Pats Pulpit
While happy with their offensive output overall, the New England Patriots knew that relying primarily on the pass without much threat of the run was not a sustainable way to play offense. And so, heading into their Week 7 game against the Tennessee Titans, they put an emphasis on improving one of the worst rushing offenses in football.
It paid off.
Led by Rhamondre Stevenson, who had his best game of the season as a ball carrier, the Patriots finished with 177 rushing yards and a touchdown on 34 carries. Gaining 5.2 yards per attempt, they produced well above the season average of 3.5 they had entered the game with.
In doing so, they met the challenge presented to them by their head coach.
“I feel like [Mike] Vrabel challenged us, the O-line, this week, even the receivers,” said Stevenson after the Patriots’ 31-13 victory. “So, it felt good. It felt great. Got to go watch the film, but it felt efficient on the ground.”
Over the first six games of the season, the Patriots were unable to gain much traction on the ground due to several issues ranging from insufficient blocking to ball security. The concerns as a whole are not gone despite the promising showing against the Titans — a team now 1-6 that has disappointed on both sides of the ball and was without its best defender for all but 12 snaps on Sunday — but it was a much-needed reprieve for the unit.
The offense as a whole benefitted from it, said quarterback Drake Maye.
“Being able to run the football helped us out [Sunday],” the second-year passer, who set a new franchise record in single-game completion percentage, said. “I’m proud of the guys up front. Been an emphasis all week to be able to run the football.”
Maye himself played a big part in the Patriots successfully moving the ball on the ground. Because of some issues in pass protection, he embarked on eight scrambles and gained 62 yards in the process. All those yards count the same, though, and even with them removed New England had a good game running the ball.
The advanced stats show this as well. The Patriots were ranked 32nd in the league heading into Week 7 with -0.312 expected points added per run and a success rate of just 31.6%. Versus the Titans, the team checked in at 0.07 and 38% — a serious improvement considering the underwhelming performance so far.
For Mike Vrabel, it was more than anything a showing of the unit finding each other.
“It’s not just the running back,” he explained. “We say the running back doesn’t do a good job and we got to run it better, but we got to block better. I felt like there were some running lanes and when there weren’t, we were able to take it downhill and be able to push some piles. We had some double-digit runs. We had some dirty runs. It was great to see...
