Pats Pulpit
While the narrative itself is overblown, the New England Patriots offense did indeed not go up against a murder’s row of opponents in the regular season. Sunday’s wild card game against the Los Angeles Chargers was different, though: the team’s defense entered the playoffs as one of the best in the NFL, and it showed.
L.A. failed to win, in large part because of the Patriots themselves playing some inspired defensive football. Nonetheless, the team performed well on that side of the ball and held Drake Maye and company to their lowest scoring output since Week 3.
How did the Chargers do that? A pair of turnovers helped, and so did some heat on the quarterback: Maye was sacked five times in the game and pressured on 35.9% of his dropbacks.
For starting center Garrett Bradbury, however, not all of those numbers were entirely the result of Los Angeles’ defense.
“Whenever Drake’s getting hit, we take accountability,” Bradbury said on Monday. “We just got in and watched the tape and there’s some things we can do technique-wise. You never feel like it’s what they’re doing. So, there are some things we can clean up. At the end of the day, that was a good defense. Give them credit. But we know if we can be a little bit better then it’ll be better for the team.”
The group being a little bit better will be crucial come the divisional round. The Houston Texans, after all, are being led by a defense whose disruptive nature outshines even the Chargers’.
What could help the Patriots O-line is, simply, time and experience with one another. The game against Los Angeles, after all, did not just come after both Bradbury and right tackle Morgan Moses had missed practice time due to illness, it also was the first since early November that featured the entire starting five.
That meant that both tackle Will Campbell and guard Jared Wilson were back in action again to man the left side. Their opposition was obviously formidable, but there also was some rust the two rookies had to shake off.
“Had some good plays, had some plays they’d like to have back,” said head coach Mike Vrabel. “We can evaluate everybody and say that they had some good plays in the run game, had some good pass protections, gave up a sack. We can’t get pushed back in, and then if we’re cutting a guy, we’re trying to get rid of the ball. We’ve got to get rid of the ball, and Drake knows that. That’s how it goes.
“We just put 65, 70 plays out there. There’s going to be some good ones. There’s going to be some bad ones. Hopefully, there’s not too many of them that get you beat.”
