New England Patriots - NESN.com
Drake Maye has rekindled the New England Patriots’ offense, but their running attack remains a cause for concern.
The Patriots didn’t receive much help from their ground game during Sunday’s 25-19 win over the New Orleans Saints. Maye led the team with 28 rushing yards while Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon Henderson combined for 47 yards on 22 carries. Neither running back registered a rush longer than seven yards in Week 6.
That continued an unfortunate trend for the Patriots, who rank 26th with 91.5 rushing yards per game this season. Despite those doldrums, Stevenson and Henderson expressed optimism to MassLive’s Mark Daniels that they’ll turn the corner.
“We’re almost there,” Henderson said. “Those guys up front, they do a great job. They do a great job each week, and work hard. Us running backs try our best to hit it. We see a crease, we hit it. There’s been some dirty runs we’ve been having to hit, so we just have to keep hitting them. Hit those dirty runs and eventually one will pop.”
“I think we’re really close on some runs,” Stevenson added. “I think they’re going to start popping for us here soon.”
A better running game would have given the Patriots more peace of mind when protecting a nine-point lead early in the second half. They instead punted on three straight possessions, tallying 10 yards on 15 plays.
Mike Vrabel told reporters Monday, per the team transcript, that New England’s running backs may be overly focused on protecting the football at the expense of making big plays following Stevenson’s early fumbling issues. The head coach will strive for more balance moving forward, starting with a Week 7 matchup against the Tennessee Titans’ 25th-ranked run defense.
“We’ll keep working,” Vrabel said. “We’ve had some good runs, we’ve had some pitiful ones, too. We just have to make sure that there’s a consistency, that we’re coaching the details, that we’re coaching the demeanor, understand that it’s going to be some dirty runs in there and that we’re going to have to make a guy miss or break a tackle, things that we’ve done throughout the season, and be able to do all those while taking care of the football and trying to move the line of scrimmage. Probably wished we had some more production in the run game there at the end.”
