaheim Bell of Florida State, who had a decent college career as a pass-catching tight end.

A consistent problem in the Mac Jones era was a lack of legitimate weapons. In Jones’s first two seasons as a starter, his top pass-catcher was Jakobi Meyers, who is clearly best as a #2 option (which is the role he now plays in Las Vegas). Last year, it was sixth-round rookie DeMario Douglas. While Douglas could be exciting to watch, he was still a step down even from Meyers.

The Patriots have made it clear that they don’t want to make that mistake with Maye. That’s why they drafted Polk, Baker, and Bell, and it’s why they aggressively pursued Calvin Ridley in free agency before being outbid by the Tennessee Titans. If they want to be sure Maye has an elite weapon from day one, they could still try to trade for Brandon Aiyuk, the disgruntled 49ers wideout. Failing that, one of the rookies will need to break out quickly to make this passing attack significantly better than what we saw last year.

All that said, again, Van Pelt does like to run the ball. So the good news is that Rhamondre Stevenson is one of the league’s most underrated running backs, and he should fit nicely with Van Pelt’s schemes. With former Washington Commander Antonio Gibson joining the team in free agency, this should be a cogent thunder-and-lightning backfield.

The O-Line

The downside of New England’s heavy emphasis on quarterback and receiver is that they weren’t able to do as much for a struggling offensive line. As things currently stand, right tackle Mike Onwenu is the line’s only bright spot, thanks to the free agency departure of Trent Brown. That doesn’t bode well for a rookie quarterback who had some trouble with taking too many sacks in college.

Still, there are reasons for optimism. Guards Cole Strange and Sidy Sow are both young and could blossom into better blockers. And the Pats did draft Caedan Wallace of Penn State in the third round of this year’s draft. He played almost exclusively at right tackle in college, but the Patriots could try moving him to start on the left side.

The Defense

This side of the ball is much harder to analyze, for the simple reason that we have no idea how the absence of Bill Belichick will affect the defense. For all the problems the Patriots had last year, their defense was still stout – they held their opponents to 10 or fewer points four times, but managed to lose three of those games thanks to their anemic offense.

Whatever criticisms can be thrown at Belichick, he is almost unquestionably the greatest defensive mind in the history of the game. From player development to game managing, the impact he made year in and year out is huge, if unquantifiable. So we can look at the roster, but we just don’t know if Jerod Mayo will be able to turn past performance into future success.

Case in point: Defensive lineman Keion White. Last year’s second-round pick was seen as a high-end athlete without much craft to his game. That made New England a natural landing spot for White, where he could learn from Belichick. Now, there’s a real question about whether he can continue to mature and develop as a pass rusher.

The same is true for last year’s first-rounder, cornerback Christian Gonzalez. Like White, he was considered an incredible athlete who needed to learn the nuances of his position. Gonzalez went down with a season-ending injury early in the season, but showed flashes of brilliance under Belichick’s tutelage.

There are other concerns, of course, particularly in the trenches. Edge defender Josh Uche is coming off a lackluster season, and the Pats will need him to bounce back if they want to improve on last year’s terrible pass rush. Fan-favorite Matthew Judon is in an increasingly ugly contract dispute. And defensive tackle Christian Barmore, one of the team’s best players, is out indefinitely following a scary diagnosis of blood clots.

On paper, this all still looks like a good defense, particularly against the run. If anyone can keep Belichick’s magic going, it’s Jerod Mayo, who had plenty of first-hand experience with Belichick’s approach as both a player and as a coach. If he can do that, the defense will continue to be good. If he can’t, this could be a disaster, and an expensive one at that, given how many contract extensions the Patriots have given on this side of the ball.

Overall Outlook

Sportsbooks are putting the over/under of Patriots wins at 4.5. For context, that number was 6.5 last year, and the Pats ultimately finished with a dismal record of 4-13.

Let’s be clear: We’re looking at ground zero of a rebuild. Expectations haven’t been this low for the Patriots in decades. Pro Football Focus projects just an 18% chance of the Patriots even making a playoff appearance this year, the lowest in the league.

Best-case scenario:

Drake Maye hits the ground running
Rhamondre Stevenson looks like a top-tier back in Alex Van Pelt’s offense
The Patriots acquire Brandon Aiyuk from the 49ers in a trade
Maye builds rapport with Kendrick Bourne or one of the rookie pass-catchers as a #2 option
The young offensive linemen improve
Jerod Mayo keeps the defense on track

In that scenario, the Patriots are still probably only looking at a Wild Card berth and an early exit from the playoffs. The AFC East is just too tough a division right now.

Worst-case scenario:

Drake Maye isn’t pro-ready
Jacoby Brissett shows his age
None of the wide receivers emerge as a true #1
The offensive line does Maye no favors
The defense regresses without Bill Belichick

If that’s the case, this truly could be the worst team in the league, winning only two or three games. But even the worst-case scenario isn’t all bad when you’re in a rebuild. If things go poorly, the Patriots will end up with a high draft pick in 2025 and can take a blue chip receiver, offensive tackle, or defensive lineman.