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Patriots vs. Titans 2017 AFCDG

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuTxtPYnrOs

After the Tennessee Titans miracle comeback against the Chiefs, and the Jaguars snoozefest win over the Bills, the Patriots will face the Titans in the AFC Divisional Game next Saturday night at 8:15pm EST.

The two teams haven’t met in the playoffs since 2003, when Tom Brady took down league Co-MVP Steve McNair’s team in the divisional round as well. It was a nail-biting 17-14 win in arctic temperatures, reminiscent of the weather in New England the last couple weeks. Luckily the forecast doesn’t appear to be quite so frigid this time around.

Since that playoff game the two teams have met just four times, with the Pats winning all four by a combined 166 to 52.

Initial impressions? Well, I guess I’m glad it’s not the Chiefs, who had me petrified when they were rolling over the Titans early in the game on Saturday afternoon. Of course we all saw how they fell apart so I guess the Chiefs weren’t the threat I believed they were. They just matched up well and had some talented pieces that could give the Patriots key problems in key areas. But oh well, their season is over and now we have to deal with Marcus Mariota, who made all the plays down the stretch that the Chiefs couldn’t.

We’ll dive more into the matchup this week, but in terms of the big picture the Titans are a below average team in just about every metric. Yes, they’ve got some tough trench players on both sides of the ball. Tight end Delanie Walker led the team with 74 catches, while Derrick Henry had 744 yards rushing. The loss of Demarco Murray to an MCL tear hurt both on the ground (659 yards) and through the air (266 yards).

I know. You don’t want to get overconfident, nor feed the Shank Tomato Can narrative but the Pats should roll in this one as the Titans might be the most overmatched opponent in recent Patriots playoff history. Still, they’re a young team who will play with nothing to lose. Their season has already been made, with their coach picking up another year with the team after their previous upset win.

The Patriots won’t care of course. They’ll lock in on the Titans like they’re an AFC favorite. It may lack some excitement but a playoff game is a playoff game and that’s why we write all them blogs. Let’s do our best to get fired up. Yay.

Historical Stat Comparisons for 2017 Patriots

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Upon further review, I’m having a tough time putting this Patriots team in historical context as far as the stats go. One advantage of blogging solely about the Pats for the past decade and keeping detailed stats on each season, is that I’m able to quickly look back and compare how each season stacks up against those that came before it.

2017 feels like a mix of a lot of the bad seasons, but with just enough sprinkling of the good seasons that this year feels totally unpredictable to me.

Let’s dive in on both sides of the ball and try to find some common threads.

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5 Takeaways from ESPN’s Brady-Belichick-Kraft Article

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Last night, Bruce Allen dropped the news that ESPN was about to run a “hit” piece on the Patriots this morning that dove into growing tension between Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft. Of course Patriots fans went ballistic at the mere mention of this and the internet was ablaze with takes before anyone had even read what was actually written.

Well the article came out this morning and honestly I found it pretty tame and mostly just expounding on what had already been reported locally.

It did contain plenty of interesting details but, after 18 years of the central figures working together, there’s nothing that is all that hard to believe. There are certainly details that left me scratching my head a bit, things that were left out or muddier than I think they needed to be, but overall, I found it more interesting that outrageous, and a reminder of all the moving parts involved with managing a football team, much moreso one that has had such unprecedented success.

Here are the five takeaways that I found most interesting, and what this all means as we enter the playoff bye week.

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How Does Pats’ 2017 Bend-Don’t-Break Defense Stack Up Historically?

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For the last few years I’ve quantified the Patriots maddening-yet-effective Bend-Don’t-Break style of defense as such: Points-per-drive and Turnovers-per-drive measure the “Break” element, while Yards-per-drive and Plays-per-drive measure the “Bend” element. It’s not perfect, but it at least gives me the ability to get a sense of how bendy and breaky each defense of the Bill Belichick era has been.

How does 2017 stack up? Let’s take a look.

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Dion Lewis: Top Five Running Back?

