Why have the New England Patriots gone 4-13 in back-to-back seasons? The answer goes beyond a lack of talent.
After a 2023 campaign defined by dysfunction in Bill Belichick's final season as head coach, things got even worse in 2024, with first-year head coach Jerod Mayo and an inexperienced coaching staff failing to establish a new standard in the post-Belichick era.
As The MMQB's Albert Breer explained Tuesday on Arbella Early Edition, part of the Patriots' struggles can be attributed to an unusually small number of employees across multiple departments in New England. Belichick kept a notoriously small staff while handling several responsibilities himself, and it appears that staff wasn't built out in a meaningful way under Mayo last season.
"They are so far behind the rest of the league in so many different ways," Breer said, as seen in the video player above. "Everybody who comes here and sees it for themselves is like, 'Where's all the people? Where's this department? Where's that department?' Bill did so much for so long that they were able to get away with being very, very small."
As Breer explained, the Patriots' transition from the old Belichick model to a more "modern" organizational setup won't happen overnight.
"It's gonna take time to build that out," Breer said. "That's why, when I look at it and I hear people say, 'You add these free agents and then it'll just be fixed,' no, they've got a long way to go as far as building that organization out and building the football operation out to catch up with where the Niners are, the Rams are, the Ravens are, the Eagles are. The most forward-thinking organizations in the league are so far beyond them from a staff standpoint."
As our Patriots Insider Phil Perry pointed out, New England's football operation also needs modernizing in other areas.
"Even from a technology standpoint, from some of the things I've heard, they are behind the rest of the NFL," Perry said. "They are starting to creep back -- last year they added the virtual reality technology so that the quarterbacks could get the additional reps they needed -- that was new, that needed investment.
"But when it comes to some of the technology in terms of how the playbook comes together and how the coaches can teach their players -- there are little things like that where they still have room to grow."
New head coach Mike Vrabel will be tasked with righting that ship, and he's already brought in two key figures -- vice president of player personnel Ryan Cowden and VP of football operations and strategy John Streicher, both of whom worked with him in Tennessee -- to oversee football operations alongside executive VP of player personnel Eliot Wolf.
One of Vrabel's most important tasks -- aside from adding an influx of talent in free agency and the NFL Draft -- will be to convince Patriots owner Robert Kraft to make significant investments outside player acquisition.
"Mike, (Streicher), Cowden, Eliot, they know how far they have to go," Breer said. "Now, the good news is, I do think Mike's got some juice with ownership to get some of that stuff built out, and they've already brought in a player development person to help start to build out that department. But make no mistake about it: This is an archaic organization that needs updating.
"I think they had a group last year that didn't have the juice to get a lot of the changes that were needed pulled off, and now I think they've got some guys coming in who might have a little bit more sway with ownership to get them to open the pocketbooks."
Considering the Patriots ranked 31st out of 32 NFL teams in the latest NFLPA report card (with "Ownership" receiving a D grade), Kraft has plenty of motivation to invest more in his team.