Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Collapse: Patriots’ Disjointed Second Half Ends In Disappointing Loss
Episode Date: September 7, 2025The New England Patriots turned in a terrible second half of football against the Las Vegas Raiders, resulting in a 20-13 loss to open the season. Josh McDaniels and Drake Maye have to go back to the ...drawing board offensively, while Terrell Williams needs to figure out the backend of his defense.Lots to breakdown on this postgame edition of the Locked Patriots podcast.Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms…🎧 https://link.chtbl.com/LOPatriots?sid...Locked On NFL League-Wide: Every Team, Fantasy, Draft & More🎧 https://linktr.ee/LockedOnNFL#patriots #newenglandpatriotsSupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!5-Hour ENERGYTee up that trip! Enter for a chance to win a dream golf trip for two to any golf tournament* in the USA. Visit https://5HEWIN.com for full rules and entry. No purchase necessary. Excludes the Master’s tournament. Ends October 31, 2025.DoorDashWith DoorDash Streaks, you save every Saturday you order — stack it up all season and you could save up to $250. Order this Saturday. Keep the streak alive. Fuel your gameday — only with DoorDash. Terms apply. Promo period through 11/18.Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONNFL at monarchmoney.com/lockedonnfl for 50% off your first year.UpsideDon’t let this offer drive on by, download the free Upside app now using my limited time promo code TOUCHDOWN for a limited time 25 cent per gallon bonus! Offers vary by user and location, Go to upside.com for terms and conditions.Click Here to download the app: https://getupside.onelink.me/zlLr?af_xp=custom&pid=barrington&c=barrington_lockedon25&deep_link_value=promo&deep_link_sub1=lockedon25&af_dp=upsideapp%3A%2F%2FYahoo FantasyPresented by YahooFantasy #YahooPartner. Draft now at https://yahoofantasy.com/lockedonnfl.PrizePicksDownload the PrizePicks app today and use code LOCKEDONNFL to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNFL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.FanDuelRight now, new customers can bet just FIVE dollars and if your bet wins—you’ll get THREE HUNDRED dollars in bonus bets to use across the app.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)
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Man, oh, man, oh man, an absolutely dreadful second half does the Patriots in during their home opener against the Raiders.
And we've got to look at everything that went bad.
And that was a rough one.
This is Lockdown Patriots.
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I am your host, Nick Cattels, covering the Patriots for the last 16 years,
co-host of the Greg Bedard Patriots podcast with Nick Cattels and a sports talk show host veteran.
On this postgame show, the defense has one glaring issue all day long against the Raiders,
and the offense simply vanishes in the second half.
But first, we have to talk about a miserable, miserable second half for your Patriots and Mike Vrable.
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The Patriots did almost nothing right in the second half.
You know, after the first half, I felt like it was a solid half of football after a very, very slow start
the paths in the second half not much rewarding as you watch this football game the second half
was miserable it was dreadful it was horrific it was embarrassing it was tough to watch
especially offensively which we'll get to but in this second half against the raiders the patriots
were outplayed they were out coached they were out everything they were out everything
let's start defensively because i want to rev the motor up a little bit before i get into this
offense and Josh McDaniels. This defense, the past defense, the secondary, big play after big
play, after big play. The Raiders had nine. That's an absurd number. The Raiders had nine.
Nine plays of 20 plus yards in this football game. Nine plays of 20 plus yards. That is simply outrageous.
that should never happen to an NFL defense, that should never happen to an NFL secondary.
There's absolutely zero excuse for it.
I know you didn't have Christian Gonzalez, who was your best player, but to give up nine plays
of 20 plus yards is absurd.
That's high school type stuff.
You can't do it.
You just can't do it.
And I thought that the cherry on top was at the very end of the game.
The Raiders have the football, and you are desperate for a stop, try to get it back, try to save this game somehow, some way.
And the Raiders are in a third and 20, third and 20 in Carlton Davis, who is your best cornerback on the field, the guy that you paid a bunch of money in the off season two, to make a play when you need a play made.
Now, I will give Davis credit in the first half, undercut the route by Brock Powers, got his hands on the football,
and caused a turnover, cause that pick.
That was great.
That was good stuff.
But third and 20, third and 20, have to have it type stop.
And for some reason, unknown to me, unknown to probably all of you, maybe even unknown
to Carlton Davis himself, for some reason, Davis bites.
He bites on the action.
The slant go, he bites on it.
