lexrageorge said:
Since someone brought up the Pats defense and their 4.9 YPC against, I'd thought I would do a quick game-by-game summary. The following is the NE defense's yards per carry against
Steelers: 5.4
Bills: 5.9
Jax: 2.9
Dallas: 4.2
Indy: 5.5
The Pats run defense was not particularly good against either the Steelers or the Bills. Things improved quite a bit against Jacksonville and Dallas. A lot of Dallas' rushing yards came on one drive in the 3rd quarter, the one in which the Cowboys went for the gimme FG on 4th-and-short to make it 20-6. Other than that, Randle was relatively quiet.
I'm still not sure what to make of the run defense against Indy. Frank Gore had a good game (6 YPC), but he seemed to have little impact on the Colts fortunes beyond the first Colts scoring drive. He had some good runs when the Colts got the ball in the 3rd quarter, but the fake fake punt travesty resulted in the drive stalling anyway.
I think it bears watching, and let's hope that Sheard's injury is not too serious. This weekend will be the interesting test.
I think a lot of this has to do with BB's strategy of taking away the opposing team's number one option. For example, it was pretty clear against Indy that BB was hyper focused on eliminating TY Hilton and Coby Fleener who basically did nothing (Hilton had 43 of his 69 yards in the 4th quarter when Indy was down 34-21, and Fleener had a total of 3 catches for 20 yards after having 9 receptions the week before) , and thus, there were holes available for Gore to exploit. In the Pittsburgh game, they were playing without Bell, and so BB put the focus on stopping the passing game and Big Ben, opening holes for DeAngelo Williams. On the flipside, BB punished the Jacksonville running backs, and put the onus on Bortles to beat them, and likewise with Dallas and Brandon Weeden (eliminating Witten). The Bills game is the one real anomaly, but it's skewed a bit because Tyrod Taylor had 43 yards on the ground himself, at an average of 8.6 pc, and a lot of the damage was done by the Bills when the game was pretty much out of hand.
I think BB will have the team focused this week on eliminating Ivory and Brandon Marshall, and forcing the Jets to beat them with guys like Decker and whoever the hell is playing tight end for them now. It's this extreme focus on taking away opponents strengths that leads to us scratching our heads when guys like Scott Chandler, or Dustin Keller or DeAngelo Williams put up big numbers against us out of nowhere.
I also think folks need to stop worrying so much about the Patriots defense early in games. The game threads are littered with people freaking out on the first couple defensive series about how we can't stop the run, or we can't get a pass rush. It's like folks haven't realized by now that BB doesn't throw many blitzes or exotic coverage packages out early on. Just like a lot of teams script their first 15 or so offensive plays before a game starts, BB seems to use that time on defense to get a feel for what the opponents are going to do. Then he writes his little notes with his pencil in his little notebook, adjusts and reacts to the opponent and voila, Pats win. It's a script that has played out many, many times and often times results in a long drive and points for the opponent early on, and very little thereafter.
Until the Patriots start losing games at home with any regularity, I have a hard time getting nervous about any of these games at Gillette. I was much, much more concerned about last week against Indy than I am this one, and I hope that's not misguided, but it's the truth. Having been present for literally hundreds of games, including dozens in which I heard folks talk about how they were uneasy or nervous pre-game, that resulted in the Patriots dominating the opponent and half the place filtering out in the third quarter, it's just gotten to the point where I'm probably way too confident about each game at home. If you eliminate the games like the last one last season, where the Pats were resting starters, does anyone know off hand how many games Brady and BB have lost in the last 14 years at home?