FOXBORO – Most people who tuned in to watch Tom Brady and the Patriots offense on Sunday against the Bills have called a code red on the passing game.

There was good reason. There’s one week left in the regular season, and Brady & Co. looked out of sorts. Without Josh Gordon, who was suspended indefinitely by the league, the passing offense went from decent to troubling.

The worry is that when the time comes for the Patriots to put up some big numbers during the postseason, when Brady has to go toe-to-toe with an elite offense, whether it’s Kansas City or the LA Chargers, the passing game won’t be there.

This was NBC commentator Rodney Harrison on Football Night in America prior to Sunday Night Football: “I don’t really like the Patriots. I’ve never seen Rob Gronkowski look like this. I’ve never seen Tom Brady look like this. I’m really worried about the New England Patriots. I wouldn’t be afraid to go into New England.”

Brady was 13-of-24 for 126 yards with two interceptions and a touchdown. Sometimes he looks fine. Other times, he looks nothing like the GOAT.

Ditto Gronk, who had no catches on three targets, and had one ball go through his hands for an interception.

After losing Gordon, this doesn’t look like an offense that can do much in the air. They can run. They beat the Bills with an awesome ground game that produced 273 yards with a four-headed attack. But they couldn’t get much done throwing the ball.

Asked Monday if he was confident his passing game was going to be able to deliver when he needed it the most, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels didn’t hesitate with his answer.

“I am. I mean, nobody is happy with what we did in the passing game yesterday, and it starts with me,” McDaniels said. “I have to do a better job of getting us in the right positions no matter what the defense is doing and then get our guys to execute it properly when we have our opportunities. We have good stretches this year when we’ve executed well in one phase or the other. And we’ve had some stretches where we’ve executed in both phases. Certainly the opponents deserve a lot of credit when we are disrupted . . . we have to work hard to try to improve those things as quickly as we can because we have a huge challenge coming up.”

McDaniels was essentially on panic control. He didn’t give any credence to the health concerns about Brady. Brady had been on the injury report with a knee problem. He wasn’t on the list last week.

Asked to comment on Brady’s recent dip in efficiency, McDaniels wouldn’t put it on the quarterback (injuries or otherwise). He made it a collective problem, while also crediting the defenses they’ve gone up against.

“There’s never one thing,” said McDaniels, “and again, I take that on my shoulders. That’s my responsibility. We try to be efficient in everything we do. We have to take care of the ball, which we haven’t done as well as we all would have liked the last few weeks. Whether we’re running the football, or throwing it . . . whatever it is, we need to all be on the same page. Everybody’s got to execute their job. Passing the ball against good defenses is never easy. It takes a lot of people to execute their assignments well to get it done well during the course of a game.”

McDaniels claimed there were no new challenges, and nothing new to the equation this year that would lead to Brady’s uncharacteristic numbers, or the offensive numbers as a whole, being down from last year.

“We have to do a better job, I have to do a better job of trying to get ourselves in the right positions, and our players executing the right things against whatever we get on defense,” said McDaniels. “We don’t have any excuses. We need to play better in every phase of our game. We can take care of the ball better, we can throw it better, we can catch it better, we can protect better, we can run it better than what we did yesterday, as productive as we were . . . the great thing is we have a conscientious group that wants to try to do things right.”

Neither Phillip Dorsett nor Chris Hogan were targeted at all. Hogan appears to be frustrated at the lack of usage, but McDaniels said Hogan hasn’t expressed any complaints to him directly.

“It’s a long season, there’s definitely stretches where guys are more involved, for one reason or another, than others,” said McDaniels. “I would be disappointed if guys that played a skill position didn’t want to contribute and help the team win by producing. The receiver, by nature, wants to catch the football. “

The only disappointment right now is the fear the offense won’t be able to deliver when the time comes. That’s never been the case with Brady running the show.