The Patriots defense didn’t quite turn in the near-perfect performance that I saw against Miami earlier in the year, but they were pretty close against the Vikings. Despite their road inconsistencies, no one can argue this isn’t a top-10 defense at home.
The addition of some murkiness to the third-and-longs was fun to see, as was some aggressive strategy (Cover 0 blitz!?), but those twists aren’t really what defines why these Patriots are good. They’re good because they’re once again fundamentally sound and all playing in sync. A defense that doesn’t give up big plays and doesn’t beat itself is hard to score more than 20 points. On this day they held Minnesota to just 10.
Now that we’re into December it’s not too much to expect the Pats to put their days of playing down to the competition on the road behind them. That starts with the defense, who showed perfect symmetry between coverage and pass rush to negate a talented Viking offense.
Here’s a bunch of rapid-fire thoughts on what I saw on the All-22.
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