Right now, Jacoby Brissett is essentially going to be the sacrificial lamb for the New England Patriots to start the 2024 NFL season: The Patriots’ offensive line just isn’t good, at all. And they do not want to put their 3rd overall pick Drake Maye behind it just to get him hurt. That’s how bad it is.
So Jacoby Brissett has to bear the brunt of this poor offensive line unit the Patriots can figure out what to do to maximize their protection.
And Brissett just has to have confidence in the offensive line.
This seems unfortunate for Brissett, that he has to be in such a position and this is what he is reduced to. But the reality is that you can’t feel too bad for him, because he had better opportunities before.
When Brissett was with the Colts in 2017 (when Andrew Luck got hurt), he had the opportunity to play 15 games – almost a full season. And he threw a whopping 13 touchdowns to 7 interceptions. Not very great.
Even then, luckily for him, Andrew Luck retired at the start of the 2019 season, giving Brissett the chance to legitmately be the QB of the future for them. After a 5-2 start, however, he and the team faded down the stretch and he only finished 18 touchdowns to 6 interceptions in a 15 game sample. An improvement, but not nearly the kind they had hoped for.
And in 2020, the Colts acquired old man Phillip Rivers (in his late 30s), who Brissett could not beat out in the pre-season, and Rivers led the Colts to an 11-5 record and playoff berth. This is what the Colts expected out of Brissett.
After a stint in Miami, Brissett got to start 11 games with the Cleveland Browns in 2022 while Deshaun Watson was suspended.
He went 4-7. He was actually pretty solid in this stint, playing the best football of his career. But even when you account for the close losses he had against the Jets that season, and the missed field goal against the Chargers, he still had games against the Patriots and Falcons where he didn’t play as well as he should have. And overall – that Browns offensive-line was good. And he had Amari Cooper and Nick Chubb who were healthy and played every game for them. To put it simply, the Browns offense led by Brissett should have arguably been more potent than they were. Look at what Flacco did in 2023 in his last 5 games, without even having Nick Chubb. Simply put, Brissett should have had a 2023 Dak Prescott-type season with the Browns that year, given the offensive cast he had around him.
What this shows you is that in the NFL, if you’re a QB, bad luck can often just be the result of you squandering good opportunities. If Brissett had played better in either of his Colts’ stints, or his Browns stint, he’d have gotten better opportunities. He could have literally been the guy in Indianapolis had he played better in 2019. He could have been traded to/signed to a good team with a chance to compete for a starting job had he played lights out with the Browns in 2022 or even just looked better in 2017 with the Colts.
But because he didn’t, he’s now been relegated to being a crash test dummy behind a bad offensive line.
