At this point, you know most of the names by now: Isaiah Wynn, N’Keal Harry, Jordan Richards, Cyrus Jones, Duke Dawson, Tyquan Thronton, Joejuan Williams, Chase Winovich, Devin Asiasi, and Dalton Keene.

Several talents who slipped through their grasp include stud wideouts Deebo Samuel and A.J. Brown — both taken within 20 picks of Harry during the 2019 NFL Draft.

Despite some promise found in the 2023 NFL Draft (headlined by Christian Gonzalez and sixth-round pick Demario Douglas), New England’s 2022 draft class is looking like a disaster — be it reaching for guard Cole Strange in the first round, Thornton’s lackluster returns and the drama involving Jack Jones before the cornerback was cut in November. 

Belichick hasn’t re-signed a player he drafted in the first three rounds since 2013 (Duron Harmon), with New England unable to add (and retain) star talent internally.

Reportedly playing a part in Tom Brady’s exit

Good things don’t last forever, especially in sports.

But considering that Brady won a Super Bowl and tossed 108 touchdowns over his final three seasons with the Buccaneers, the case can be made that New England’s dynasty had at least another run or two left in it before Brady made the move to Florida.

While Belichick’s demanding approach with Brady played an instrumental role in the quarterback’s ascension as the greatest of all time, that stringent mindset carried over into Brady’s final seasons — eventually leading to a franchise-altering fracture.

“During his final years in New England, Brady was sick of being antagonized by his head coach,” Chad Graff of The Athletic wrote Thursday in a piece detailing Belichick’s exit. “Belichick was quick to critique Brady, often doing so in front of the entire team. That’s part of how he got so much success out of Brady, who was at his best when he played with a chip on his shoulder. That relationship yielded three MVP awards and nine Super Bowl appearances.

“But day after day, month after month, year after year, that lack of recognition wore on Brady, who vented to Kraft. At one point in his final season with the Patriots, Brady bemoaned that he was, “the most miserable 8-0 quarterback in league history.”

Yes, running it back with a 43-year-old Brady in 2020 might have been viewed as a short-term measure for a franchise staring at the inevitable rebuild.

But keeping Brady happy for at least a few more years would have yielded stronger returns for this franchise — and would have bought Belichick more time to try and map out a post-Brady plan.

Not having a plan in place after Brady’s exit

Belichick, like many others, might have thought Brady was at the end of his rope by 2019.

But even though he was ultimately proven false, Belichick could have assuaged the pain of Brady’s departure by way of having a succession plan in place. Granted, New England did have one brewing after drafting Jimmy Garoppolo in the second round of the 2014 NFL Draft — but that plan fell to the wayside due to Brady’s continued defiance of Father Time.

But by the time Brady left New England, the only quarterbacks it had on the roster were Jarrett Stidham and journeyman Cody Kessler. 

Months into free agency, New England finally signed Cam Newton to a one-year deal in July 2020, with the declining quarterback struggling to serve as the answer for a team that ultimately went 7-9.

New England’s search for a franchise quarterback has continued on ever since Brady left Foxborough.

Breaking Mac Jones

Sure, you can make the case that Jones was not the answer in New England — at least not a top-10 signal caller capable of elevating a sub-standard supporting cast.

But there was an awful lot to like about the Patriots’ presumed QB1 for the future in 2021, when Jones earned a Pro Bowl nod and finished second behind Bengals wideout Ja’Marr Chase for the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year.

We’ll delve more into it below about the various personnel decisions that led to Jones’ crumbling, but New England ultimately brewed up a perfect storm that made a first-round QB virtually unplayable by the end of this season.

Jones is what he is: an accurate pocket passer who can execute off of short throws and RPO plays when given time and space to operate.

But after shuffling through three offensive coordinators in three years, a dreadful offensive line hastily put together due to roster mismanagement and a dearth of high-end receiving weapons, Jones was destined to fail in New England.

It got so bad that Jones asked for help outside of the organization following the 2022 season, with the results continuing to regress in 2023. 

Now, another coach will be tasked for finding and developing the next franchise QB in Foxborough. 

Installing Matt Patricia as OC in 2022

Belichick and the Patriots were dealt a bad hand in 2022 after longtime OC Josh McDaniels packed up and left for Las Vegas — taking a handful of coaches and execs with him.

But rather than search for another proven offensive-minded coach, Belichick went against the grain and installed longtime defensive coach Matt Patricia as the team’s de-facto play-caller and offensive-line coach. Joe Judge — who primarily worked with special teams during his first stint in Foxborough — also took over as an offensive assistant and quarterbacks coach.

The results were nothing short of a disaster, with Jones and the entire Patriots offense regressing en route to an 8-9 season.

After a discouraging training camp where Patricia’s offense struggled to take off, New England opted for a simplified, cookie-cutter offense that didn’t play to Jones’ strengths (especially as far as RPOs), while showing a lack of adjustments to whatever defenses was throwing at them. Key playmakers like Kendrick Bourne were mired in the doghouse, while Jones’ promising poise withered away.

