Kayshon Boutte questioning Pats’ play-calling adds more fuel to fire originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Jerod Mayo wasn’t the only member of the New England Patriots who took an apparent shot at offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt after Sunday’s loss to the Arizona Cardinals.

Shortly after Mayo indirectly pointed the blame at Van Pelt for not calling designed Drake Maye runs on failed third-and-1 and fourth-and-1 plays deep in Arizona territory, Patriots wide receiver Kayshon Boutte stood at his locker and shared his own criticism of Van Pelt’s play-calling, lamenting New England’s failure to find success against the Cardinals’ man-to-man coverage.

“We knew they were gonna play man the whole game,” Boutte told reporters, including our Patriots Insider Phil Perry. “But I feel like it’s disrespectful when they go man first quarter, you know? So I feel like we need to be better at attacking that instead of being shy about it.

“It’s no surprise that we know what they were going to do. So, just got to start faster. We started down 13-0 and waited to get going, but we’ve got to get going early.”

Perry then asked if Boutte’s “being shy about it” comments were related to play-calling, to which Boutte responded, “Yeah.”

“I can’t control none of that, honestly,” Boutte said when asked what he can do in that situation. “We’ve all got to talk about it. It’s not one person who makes the decision on anything like that. But we really all have to sit down and talk about it.”

It’s one thing for Van Pelt to catch a stray from Mayo, who walked back his comments Monday and insisted he and Van Pelt are on the same page. But players openly questioning Van Pelt’s play-calling — and in Boutte’s case, his overall game plan — is a bad look for all parties involved.

For starters, Boutte finished the game with just two catches for 19 yards on five targets with one drop that led directly to a Cardinals interception and has just 27 receptions for 349 yards on in his second NFL season. So, he doesn’t exactly have the longevity or resume to be publicly second-guessing his OC.

From a bigger-picture perspective, however, this isn’t the first time Boutte has questioned the Patriots’ offensive strategy, and the fact that he feels empowered to criticize his coach in public doesn’t reflect well on the team’s leadership and cohesiveness.

The Patriots have plenty of on-field issues to fix after falling to 3-11 with Sunday’s loss. But if they want to fix those issues, they need to be rowing in the same direction, and that hasn’t always been the case in 2024.