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Patriots Gameplan: Week 6 at New York Jets

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It felt like a lackluster Patriots off week, didn’t it? The Pats had an okay with last Thursday night, but it was so middle of the road that it sparked neither the “Pats are dead” nor the “Pats are Super Bowl favorites” crowds.

Sure there were plenty of complaints like there usually are. I think those were best summed up when I was listening to Dale and Holley for a minute and they were complaining about the offensive line. Then there was a pause and Holley mentioned that Pro Football Focus has the o-line ranked 11th in the league. Silence. What were we just talking about? They digressed. Yeah, it was one of those kinds of weeks, where everyone goes to default complaints but there just wasn’t the same kind of fire that existed after the Panthers’ loss.

The other big headline? That Tom Brady has a sprained AC joint in his left shoulder. By this time we just brush off Brady injuries like they’re no big deal. Brady brushed it off. We brush it off. Do we take his toughness and durability for granted? Of course! But tying any injury, no matter how small, to the offensive line are just the dots that must be connected when you have 10 days off and hours upon hours of sports talk radio time to fill.

How do we feel about the Patriots right now? If we’re being honest with ourselves it does feel like it’s off to another injury apocalypse year like 2013 started out and 2015 became. But it’s still early so no one should be abandoning ship just yet, but keeping the remaining roster healthy, especially 12, 87, 80 and 54 is critical to any Super Bowl aspirations.

In some ways it feels like the Pats are under the radar. I like how Kurt Warner put it, the Pats aren’t the favorites in the AFC, they’re the favorites to upset the favorites. That sounds about right. Still, the real football season is just starting and that’s always when the Patriots start to roll.

This week has been a soft reset. The defense didn’t look lost against the Bucs and the offense showed more explosiveness. Both ran out of gas at the end to make the game interesting, but it’s hard to kill them for that on a Thursday night on the road.

So now we get back to business against a Jets team that could field 22 high school JV players and still play the best Patriots team close in mid-October in the Meadowlands. For whatever reason, that’s just always how it seems to go unless it’s the rare exception like the Buttfumble game.

What do the Pats have to do to get their first divisional win and get the Patriots hype train back on track? Here’s the gameplan.

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Coffin Corner: Matt Patricia’s White Whale – 3rd and 2

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If the Bucs employed my two-year-old at kicker, last week’s “run-it-back” defensive gameplan would have failed. Should have failed. The Patriots didn’t have time to fix the fairly large-scale issues on a short week, so they went with “same but try harder” strategy and eeked one out.  But that was lucky.

The missed assignments, the wide-open receivers, the lack of a consistent pass rush, the poor tackling (Hightower even went for the up high knockout hit instead of wrapping up), all of these things were still there. Nearly two and ½ months from the beginning of training camp and the Patriots Bend But Don’t Break Defense is broken.

Some of the fixes can come from practiced areas: problems of effort, communication breakdowns, and poor tackling technique.  But with the elite play and professionalism that we’ve seen from the players over their careers, it’s my belief that this is becoming a breakdown in play-calling, specifically on 3rd down and specifically in the 4th quarter.

3rd downs in the 4th quarter are the most important plays for any defense, those are the plays that silence opposing crowds, flip fields and end games. And through 5 games, it seems this is the albatross around the Patriots defensive coaching staff’s neck.

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Scouting Report: New York Jets

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The Patriots head to New Jersey to take on the Jets in a battle for first place in the AFC East this weekend. Both teams are 3-2 and it’s an unexpected competitive matchup that many thought would see a near-undefeated Patriots juggernaut slamming a tanking Jets team, but alas that storyline has been destroyed.

Let’s not get too carried away. Yes, the Jets have won three-straight, but it’s been over a who’s who of terrible NFL franchises including their last two against the Jags and Browns. Still, for a team that blew it all up and started over, they’re getting good play from some young players who should be eager and unafraid to play the Patriots in a game no one expects them to win.

Let’s take a quick look at five headlines about the 2017 Jets.

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Bending and Breaking: A Historical B-D-B Look at the 2017 Pats Defense

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It’s driven you insane hundreds of times at this point. The Patriots defense is picked apart by a supposedly mediocre offense until miraculously stopping them in the red zone and forcing a field goal. Some seasons it feels like it happens on the first drive of every single game.

Yes, this is the Bend-Don’t-Break, a mantra muttered by football-philes like myself who have bought into Bill Belichick’s philosophy that sound coverage and tackling can make up for not attacking a quarterback with blitzers on every down. The Patriots certainly pick their spots to blitz defensive backs, but generally their philosophy is about 11 guys all doing their jobs and it’s hard to argue with the results even if the stats don’t rank them near the top of the league.

What matters most of course is points, and the Patriots have ranked below 13th in the league in points-per-drive just twice before this season.

My statistical way to breakdown the Bend Don’t Break is to rank plays- and yards-per-drive (BEND) and points- and turnovers-per-drive (BREAK). While the results in 2017 are expectedly putrid they’re not exactly in uncharted territory and there’s still plenty of time to turn things around.

Here’s a look at the Bend-Don’t-Break chart to see how the 2017 Pats stack up after five games.

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5 Patriots Concerns

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It’s hard to know at the beginning of the year what problems are real and which can be chalked up to September being more of an extension of the preseason. The Patriots experiment a bit, sit guys for even a minor ailment and are just trying to figure out what they have more than anything.

Of course, that never stops the overreactions but that’s what happens when people have been waiting seven months for football and then a shitty Patriots team gets lit up by some random team who won’t make the playoffs. It’s the same thing almost every year and there’s difficulty knowing what the real weaknesses of the team are.

But here we are five games into the season and the 2017 edition, like all teams have flaws, even if the 2017 betting odds for the next Patriots game don’t quite reflect it.

Here’s a quick hit list of the things that concern me with these Pats and what the real issues they’ll have to overcome are.

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Patshow Episode #109: Bucs Wrap, Jets Preview

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Check out our latest episode of Patshow Live as we breakdown a needed win in Tampa Bay and Joe Caporoso of TurnontheJets.com joins us to give us some insight into the Jets’ 3-2 start and what we might expect to see from our young rivals this weekend. Plus our favorite media from this week and as always a visit from the Fitzy puppet. It’s all here on Patshow!

Breaking Down Pats O-Line Struggles vs. Tampa Bay

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Despite being the first team in NFL history to allow five straight 300 yard passers in a single season, the New England Patriots defense looked immensely better Thursday night in Tampa, grinding out a 19-14 victory thanks in large part to the woes of Nick Folk. The defense, despite coming in to Thursday’s game ranking last in the NFL in points allowed and yards allowed, showed signs of improvement, and in my mind, the defense is not the unit that could cost the Patriots the shot at a return trip to the Super Bowl.

To me, the struggles of the offensive line thus far have been far more concerning than the defensive woes, because New England returns the exact same starting group as 2016, a year in which Brady was only sacked 15 times (in just 12 games), yet he has been sacked 16 times already in just five games. Brady has been hit 32 times, meaning he has been hit on 17% of his drop backs this year, a rate that is certainly not ideal for the 40-year old quarterback. Despite Brady’s seemingly impenetrable youth, it is now more important than ever to protect him, and the offensive line needs to do its job and step it up.

And it’s not like Brady needs a ton of time too; on Thursday night, when he released the ball in under 2.6 seconds (13 attempts), Brady’s quarterback rating was 116, and his adjusted completion percentage was 92.3%, meaning all Brady needs is roughly 3 seconds in order to be successful, yet the offensive line isn’t even giving him that.

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