Kendrick Bourne suggested that he’s identified the New England Patriots’ biggest problem on offense.
The receiver may have had a smaller role in the team’s game plan against the Buffalo Bills after ending up on COVID-19/reserve and missing all of practice in Week16, but he seemed to feel he had a good grapple on what the team needs to fix to rally at the end of the season.
“Just keeping ourselves out of third-and-long, I think, is the biggest thing,” Bourne said. “We’ve just ended up there a little bit too frequent, and that’s what we’ve got to fix.”
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Kendrick Bourne explains "the biggest thing" the Patriots plan to correct: getting out of third and long. Bourne says they're still "very confident." pic.twitter.com/sL9XtSMxdQ
— Henry McKenna (@McKennAnalysis) December 30, 2021
The Patriots have, indeed, struggled on third-and-long this year. On third-and-7+, the Patriots have converted just 18 of 77 (23.4%). That’s a brutal percentage for New England. (As a point of comparison, the Chiefs are 19 of 64 (29.7%) and the Bills are 28 of 76 (36.8).)
It’s not like they’ll change that weakness at this point in the season — but they can make an effort to keep themselves out of that situation.
“It’s nothing crazy,” he said. “We’re still making plays. We’re still pretty confident — we’re very confident. It’s just about executing on every play, not taking any play for granted, and that’s how you’ve really got to think about it, because you never know which play is going to be the difference.”
