Pats hope to get Edelman more involved

Julian Edelman’s numbers are down. Not all of them — with eight more yards, he’ll set a career-high in passing yards for a season — but the ones in which Edelman has made a name for himself as a receiver during his New England Patriots career.

The Patriots offense took a huge step back last week and, for the third week in a row, Edelman wasn’t really a part of the game plan. He’s had 18 targets the last three games with seven catches, a far cry from when Tom Brady would drop back and it felt like there was a 50% chance the ball was going his way.

It’s difficult to pinpoint one reason why this is happening. There is a multitude of reasons for Edelman's lack of production this season.

The easiest answer is Father Time. Edelman’s 34 and has played every single game of his career like it’s going to be his last time on a football field. It’s a lot easier to shake off or recover from bumps and bruises in your 20s; at 30 things change and approaching 35, it’s much harder.

Doing that is exactly what made Edelman who he is and it’s hard to see his style of play changing. Because of this, it seems probable that offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels is trying to avoid Edelman destroying himself by midseason so he can have him going when the games start to get more important.

Of course, with the Patriots sitting at 2-3 right now, all games are important.

“The best way to play offense is for everybody to contribute and find ways for everybody to contribute and that’s certainly my job. I’m going to try the best I can to get him involved, but also to get production from all the skill positions on the field," McDaniels said. “Every offensive unit is always better when there’s a lot of people that are contributing and you’ve got to stop a lot of things. Whether it’s our receivers, backs, our tight ends, the more guys that are producing and making plays and creating first downs and opportunities to make bigger plays, the better off we’re going to be.”

“Josh knows me very well. I’ve played under him for the past nine, 10 years. Whatever he asks me to do, I’m going to do,” Edelman said on Friday. “That’s my job as a player — just do what they ask me do to and let them worry about the grand scheme, big picture, whatever, and me try to go out and worry about continually trying to improve my game and worry about what’s on my plate at this moment.”

Building chemistry with Cam Newton is and was going to take time. Newton hasn’t had a receiver like Edelman since playing with Steve Smith in his first three years in Carolina.

In Week 2, it looked like whatever they needed to bond happened. Newton picked apart a lackluster Seattle secondary and Edelman made eight catches for 179 yards.

The next week he wasn’t a part of the game plan. The Patriots won the game on the ground, so that made sense. But then the next two weeks happened — no Newton vs. Kansas City and no practice leading into the Denver game, where Edelman had six targets and caught two balls for eight yards.

This week, Edelman gets to go back to work and a chance to get back to building something with Newton with hopes that the lack of practice has been the missing piece.

“Never thought it would come to this, but I was pretty excited to go out and practice and have a normal week,” Edelman said. “It’s a huge part of how you build confidence, especially with a young unit and a young team.”

It might fix the offense, but it’s not going to fix Edelman’s overall numbers. If he makes it through the season healthy, it’ll be the first full season he’s played without getting at least 90 catches since 2013. There’s a chance he doesn’t reach the 74-catch mark he had in 12 games in 2018 and, as scary as it sounds, an outside chance he doesn’t reach the 61 he had in 2019, when he played in nine.

A lot of that will be decided by how the Patriots elect to use him going forward.

"Certainly Julian’s always a big part of what we’ve got to try to do and I’ve got to do a good job of trying to get him going, McDaniels said. “In the grand scheme of things, all of us need to do our jobs well and try to get contributions from everybody to be the most effective we can be.”

For Edelman, that might mean fewer snaps. It might mean fewer targets and catches.

Whatever it is, Edelman doesn’t seem to care. What he does care about is the Patriots being 2-3 and what they can do to make that improve.

“What we have to do is try to focus on what we can control and what we can learn from those things and try to really hone down on our preparation process and our practicing and build our confidence through that and go out and try to play our best football in this upcoming weekend,” Edelman said. “That’s how it goes. It’s not the first time we’ve ever lost a game here. It definitely sucks, it is what it is, but now you’ve got to put that in the past, have a short memory and really go out and try to focus on what you can control.”