The Top 12 Worst Games of 2021: Just Missed the Cut

Dis-Honorable Mention

Giants at Dolphins, Week 13: Why You Shouldn’t Hire Belichick Protégés

Front offices just don’t learn. We’ve now seen former Belichick assistants with every conceivable coaching background fail at the NFL level: offensive coordinator (Charlie Weis, Bill O’Brien, Josh McDaniels), defensive coordinator (Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini, Matt Patricia), special teams coordinator (Joe Judge), linebackers coach (Al Groh), wide receivers coach (also Joe Judge?), sort-of-everything? coach (Brian Flores), even college head coach (Nick Saban – though he was originally Browns DC from 1991 to 1995). In that spirit, let’s talk about two of these Belichickian tough guys who admirably masqueraded as culture changers before being shown the door this offseason. Enter Brian Flores and Joe Judge, two key pieces of the worst Patriots team to win the Super Bowl since 2001, who each endeavored and succeeded in imitating the Patriots’ Super Bowl 53 offense.

It's truly amazing how similarly former Belichick coaches seem to fall from grace once their tenure as HC of insert-troubled-new-team-here starts to sour. Just look at these two: after promising moments in their first seasons (or two, in Flores’ case) that saw their largely undermanned defenses put up surprisingly stifling performances that spoke to solid coaching and opportunistic turnover generation, they tumbled in their final seasons, with their corresponding offenses not only failing to develop alongside their defenses but actually plummeting to league cellar levels. The Dolphins managed to at least tread water with Tua and a fairly respectable receiving corps, finishing 17th in total passing and a not-great-not-terrible 20th in point differential. But that’s the only good thing you can say about this Dolphins squad offensively, as they finishd behind teams like the Steelers, Browns and Saints in total points for and behind rebuild merchants Chicago and Detroit in total yards. However bad the Dolphins were when you stack them up against other mediocre teams, though, they look like the 2004 Colts compared to their fellow former Pats patsies in New York. Joe Judge’s Giants squad was disgusting on offense, finishing with more turnovers than touchdowns. They threw 15 touchdowns to 20 interceptions, scored 8 rushing touchdowns and lost 10 fumbles, and finished with fewer total yards than the Buccaneers’ passing yardage total. 345 fewer yards, in fact.

            Much of this repellent material is due to a hideous 6-game losing streak the G-Men embarked on to end the season, during which they scored more than 10 points only once (they lost that game, 37-21, to the Chargers) and averaged 232 yards and nine points a game. It should come as no surprise that they kicked off this ill-fated HMS Terror-esque expedition with a voyage down to South Beach where they met Judge’s old buddy Brian Flores. The results were predictably sickening, and led to one of the most boring games you are likely to ever see. The reason this game sucked so bad is simple: Patriot-style football, which both of these teams were trying to play, is inherently boring if you don’t have a good quarterback, and not only did these teams not have good quarterbacks, they had barely average and pitifully far from average passers in Tua Tagovailoa and Mike Glennon (sorry Tua – that’s the last time we’ll mention you and Glen Non in the same breath). The comparison ends there though – these were two quarterbacks on the same field at the same time, and they shared nothing else in common this day. The gameplan for Tua looked sound, if not adrenalizing – the Dolphins largely nickeled-and-dimed their way down the field, Tua’s longest pass being only 25 yards. But he was on the money all day long, going an outstanding 30 for 41 against a Giants defense that at least on paper had a solid secondary. Flores did not ask his young QB to annihilate the Giants deep downfield, and despite averaging below 6 YPA he looked more than effective. Glennon did not. It looked like his coach was asking him to win the game by himself, a fact evidenced by a bizarrely low amount of called HB runs by NY – only 17 for the whole game. In contrast, Glennon dropped back 47 times – MIKE GLENNON! – and failed to crack the 200 yard mark. Subtracting the 3 sacks he took for 28 yards (he’s great at wringing every possible lost yard out of sacks), that clocks in at a deeply meager 4.25 yards per attempt, a figure about as far from the 2021 league average of 6.6 YPA as South Beach is from the dimly-lit Giants meeting room where someone decided that going pass-heavy against one of the league’s better defenses while fielding one of the NFL’s worst offensive lines was a bright idea. This was not a Professor Moriarty-level ingenious master plan on offense, to say the least.

            At least Kenny Golladay showed up in this game. By “showed up,” we mean caught a pass. That can’t be said about all of his games in 2021. But even if he did go only 3 for 37, he fared better through the air than Saquon Barkley, who somehow caught 6 passes for 19 yards. How in God’s name? And his long catch was 11 yards! The Dolphins receivers fared far better, with Jaylen Waddle and Devante Parker each catching at least 81% of their targets and cracking at least 62 yards (by contrast, Evan Engram caught 4 for 61 and led the Giants in receiving). We hate to put it all on the Giants’ passing game, but the Dolphins’ running game was doing their own team no favors, with their 25 carries for 68 combined yards failing to truly provide a counterbalance to Tua’s tactful, controlled aerial attack. If we learned nothing else from this game, we learned that Tua is better than Mike Glennon. Not exactly news. But what else can you say about a game where the teams were even in 3rd-down conversions (6 each), almost even in first downs (16 for New York to 19 for Miami), and even in penalties (3 apiece)? Flores may not have accomplished all he wanted in Miami, but he proved one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: he can play winning Belichick ball when his opponent is another mediocre Belichick ex-disciple. May we all be so fortunate. And just to throw one more doomlike Jared Harris reference in:

Jared Harris, probably describing the Mike Glennon Giants.