Patriots have deep-seated, and vexing, problems

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KANSAS CITY -- The Patriots poured a bucket of cold water on New England’s collective head last night.

The whole “they’ll figure it out” mantra? That was just whistling past the graveyard.

The team that got poleaxed in the second half at Miami? The one that beat an Adrian Peterson-less Vikings team even though the offense looked meager? The one that couldn’t do jack against the punchless Raiders and was clawing to stay ahead in the final minute?

That’s the real Patriots right now.

We’ve -- actually, I should only speak for myself -- I have become so used to this team and its head coach quickly diagnosing and remedying its ills that you just don’t expect bad football to last. Look at the recent past. A blowout loss to Cleveland in 2010? They still wind up as the AFC’s No. 1 seed. A 2-3 start in 2012? Still in the AFC Championship Game. A disgusting offensive start in 2013? Third in the NFL in points scored by the end of the year.

But this isn’t temporary.

It is what it is. And it’s pretty bad. We can try and figure out if they’re worse now than they were in 2009, or they were at points in 2006, or even at points in 2002. But really, what difference does it make? The Patriots aren’t coming back to the pack. They’re in the middle of it.

How can a team can go from being the second-best in the AFC playing without key players like Jerod Mayo, Vince Wilfork and Rob Gronkowski, get those guys back, and be worse? After they added Darrelle Revis? With another season under the combined belt of the promising rookie class of 2013 -- Kenbrell Thompkins, Aaron Dobson and Jamie Collins?

What the hell, here’s a theory. The offensive line -- whose middling talent was covered up for by Tom Brady and Dante Scarnecchia over the years -- lost one guy too many when Logan Mankins got dealt. So now there’s a menagerie of middling and inexperienced players (and middling might be overstating it for guys like Jordan Devey and Marcus Cannon) getting thrown into a fat-guy stew and plunked down in front of Brady. And Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels know the line’s not good enough, so they dress every guy and hope they hit on a group that works while game-planning with the worst-case scenario in mind that all five offensive linemen might seize up at any given time and Brady will be buried under 1,200 pounds of meat.

Brady? He’s now jumpy about getting rid of the ball before he gets smoked. He’s throwing before guys are open. He’s throwing to guys who aren’t open. He’s throwing -- on Monday night -- to the other team.

And he’s throwing in the direction of a tight end who seems to be in early decline thanks to his injuries (Gronk) and a really, really nice slot receiver in Julian Edelman. Can’t use Thompkins or Dobson; don’t have time to let them get open (which each can do). Instead, since protection can’t be trusted, Brady’s left to throw screens and dumpoffs to a complementary back like Shane Vereen and see what magic he can do, which, compared to Danny Woodhead and Kevin Faulk, is not that much. Brandon LaFell? Third receiver working hard, but nobody to feature. Danny Amendola? As necessary as a pocket square.

So there’s your offense. Some nice role players who can be effective if the quarterback can do his thing, which he cannot (as yet, and who knows when) because the team screwed the pooch on the offensive line.

Defensively, they will play better than they did against the Chiefs. But their interior defensive line isn’t very good, and with all the personnel gyrations attempting to get the best guys on the field running the right scheme at the right time, sometimes the whole thing overheats. Too many bells, too many whistles, too much effort given to confusing the opposing quarterback instead of scaring the crap out of him. Just let the damn guys play.

Even then, it looks like they’ll have to be keeping teams under 20 to give the Patriots a shot.

The Patriots have seven offensive touchdowns. One was led by Jimmy Garoppolo in extreme garbage time last night. One was led by Brady in semi-garbage time last night. Another came on a 1-yard drive after an interception return in Minnesota.

So Brady has led four touchdown drives in competitive situations so far in 2014. And two of those came in the first half of the first game.

“There’s not much that we’re doing well enough on a consistent basis to score points,” Brady acknowledged. “Run game, pass game, consistently when we have to throw it, when we have to run it, convert on third down, red area, it’s all a problem. Like I said, I wish there was an easy answer. I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I think we’ve got to fight our way through it and see what kind of team we have. But I don’t think there’s going to be any easy games for us, not that we’d ever expect that in the NFL, but we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

Tom Brady’s been able to cover up the Patriots ills really well for a long time. But these first four games have shown the Pats pushed it too far and got a little too cute with their personnel. It caught up to them. And they’re all paying the price. Especially the future Hall of Famer.

They’ll get better. But they may not get good.

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