It should be noted that in reviewing the game film, the Patriots refused to change their approach to try and combat the run. On 90/90 plays including overtime, Belichick chose to continue to stay in a nickle defense, at one time even substituting Hightower out for Dane Fletcher making our run defense even worse. As we know, this is not the first time that we've seen this.
In the book by David Halberstam called "Education of a coach," the topic is brought up regarding Belichick's defensive gameplan in SB 25 vs the Buffalo Bills and RB Thurman Thomas. As we all know, that NYG team had a great defensive line that prided themselves in stopping the run, and they reportedly wanted no part of Belichick's gameplan to allow Thurman Thomas to run. He literally had to talk them into it.
As they prepared for their final gameplan meeting, Belichick reiterated his plan to allow Thomas to run for over 100+ yards, telling players like Carl Banks, Lawrence Taylor etc to allow him to wiggle free for an extra couple of yards from time to time; noting that it would help to limit the throws from Jim Kelly and the high powered BUF offense. At one point the defensive players openly complained and moaned about this questionable gameplan, and Belichick asked them "who here wants to win the MVP?" As several hands shot up, he gave them a serious look and stated "then let Thomas run."
The result spoke for itself as Thomas ran for 135 yards, but the heavily favored and high powered Bills lost the game on a 46 yard FG attempt.
Does anyone feel that the same exact thing happened on Sunday night? In other words, judging by the fact that we stayed in nickle on 90/90 plays, we didn't attempt to try and do anything at all about the fact that they were gouging us vs the run. I honestly believe that we'd have attempted to combat this if it weren't part of the gameplan, and we weren't up against Peyton Manning and a very high powered offense.
The concern I'd have is that this isn't likely to work 2x this year, and if we meet them in the playoffs, we'll have to hope that our offense can match them blow for blow against that high powered attack of weapons.
The bottom line is that we once again are witnessing a very, very good span of coaching from arguably the greatest coach to ever exist. As stated in my signature on the weekend prior to week #1, this has the potential to be his greatest coaching season ever when we consider everything that happened in the off-season, and that was before the injuries, controversial calls, etc.