Pats Pulpit
Following three straight road games, the 5-2 New England Patriots return to Gillette Stadium where they will look to keep their four-game winning streak alive.
Here on Pats Pulpit, our focus this week both wrapped up the win over the Titans and prep for the Cleveland Browns. For anything else not covered previously, let’s clean out the notebook. Welcome to this week’s edition of our Sunday Patriots Notes.
Christian Gonzalez was sidelined for over two months after hobbling off the Patriots practice fields back in July with a hamstring injury. Once he was cleared to return, Gonzalez logged just a handful of practices before making his season debut back in Week 4.
The All-Pro cornerback went on to play 71 percent of the defensive snaps in his return, only being removed from the action with the game out of reach in the fourth quarter. A week after that, Gonzalez played 100 percent of the snaps in a primetime win over Buffalo.
Despite the heavy workload right out of the gate — which then continued in Weeks 6 and 7 — it took time for Gonzalez to truly return to football shape. But with fourth games now under his belt, Patriots cornerbacks coach Justin Hamilton sees his No. 1 corner looking like his usual self.
“To me, it feels like he’s starting to settle in to having his game legs,” Hamilton said. “I know the first game, I talked to him afterwards, and he was just like, ‘I got to get my legs back.’ Well, that’s to be expected. But he’s a competitive guy. Each day when he goes about his business, he doesn’t say much, and he’s not going to make a big scene. But he shows up when he needs to show up.”
With Gonzalez’s return, New England has been to deploy him opposite of Carlton Davis — a tandem the organization envisioned being one of the best in football when they signed the veteran to a three-year, $60 million contract in free agent.
But even with the sticky Marcus Jones manning the slot in between them, the Patriots defense has had issues playing man-to-man coverage this season. Entering Week 8, New England ranked dead last in EPA per drop-back while playing man (+0.39), and have dropped their overall usage the last two weeks playing 10 or less man coverage snaps in their last two wins.
“I see us as a defensive staff putting together a plan we feel is going to help us win the game,” Hamilton said. “You put a lot of it on film, so you start to see some of the beaters for that and try to put guys in position in that way.
“For the most part, we watch the opponent and we say, is man coverage the best way to defend them, to keep yards and points down, or is zone coverage? Then we put the plan together. The past few weeks, it’s been kind of having some...
