Analysis

Malcolm Mitchell Back at Patriots Practice

December 27, 2017 by Mike Dussault

The surprising end-of-year Patriots news continued today with Malcolm Mitchell showing up in pads at practice. This means the Pats now have 21 days to activate him off of IR, though Mike Giardi reports that he could see game action as soon as this Sunday against the Jets in the season finale.

Source: Pats will “take it day by day” with Mitchell but believe he “has real chance” to make debut Sunday vs Jets

— Michael Giardi (@MikeGiardi) December 27, 2017

Pats Sacks Up Despite Uneven Recent Defensive Performance

December 27, 2017 by Sam Hollister

The Patriots rode a dominant second half to their 12th win of the year against the Bills on Sunday, clinching a first round bye in the process and all but insuring that the AFC playoffs will come through Foxborough. While Dion Lewis stole most of the headlines after racking up 196 all-purpose yards, the Patriots front seven deserves a lot of credit for shutting down Buffalo in critical moments, most notably with Marquis Flowers’ takedown of Tyrod Taylor in the red zone on 4th down and Malcolm Brown’s 15 yard sack on the first play of Buffalo’s drive after the Pats had tied it at 16.

In total, the Patriots racked up six sacks, hit Taylor on four other occasions, and were consistently in Buffalo’s backfield. In fact, in the past five games, the Patriots have averaged 4.2 sacks per game, a rate that would put them above the NFL’s overall sack leaders, the Jacksonville Jaguars, who have put up 3.5 sacks per game on average. Sure, the Jaguars have done this over the course of 15 games, and the Patriots sample size is just five games, but this still shows just how well the Patriots have been playing of late.

Patriots Add James Harrison

December 26, 2017 by Mike Dussault

You might’ve gotten the impression that I was a bit concerned about the Patriots defense heading into January after my piece from this morning. For those reasons I welcomed the afternoon’s news of James Harrison signing with the team just days after his somewhat surprising release by the Steelers.

Source: the Patriots are expected to sign former Steelers LB James Harrison.

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) December 26, 2017

The 2017 Patriots Defense: Can Patchwork Front, Inconsistent Back Get It Done?

December 26, 2017 by Mike Dussault

The Patriots defense turned in another signature effort against the Bills that we’ve seen in recent weeks — early struggles on third down, some big plays allowed, only to see them tighten up in the second half and allow the offense to pull away.

I’m not here to sugar coat it guys, this defense is a shell of what we’ve seen in recent years and obviously injuries are a huge part of it. The other part of it is that the secondary, which is healthy, needed to step up and lead the way for the decimated front seven. At best, they’ve been inconsistent. At worst they’ve been lit up repeatedly no matter who they’re facing. But again, they’ve made the plays they needed to to win games.

But as I look around at the personnel up front I wonder how many stop gaps there are and how many actual building blocks there are.

I’d break it down like so:

Can Rivers or Roethlisberger Finally Knock Off Brady Just Once in Playoffs?

December 7, 2017 by Mike Dussault

Philip Rivers and Ben Roethsliberger were both drafted in 2004 and both have gone on to Hall of Fame-worthy careers. But they’re a combined 2-14 against Tom Brady in their respected careers. With the Chargers surging and the Steelers atop the AFC it looks like Brady is on a collision course with one or maybe both of these veteran quarterbacks.

Whether or not Rivers or Roethelisberger can finally knock off Brady should be the defining story of the AFC playoffs. And it might be now or never for both.

Let’s take a closer look at how these two great quarterbacks have fared against the Patriots, and, perhaps more importantly, how Tom Brady has fared against their teams.

Is Patriots’ Run Defense a Fatal Flaw? — Season Film Review

December 6, 2017 by Mike Dussault

While the Patriots defense has been trending up the last few games, I was surprised to see they had fallen from a mid-season 23rd-ranked run defense to 30th in Football Outsider’s DVOA, an analytic that weighs situation and opponent. This is of course about when Dont’a Hightower went on IR, so some drop-off should be expected but it hadn’t been all that glaring to me recently.

If they do have a bad run defense it hasn’t hurt them in the win column. Last week against the Bills they gave up their second-highest yardage total this season (183) and held them to three points. Opening night against the Chiefs (185) remains the highest and only time a team actually ran to victory over New England.

Yardage wise they’re 26th, yards-per-carry they’re 32nd.

So is this a real flaw for the Pats’ defense? Will LeVeon Bell be able to exploit it? Could the Steelers ride that to victory? Miami got a season-low 67 yards on the ground vs. New England and doesn’t look like they’ll do much more this Monday night.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the bigger running plays against and how much impact they had on the game.

Brady’s Favorite Receiver (The Open One) Is Back!

November 30, 2017 by Mike Dussault

When Julian Edelman was lost for the season the first question on my mind was who was going to make the tough catches on third down. Brady had grown to depend on Edelman in the toughest spots. From 2013-2016, Edelman had 135 targets on third down, 40 more than second-place Rob Gronkowski.

If there was a player for defenses to key off of on third down, it was clearly Edelman. But now, without Edelman, the Patriots are spreading the ball around, with Brady becoming reacquainted with the days when his favorite receiver wasn’t Edelman or even Wes Welker, it was the open one.

Now the Patriots have a balanced third-down attack that has seen little regression from where things left off in 2016 with Edelman still tearing up the field.

Here’s how the 2016 season looked for third down targets.