“A lot of guys would ask, ‘Well, what’s going to happen if (the defense) does this?’ And you would see they hadn’t really accounted for that yet,” a Patriots source told Andrew Callahan of the Boston Herald last January. “And they’d say, ‘We’ll get to that when we get to that.’ That type of attitude got us in trouble.”

Despite a blowout loss to the Bills in the AFC Wild Card Game in January 2022, the writing seemed to be on the wall that New England was building up another winning roster entering the 2022 campaign. Instead, things splintered apart. 

Reportedly not giving Bill O’Brien autonomy to pick his coaching staff

There was plenty of optimism surrounding the Patriots last offseason, especially after New England hired Bill O’Brien as the team’s offensive coordinator.

With an experienced play-caller like O’Brien, the hope was there that Jones and New England’s offense was due for a bounce-back showing.

But, things managed to get even worse.

New England ended the year tied with the 2-15 Carolina Panthers for the worst offense in the league, averaging just 13.9 points per game. As noted by Callahan, one out of every seven possessions for the 2023 Patriots ended in a turnover. 

Yes, Jones and the rest of the Patriots players on the offensive side of the ball underwhelmed to an extreme degree. 

But according to a report from The Boston Herald, O’Brien also wasn’t offered the opportunity to completely retool New England’s offensive personnel after taking the reins last winter. 

“According to league sources, some assistants came to believe O’Brien wanted to clean house and build his own offensive staff upon arriving in January, but Belichick denied him,” Callahan wrote in a breakdown of New England’s 2023 season. “Belichick allowed one hire, [Will] Lawing, who replaced ex-tight ends coach Nick Caley. To onlookers, a clear hierarchy developed with O’Brien and his assistants: there was Lawing and assistant quarterbacks coach Evan Rothstein, then everyone else.”

With O’Brien given control of an offense with a largely entrenched staff in place, the Herald reported that New England’s offense found itself mired in the mud in short order. 

“O’Brien also pulled the offense closer to him, running more unit meetings –which involve all offensive players — than Belichick and Patricia had the year before,” Callahan wrote. “Consequently, positional meetings became scarce, sources said, which limited individual time shared between players and their position coaches. Most everything flowed through O’Brien.”

Creating a mess at offensive line

New England’s offensive-line woes was the spark that eventually burned the Patriots’ 2023 season to the ground.

Be it injuries, lackluster play, and an unwillingness to shore up key vacancies on the roster during the offseason, New England struggled to keep both Jones and Bailey Zappe off the turf in 2023.

By signing two veterans in Calvin Anderson and Riley Reiff in free agency, Belichick and the Patriots put a Band-Aid over a massive fault in a dam — leading to ugly results.

Anderson was sidelined for all of training camp due to illness, eventually only making two starts in 2023. In two starts, he coughed up two sacks. Reiff only played one game for New England, with his rough returns during training camp prompting the Patriots to shift him over to guard at one point.

With little tackle depth available, New England had to trade for two tackles in Vederian Lowe and Tyrone Wheatley Jr. at the end of the preseason. Both did little to reverse New England’s fortunes.  

“If you pay Ted Karras, who played a hell of a season at left guard before he left to go to Cincinnati, I think that solves an issue,” Trent Brown said in an interview with NESN.com’s Dakota Randall earlier this week. “I think if you don’t trade Shaq Mason, who’s an All-Pro guard, that solves an issue. I don’t think it was necessary for those moves to be made. And then to not really replace them with guys of their caliber.”

Not bolstering New England’s offense with proven weapons

Rather than further facilitate a bounce-back season for Jones and New England’s offense in 2023, Belichick instead focused his sights on other areas.

New England’s first three picks in the 2023 NFL Draft were all defensive players, while dedicating seven roster spots to special-teams personnel on what was another underwhelming unit this season.

It’s been a recurring trend for New England, where Belichick and the Patriots have either neglected offensive weapons or outright whiffed on the ones that they did sign.

An offseason spending spree in 2021 did land key contributors like Judon and Hunter Henry, but it also brought in Nelson Agholor (68 catches, 835 yards in two seasons) and Jonnu Smith (55 catches, 539 yards).

For those keeping track, Smith reeled in 50 catches for 582 yards this season for Atlanta, while Agholor added 35 catches for 381 yards and four touchdowns with the Ravens.

Instead of retaining Jakobi Meyers (71 catches, 807 yards and eight touchdowns with Las Vegas) last winter, New England let the dependable wideout walk and signed JuJu Smith-Schuster to a three-year deal.

Smith-Schuster’s first season in New England was a disaster (29 catches, 260 yards), while New England ranked last this season in generating 20-plus yard pass plays (37), according to Patriots.com’s Evan Lazar. 

Signing a proven wideout like DeAndre Hopkins (75 catches, 1,057 yards, seven touchdowns with Tennessee) would have helped out New England. The Patriots have not had a 1,000-yard pass-catcher since Julian Edelman in 2019.