The 10 Worst Patriots Moments of 2023: No. 10

Starting the offseason countdown off in style!

Welcome to the first of our Top 10 Worst Patriots Moments of 2023!

In case you missed it last week, I’m going to be deviating a bit from my usual offseason countdown of the Top 20 Most Memorable Patriots Moments of the previous season. The sad reality is that there was just no way I was going to be able to squeeze 20 good plays out of the rotten fruit that was last year, so rather than make wild, insane leapism I’ve decided to alternate between the 10 worst moments of 2023 and the 10 best. And since the saying goes “save the best for last,” I thought it appropriate to kick off the countdown on the lousy side and go from there.

Starting at Number 10, something that should have tipped us all off that maybe 2023 wasn’t going to be New England’s year.

10. Marcus Jones, Christian Gonzalez, and Matthew Judon are all lost for the season by Week 4.

The 2021 Patriots were a pleasant surprise, and the 2022 Patriots were an unpleasant one. We were all excited for Mac Jones to continue to progress in 2022 as the team continued to gel, but what we got instead was a lot of inconsistency and a disappointing 8-9 finish. However, the general consensus was that 2022 was more of a hiccup than a trend, as the offensive issues seemed fixable and the Patriots were bringing one of the best defenses in the NFL back for the 2023 campaign.

The thought process was that if the offense could just be decent, the D was strong enough to put the team in position to win games. After all, Matthew Judon was a beast, and the Patriots seemed to strike gold in the third round of the 2022 Draft with utility player and DB Marcus Jones, who would now have a full year of professional play under his belt. Plus, the top cornerback in the 2023 Draft, Christian Gonzalez, somehow fell to the Pats at 17, setting the team up to once again have one of the best defensive units in the NFL.

And maybe they would have been, if even one of those three guys made it past Week 5.

In Week 2, Marcus Jones suffered a torn labrum making a play against the Miami Dolphins and was placed on Injured Reserve. Perhaps taking the phrase “watch and learn” too literally, Christian Gonzalez then suffered the exact same injury just two weeks later against the Dallas Cowboys. In a single month, New England lost two of their best corners, including an extremely promising rookie.

But hey, at least the pass rush was still solid, right?

In that same Week 4 Cowboys game, Judon tore his bicep, which also ended his season. He had already registered four sacks and a safety on the year and was well on pace to duplicate his 2022 Pro-Bowl season. But just like that, Judon — and any real semblance the Patriots had of a pass rush — was gone.

As was any real semblance of the Patriots making any noise in 2023.

Less than a quarter of the way through the year, and the three best players on the defense were out. The unit simply never recovered. They didn’t scare anyone, they couldn’t close out drives, and while it was still a very solid unit from a big picture standpoint, the number of times they needed a stop and couldn’t get one kept on growing.

It didn’t help, of course, that the offense never gave them a break, going three and out on the regular or turning the ball over to force the D to defend a short field.

This isn’t even touching the injuries on the offensive side of the ball, Kendrick Bourne tore his ACL in Week 8, and Rhamondre Stevenson was lost for the year in Week 13. Bourne and Mondre were more or less the only consistent weapons the Patriots had, and neither finished the year. However, by the time Bourne and Stevenson went out, the season was already long gone.

In retrospect, we all should have taken three top contributors going down so early as an omen that this season was doomed from the start. Every team suffers injuries every season, and it’s never an excuse at the end of the day, but to lose such impact players before the Halloween decorations even went up was just a massive kick in the crotch. Our reward for the rest of the year was watching quarterbacks constantly escape the pocket, receivers getting open, and an almost total dearth of clutch defensive plays. That the D was still as good as it was in spite of the holes left by these guys is a testament to what they’re capable of, and it’s also a reason that there’s some hope that next season will represent some serious progress towards gaining some respectability. But none of that mattered in October of 2023, and so I thought this would be a good way to begin the suckfest by ranking the injuries here at No. 10.

Next up, we’ll be going to Happy Land for the 10th best moment of the year. I see no need to bombard everyone with depressing memories for the next few months.