Poor Al Michaels.
The switch from NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” to Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football” has spelled a major downgrade in quality of games for the legendary broadcaster, and this week’s matchup between the Patriots and Steelers could be among the season’s worst.
Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett is injured with a high ankle sprain, meaning Mitch Trubisky is slated to start. And Patriots starter Mac Jones was finally permanently demoted for backup Bailey Zappe last week.
Patriots-Steelers looked like it had the potential to be a sneaky-good matchup with playoff implications when the season began. Now it’s fair to wonder if either team will actually reach the end zone in a game pitting two of the NFL’s worst offenses against each other.
Here are four Patriots players whose importance has grown as the season has gone along.
Expect starting running back Rhamondre Stevenson to be out weeks, if not the remainder of the season, with a high ankle sprain. That means a much bigger role for Elliott with no other workhorse back behind him on the 53-man roster.
Ty Montgomery is a running back/wide receiver hybrid who has mostly played on special teams this season, and recently added running back JaMycal Hasty is undersized at 5-foot-8, 205 pounds. The team does also have 2022 sixth-round pick Kevin Harris on the practice squad.
But expect most carries in Week 14 to go to Elliott, who has been solid but mostly unspectacular in his first season with the Patriots. He’s 47th out of 61 qualified running backs with 2.54 yards after carry per attempt. His 13 missed tackles forced ranks 43rd, and he has just seven carries of 10-plus yards this season.
These final five games will serve as an audition of sorts for Elliott as he enters free agency for the second straight offseason.
It was not a surprise to see Parker have his most productive game of the season in Zappe’s first start last week. In eight games in which Zappe has made appearances, Parker has been the Patriots’ most productive pass-catcher with Zappe under center as he’s caught 14 passes on 23 targets for 254 yards with a touchdown.
Parker received nine of Zappe’s 25 passing attempts in Sunday’s 6-0 loss to the Chargers, catching four of them for 64 yards. The Patriots’ next-most productive receiver, Elliott, caught four passes on five targets for 40 yards.
Parker has disappointed since signing a two-year contract extension with the Patriots in the offseason. His play could pick up, however, with Zappe taking over for Jones.
“DP is one of those guys who if you put it up there, he can go up and get it,” Zappe said Tuesday.
Peppers has not only been one of the Patriots’ best defensive playmakers this season, he’s also typically their last line of defense, leading the team in snaps at free safety.
The Patriots’ defense has dominated in general over the last three weeks. They’ve been stout at defending against big plays all season.
They’ve allowed the sixth-fewest explosive plays per game this season and the fourth-fewest explosive rushing plays. The 37 explosive passing plays they’ve allowed ranks 13th.
If you can still find humor in a 2-10 season, it was a little bit funny that in the same week that Matthew Wright was signed to the practice squad to provide competition at kicker, the Patriots’ offense never got close enough for Ryland to attempt a kick.
That’s really been an issue all season as the Patriots continue to evaluate the fourth-round rookie out of Maryland. He ranks 29th with 18 field goal attempts and 28th with just 14 extra point attempts. To put that into greater context, Browns kicker Dustin Hopkins leads the NFL with 33 field goal attempts. Dolphins kicker Jason Sanders leads the NFL with 49 extra point attempts. Ryland is 31st in total kicking attempts because the Patriots aren’t scoring enough touchdowns to get him extra point attempts or even getting close enough to kick field goals.
So, it would be nice for the Patriots to give Ryland a few chances to kick the ball Sunday against the Steelers to prove they don’t need to turn to a veteran like Wright.