Had a chance to take another look at the game last night and as those of you who’ve been long-time readers know, I tend to gravitate toward the defensive side of the ball.
Here are the things that jumped out to me…
– The Pats played nickel nearly the whole game (we’ll get the snap counts later today) and it was Brandon Spikes getting the start with Mayo. Spikes left due to dehydration but returned and then had a rotation with Hightower similar to what we saw last year.
– They played a lot of man-to-man defense, something we thought they wanted to be able to do, and they rarely sent many blitzers. Most of the time if was just a four-man rush, though they did send Hightower once and he caused a rush throw that resulted in an incompletion.
– In the pass rush sub-package they shifted Chandler Jones inside for Tommy Kelly and brought on Michael Buchanan.
– Joe Vellano saw plenty of snaps but I didn’t see him make much impact. He got pushed out of the way and run over a couple of times. Hopefully Armond Armstead can upgrade him when he returns.
– I heard from some fans who thought Chandler Jones was invisible but I really thought he looked pretty good. Did he have a big impact sack? No, but he caused plenty of problems and looked a lot faster and more violent with his hands than he did last year. The sacks and stats will come for him, and I like what he brings as an inside rusher where he has better size than Jermaine Cunningham did last year.
– I thought Steve Gregory had a pretty good day as well considering most of us were writing him off this offseason. He’s a good combo with McCourty when he can play the “robber” role and come downhill to make tackles. He had some sure tackles yesterday. Makes me think he and McCourty could be the two for a while back there.