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The Patriots finished off the regular season in rather lackluster fashion on Sunday, defeating the Jets 26-6 and clinching home field advantage throughout the playoffs in the process. Missing James White, Rex Burkhead, and Mike Gillislee, the Patriots had to lean heavily on Dion Lewis to carry the load, and he delivered for the second straight week, racking up 133 yards from scrimmage and finding the end zone twice. Lewis has proven he can be a catalyst for this Patriots offense during the rare times it has stalled, and he should be a major factor in the coming playoffs.

Once a fifth-round pick out of Pitt, the 5’8” Lewis has put the NFL on notice this season. Lewis finished as Pro Football Focus’s third ranked running back, and coming into Week 17, Lewis was fourth in yards after contact per attempt (3.4) and 5th in forced missed tackles on the ground (38). While he does rank just 14th in rushing yards in the NFL, every running back ahead of him had at least 32 more attempts, and 12 of them had at least 50 more attempts.

Because of his lack of volume, Lewis’s numbers don’t jump off the page, but when you look closer, it is easy to see why he deserves to be mentioned along with the best running backs in the NFL. He led the NFL in rushing yards in the second half of the season, and was second in all-purpose yards during that span. Lewis also had the most carries out of all running backs without recording a fumble. He finished second among all running backs in yards per carry with a 5.0 average, meaning he was one of just two backs that averaged over five yards per carry this season (the other being rookie sensation Alvin Kamara). Using Lewis’s yards per carry average, if he had been given 265 carries this year (which would have only been roughly 16 carries per game), Lewis would have put up more yards than the NFL’s rushing leader, Kareem Hunt, on seven less carries than Hunt had.

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3 Reasons Patriots Will/Won’t Win Super Bowl 52

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As I said on Patshow yesterday, this is one of my favorite football weeks of the year. There’s no official opponent yet so there’s no stress, I can just sit back and watch the Wild Card games and enjoy some playoff football without my stomach in knots. Of course all that changes next week.

Can the Patriots win Super Bowl 52? Of course, but as we’ve seen in every playoff run, they’re going to need to catch some breaks here and there along the way. Maybe even make an impossible play or two. We know the 2017 team pretty well by now, well enough that it’s clear they’re somewhat of an anomaly as far as Patriots teams go. They’ve had some huge injuries this year, but unlike 2013 and 2015, it hasn’t really devastated them.

Those teams couldn’t get by the Broncos in the AFCCG in Denver.

Thee 2017 team still locked up homefield and their three losses are pretty much par for the course of a mostly-healthy season. A couple early season stinkers and a mid-season flat game. Otherwise the Patriots did what it took to win no matter who was hurt or playing. That will be the same approach in the playoffs in a one game scenario where we can throw our “feelings” about how good or bad the team is out the window.

I never in a million years would’ve thought the Pats would find themselves in a 28-3 hole in the Super Bowl, but in that one game situation they did what Bill Belichick’s teams always do, kept fighting and clawed their way back in.

Here are three reasons on both sides of the coin — why they will and why they won’t win the Super Bowl.

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Breaking Down Patriots’ 3rd Down Nose Dive on Offense

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Third down is the most critical down in football and usually the Patriots are one of the best offenses in the league. In the last four seasons they ranked 6th (2014) and 4th (2016) when they won the Super Bowl and when they didn’t they ranked 16th (2013) and 11th (2015).

This season the loss of Julian Edelman loomed large for then third down offense. Edelman was then most targeted and reliable receiver with the game on the line. However early in then season the Pats didn’t fare too badly,

Through the first eight games, the Pats ranked 3rd on third down, converting 45.9 percent of their chances.

But since then they’ve fallen off dramatically, to the point where over the last four games they’ve converted just 30.2 percent of their third downs, second-worst in the league. All of Tom Brady‘s five interceptions in the last four games have come on third down.

These struggles are coming at the wrong time of year. Is this a critical flaw? Is there any hope in sight? Let’s take a deeper look.

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