And he ends up allowing the receiver to get behind him to pick.
up, I don't know, what was it, 25, 26, 30 yards? I don't even know because as soon as the football
was caught, I try to save myself from throwing furniture. How do you give up a third and 20?
That is your veteran outside corner. That was one of your main targets in the offseason and
free agency. You rely on him. You're playing man coverage on the outside and he gets beat because
he's irresponsible. He loses his eyes and he gives up a gigantic gain down the field.
type of stuff can't happen. I understand that there's going to be a learning curve for some of the
younger guys on this team. But Carlton Davis, Carlton Davis, you can't give that up. You can't
give that play up. Simply put, that's excruciating. You had guys running free in the secondary all
day long, guys wide open. It wasn't like Gino Smith was having to fit the football in tight
quarters. You had guys who were wide open downfield, 20 yards, 25 yards, 30 yards,
just giving yards away, chunk play after chunk play after chunk play in the passing game
for the Raiders. Just not even nearly good enough. And it didn't slow down in the second
half. And then we get to the offense. The offense in the first half, short yardage,
red zone, they struggled. They didn't execute as well as you want them to. But
when you're sitting there at half time and you have 190 yards and you've got 10 points,
which should have been 13 points, thanks to your rookie kicker who missed his first kick a 40-yard
field goal attempt. You know, 13 points and 200 yards at the half, that's not terrible. That's
fine. You can live with that. You feel okay about that. But in the second half, this offense was
as bad as we've seen it the past couple of years. This is one of the worst offensive halves that we've
seen this team have in the last three, four seasons.
And that says a lot when you had Alex Van Pelt last year in the Bill O'Brien borderline debacle in 20, 23.
And this offense got about 70 total yards in the second half until that final field goal drive, which the Raiders were, you know, they were, I wouldn't say, allowing the Patriots to move the ball down the field.
but they certainly weren't trying to stop or bury the Patriots.
They wanted that clock to tick.
If you take out that final field goal drive,
you had about 70 yards of offense in the entire second half.
I thought Drake May was erratic.
I thought that his accuracy struggled from time to time.
We had another Drake May game where you had some highs and you had some low lows.
His footwork wasn't always consistent.
He looked a little hesitant.
in the pocket at times.
Again, he looked to scramble really quickly on a couple of occasions.
So I thought May was up and down today.
I thought he had a really good drive on that touchdown drive,
a fantastic throw to Pop Douglas,
a great throw to Hunter Henry over the top,
that Henry couldn't get his second foot down.
He threw Kashan booty open in that second drive.
He had some moments, but he was up and down.
May was up and down.
And you had no commitment to the run in the second half.
You had almost zero commitment to running the football in that second half.
I think the Patriots ran a total of, what, three times?
And one of those times was Pop Douglas on a jet sweep.
So Josh McDaniels did not even want to run the football in the second half.
He did not even want to try after witnessing that first half when they couldn't run the
ball.
You had offensive line mishaps in the second half, miscommunications on the left side.
That's not a shocker.
Miscommunications on the right side between Michael Wenu and Morgan Moses.
The Raiders played more games in the second half with their defensive line.
They sent more blitz, and you gave up some pressure.
And just overall, overall, I thought the Patriots in the second half, a sloppy operation.
The first quarter and a half or so, you didn't have a lot of penalties.
You know, you played a relatively clean game in the first quarter and a half.
At halftime, I even tweeted at Nick C Radio saying that I thought it was a solid half.
It was a good half for Terrell Williams, Josh McDaniels, and Mike Vrable.
I thought they coached a pretty good first half.
Second half was a different world, and yet you completely fell off the rails.
You had too many penalties, you had too many blown coverages, you had an offense that looked
completely and utterly disjointed.
That was a brutal second half, an absolutely brutal second half.
And you would hope Mike Vrable stressed all week long.
He has stressed the past couple of weeks.
about how crucial it is to win the second half in the opening week.
If you win the second half, you usually win the game.
And it's about conditioning.
It's about keeping the clean operation.
And there was a precipitous drop in offensive play and a precipitous drop in execution by this team in the second half,
which is not what you want to see from a Mike Vrable-led team.
It was brutal, man.
It was brutal.
It was absolutely brutal.
The offense suffered from a tale of two halves, and the second half was as bad as it gets.
We're going to dive into what went wrong in that second half.
Why offensively the Patriots looked as bad as they did.
That's coming up next.
We continue with today's episode of Lockdown Patriots, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network,
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So the first half, you had 200 yards roughly and 10 points on the board.
You missed the field goal, Andy Boragallis, not the way you want your rookie catcher,
kicker to begin his career.
