This was the game by the defense that I’ve been waiting a long time for. Were there some mistakes? Of course. But overall, the Patriots defense played with their best intensity of the season and demonstrated why they can be as good as they want to be when they play within the system.
The big headline coverage-wise in this one was a shift to a lot more zone coverage, with a lot of special attention being paid to the middle of the field as I noted was a critical area in my gameplan article. Early in the game the Patriots played a lot of Cover 2 zone, which had safeties over the tops of the wide receivers and a flood of three zone players right in the flat.
They mixed in some man coverage, but this was primarily a zone game as they shifted to more Cover 3 in the second half. It was a good lesson for me from a football study perspective. I’ve always believe man coverage is the only way to go in today’s NFL but this game showed how effective zone can be when it’s executed well.
We’re finally seeing what we expected this season. An amoeba defense that can flood the line of scrimmage and have any number of guys drop or rush. Maybe they just needed some time but everyone is working together now and the results were obvious. Boil it down to the simple “Do Your Job” because that’s what everyone on the Patriots defense was doing.
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