Film Review: Pats Defense All In Sync vs. Vikings

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.

— Let’s start with the defensive amoeba front that the Pats have broken out quite a few times late in the seasons of Belichick’s tenure. Three safeties in the box!? Adam Thielen and Stephon Diggs all alone on the outside!? This isn’t something we’ve seen much of out of the Pats ever, and usually it would be a big play nightmare scenario. But not when you have Jason McCourty, JC Jackson and Stephon Gilmore on the back end, three corners who played excellent in this game and got a huge signal of trust by playcalls like this one.

— We saw in week one against the Texans, a game that can’t just be swept under the rug — this is as solid of a team defense as we’ve seen from the Patriots. They don’t have that much flash up front but they have enough when their secondary is on. I do think McCourties, Chung, Harmon and Gilmore are truly the straws stirring the drink and most everything up front aside from Trey Flowers is set dressing. Solid set dressing that each does their job and that is incredibly effective though not sexy.

— Elandon Roberts continued to be up and down on further review, but I think the good news is that for every mistake he makes he seems to make up for it with a good play. His recognition on a first-quarter play action was far better than we’ve seen from Roberts and he actually had the middle of the field covered. But he’s still late to react quite a few times and the Pats were burned in the third quarter on Dalvin Cook‘s 18-yard run.

— Hate to see the only touchdown drive at the end of the first half but it was because of three plays. 1) Hole in coverage due to blitz exposed by Diggs. 2) Great catch by Kyle Rudolph over Chung. 3) Misplayed a two-man route combination with three guys giving Thielen an easy touchdown.

— The overall success on third down and ability to use those amoeba fronts was in large part thanks to the great play on first and second down. Only three of the 12 third downs were less than five yards.

Just watch how perfect this third down defense. Everything is executed perfectly.