In the second half, though, nothing.
Nothing effective from this offense.
They could not do anything against the Raiders defense, which is troubling because the
Raiders defense, they're questionable at the second level.
the Landon Roberts early in this game, so they had to go to their depth.
Their linebackers aren't very good.
Their secondary is not very good.
And you could not do anything offensively against them in the second half.
This was a gigantic fail by Josh McDaniels.
I thought he had a pretty good first half, if not good first half.
And I thought his second half was simply atrocious.
And you had inconsistent quarterback play, yes.
And you had some bad execution with some penalties on the offensive line,
a delay of game on May, which is just inexcusable. We saw that late in camp, some delay of game
issues, get the play in, get to the line of scrimmage, and get the snap off. So yes, your
quarterback was inconsistent today, but the play calling, the offense fell well short of expectations
in that second half. I thought they had some things going in the first half, and it just fell
apart. And Vegas got more aggressive. They got more aggressive defensively. They caused some havoc
to your offensive line, they ramped up the blitzing, and I don't think that you responded
very well against that blitzing. The offensive line, we saw this during camp, we saw this
during the preseason during the joint practices. The offensive line was again beaten by games
up front, twists and all of that, right? You had a twist that got the best of Ovenu and Morgan
Moses at one point, which led to, you know, a disastrous play in a pick. So you were, you were getting beat
by those games up front.
You had some receivers drop footballs.
You had May miss some throws.
So your offensive line took a step back.
The Raiders got more aggressive, got more confident.
Your quarterback was erratic with his accuracy and missing some throws.
And when he made some throws, your receivers dropped the ball or two.
But the biggest issue, the biggest issue for me in this game offensively is 0.0 run game from the Patriots.
And that shocked me because I thought, I thought this team would be able and capable of running the football.
You have an offensive line that's athletic.
You have an offensive line that is a good blocking, run blocking offensive line.
You have an offensive coordinator and a head coach who are dedicated and usually committed to running the football.
You have three good backs.
Stevenson's a good back.
Trayvion Henderson's a good back.
Antonio Gibson's a good back.
You have three good running backs.
And I thought for sure, I thought for sure the Patriots would be able to run the football today.
And they had absolutely nothing going with the run game, nothing.
Squatouche, a big fat zero.
In the second half, if my math is right, in the second half, the Patriots had one carry from their running backs.
One carry.
Stevenson and Henderson had 11 total carries in the first half.
I believe they finished with 12.
And I'll double check just to make sure because maybe some of the stats I looked up right before this have been updated.
But you had 11 carries in the first half between Stevenson and Henderson, and they finished with 12 carries.
Antonio Gibson had a carry for three yards.
So they had one or two carries from their running backs in the second half.
They didn't have any commitment to the run game.
Josh McDaniels looked at the first half.
They were incapable of running the ball.
and instead of saying, well, let's try to rework the run game.
Let's try to get going here a little bit.
Let's try some different looks.
Let's do something.
Let's try to establish the run.
McDaniels, I thought, ran away from the run game in the second half, showed zero commitment
to it.
Now, some of that, some of that was due to, you know, penalties on first downs and you're
looking at first and 15 and first and 20.
You're not going to run the football very often when you're at first and 15 or first
and 20. But I thought for sure that you would see some level of commitment to the run game in the
second half. And you had none of that. They did not even try to run the football. And on the day,
you had Ramandre Stevenson and Trevionn Henderson finishing with 12 carries and 42 yards.
If you told me before this game that Henderson and Stevenson would combine for 12 carries and
42 yards, I would have told you you were nuts. And I would have also picked the Raiders to win the
game because I'm telling you right now, this Patriots offense is not explosive enough.
It is not talented enough to win games without a run game.
They have to run the football.
If you make this offense one dimensional, you are just begging for problems.
If you allow this offense to be one dimensional, you're going to see what the Raiders did
today.
You're going to see that over and over and over again.
Defenses are not going to be scared of the run game.
They're going to pin their ears back.
They're going to get aggressive up front.
They're going to go after Drake May.
They're going to go after this offensive line.
They're going to go after the young left side of this offensive line,
protecting May's blind side.
And they're going to continually do it over and over and over again
until the Patriots prove that they can run the football.
This cannot be a one-dimensional offense.
If this is a one-dimensional offense, we're talking, I don't know,
five wins, six wins, maybe.
They cannot be one-dimensional.
They have to be able to run the ball,
whether it's Stevenson or it's Henderson or it's Gibson,
I couldn't care less which running back on this roster can get it going, but it has to get
going. And I didn't understand the split in snaps. In the first half, Henderson had 16 or 17
snaps, I believe. In the second half, Henderson was on the sidelines an awful lot. So what are we doing?
Did you overuse Trayvion Henderson early in this game? And then you had to step back and not use
him as much in the second half? Because if that's the case, plan it out better, Josh,
Josh McDaniels should understand, all right, we didn't use him a ton in the first half.
Then we use him a little bit more in the second half.
If we use him too much in the first half, we're not going to be able to use him as much in the second half.
So I don't know.
The snaps were almost 50-50 between Stevenson and Henderson in the first half.
In the second half, Henderson was barely on the field.
I don't get it.
If you have a limit, if you have a limit to Henderson's snaps, then even them out.
balance them out better between the first half and the second half so you can use one of your
most explosive players in the second half of the game not not that it mattered because not only was
the run game a big fat zero for the patriots the screen game was awful their screen game was
non-existent and i thought a lot of the screens called were incredibly predictable the raiders
looked like they knew exactly what the patriots were going to do when they did it they knew
They knew when a screen was coming.
So the screens to the running backs did not work.
The screens to the wide receivers did not work.
So you don't have a running game.
And then you don't have the part of your passing game,
which could pretty much be a running game for you, right?
Those short, quick, efficient passes like a tunnel screen to get five or six yards
on a first down.
They weren't able to do that either.
So their early down offense stunk out loud.
They couldn't run the ball effectively.
And their screen game was awful.
so there wasn't anything easy.
They couldn't pick up any easy yards.
And you're not going to win a lot of games if you're looking at that.
Now, I did think Kashan Bouty was terrific.
He was terrific in the first half.
In the second half, you didn't see as much of him.
Raiders kind of put the clamps on him in the second half.
And just this overall lack of explosiveness to your offense.
That's what I saw.
Again, just a lack of explosion.
You didn't feel like they could pick up 30 yards.
you know, and a nice chunk play consistently.
They couldn't give you a handful of explosive plays.
They couldn't give it to you.
The Raiders were full of explosive plays.
Your defense was giving up a ton of explosive plays,
but your offense could not get any explosive plays going.
Other than that, things went great.
If you can't run, you don't have a screen game,
you don't have explosive elements to your offense.
I didn't think there was a ton of, like, exotic motion pre-snap from the offense.
And the second half was just, it was dreadful.
It was dreadful.
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All right, the Raiders enjoyed.
They enjoyed chunk play after chunk play after chunk play in the passing game.
We'll talk about that and more as we address the defense.
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So the first half, after that first drive, the Patriots give up a touchdown on the first
drive. Jalen Hawkins, flat-footed, Patriots, I don't know what they were doing.
I did not like the play call. You had both Christian Barmore and Milton Williams
dropping into coverage on a third down. Hawkins again just gets blown by.
gives up a touchdown over the top, bad start for the defense.
But then honestly, the defense for the rest of the first half was pretty much
dominant. And I know we're going to look back after the miserable second half
and say, you know, that's such a thing of the past now and it's in the rearview mirror.
But I do want to say the first half after that first drive, the defense, they played good
football, they shut down the run and they kept Brock Bowers to three catches 35 yards.
And I tweeted out at halftime that the Patriots did a really good job of limiting Brock Bowers offensively and also limiting Max Crosby's impact plays.
I didn't hear Max Crosby's name more than maybe once or twice in the first half.
I thought the offense did a really good job addressing Crosby.
And I thought the defense did an excellent job addressing Bowers.
Second half, completely different story.
Crosby made two or three huge plays in the second half and Bowers went off before he went out.
with a knee injury. He ended up with like 100 plus yards in this game, 35 yards in the first
half, and he ends up with 103 for the game. So you gave up almost 70 yards to Brock Bowers in
the second half after doing a really good job on him. So you just, you have to do better. You've got
to be more consistent from beginning to end. Now, there are a couple of issues in the second half
of the defense. Number one, they did have some struggles when they played the three cornerback
nickel package against the Raiders run game.
So when the Patriots went to their nickel package, the Raiders ran the football and they
were able to get some yards out of it, not a ton, but some yards.
And then when the Patriots went to their bigger personnel, the Raiders killed them with
play action and killed them with plays down the field.
So it was the Patriots were trying to figure out what personnel package was best for them
in this game.
And it felt like in that second half, no matter what personnel package they
picked, they were going to get beat. Now, really, at the end of the day, the defense, I'll say
this, the passing defense again, way too many, way too many huge plays. I thought that was
mostly on the secondary. And without Christian Gonzalez, we knew that there was going to be some
issues in the coverage. But to give up nine plays of 20 plus yards is egregious. And the Patriots
showed some confidence in their corners. They played a lot of man coverage in this game. And
And guys were left wide open over and over and over again.
They kept getting behind the safeties.
They kept getting behind the cornerbacks.
I thought you had some opportunities on third down to get off the field and you weren't
able to in big spots.
I talked about the Carlton Davis play earlier in this post game.
You just can't have it on third and 20.
It's a must stop situation.
You can't give that up.
So I thought there was some third down daggers.
there were some fourth down daggers so just you know pivotal plays big plays that you need from your
defense they just could not collectively get it done and that's how you fall short you give up those
big plays you know i i will give the patriots defense credit as far as only giving up 20 points you
give up 20 points you feel like you should win plenty of games in the nfl if your defense gives
up 20 points, but again, your offense was so bad, especially in the second half, you only put
up 13. Should have been 16, but, you know, Boragallis misses the kick. So it was just not good
enough. They have to tighten up on the back end defensively. They have to tighten up because I thought
their front seven played reasonably well. You know, this game is not on the front seven. I thought
the front seven played well. I thought Harold Landry had a good game. He was constantly in the
backfield. He had two and a half sacks, three sacks in this game. So I thought Landry was
good. I thought Caleb-on-Chayson gave some pressure in this game. I thought Milton Williams
and Christian Barmore created some pressure from the interior defensive line like we
hoped that they would when we look at this roster. I thought the front seven mostly played
well. Mostly played well. I mean, they were great against the run when you look at it in
totality. Ashton Genti finishes with 18 carries and 35 yards. If you told me the Patriots
held Ashton Genti to less than two yards per carry, I would say they'd have a great shot to
win this game. Now, they gave up 366 to Gino because of all those huge plays that they gave up
in the passing game, but they shut the rundown and they gave up 20 points. I thought the front
seven was was pretty good.
All in all was pretty good.
They were able to get pressure.
They were good against the run.
They made life miserable at times for Gino.
But when they didn't get pressure,
when the Patriots didn't get pressure,
didn't get quick pressure,
and their defensive backs were kind of left on that island.
That's when things went horribly wrong.
And that's when they gave up all those big plays.
It's like if they didn't get quick pressure
and bother Gino and get them off his spot,
you're going to give up 20 yards.
That's how it felt.
You're going to give up.
up 20 plus yards on a pass play if you don't get to Gino within like two seconds.
And that's a lot of pressure on the defensive line.
Now, the Patriots were aggressive.
I thought that they started to blitz their linebackers more instead of their
cornerbacks early in the game when they were blitzing their cornerbacks.
That kind of led to some issues.
There was one third down where they blitzed Carlton Davis.
Jacoby Myers just slid right out for an easy third down conversion.
The touchdown that began the game, you sent.
Marcus Jones on a blitz. You had Barmore and Williams drop into coverage, but I did think
a lot of their blitz packages actually worked as the game went on. It's just that they got cooked
from time to time, and that's something we have discussed. We've talked about that leading into this
season. The Patriots defense is going to be more aggressive, and that means you can create some
big plays, but it also means you're going to give up big plays. And we saw that today. You've got an
aggressive man-cover defense, especially without Christian Gonzalez, you're going to
up some plays, and they gave up way too many plays. I could deal with two or three big plays.
I'm not going to give up nine plays of 20 plus yards. That has to be nipped in the bud quickly.
You can't lack explosiveness on offense and allow the other offense to explode down the field over and over and over again.
That is not a good combination. So disappointing debut from Mike Vrable and the Patriots.
There's no doubt. Disappointing 2013 loss, a debacle of a second.
second half. And we'll see how they recover. They got to go to Miami week two. Miami was
humiliated by Indianapolis today in Indy. So you have two teams coming off bad losses. Miami
an especially bad loss. But you've got to be better offensively. You've got to run the football.
You've got to establish that. You can't be one dimensional. You need Drake May to be more consistent.
You need Drake made it to get off to a better start than he did today. Again, you know, his first pass of
the day, air mails it to Pop Douglas.
So again, early in games, he's a little too amped up, figure it out.
And defensively, hopefully you get Gonzalez back.
But with or without Gonzalez, you can't give up the big plays.
You just cannot give up the big plays.
All right, that wraps up this edition of Lockdown Patriots.
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