Rewatch: Patriots vs Texans

[WaterfallJumper]

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Took a photo of the D on 3rd/4th down while Romo was talking about it during the broadcast. Maybe someone with more advanced knowledge can explain it better but that alignment definitely seems new/more aggressive to me. That’s cover 1 with the FS just 10 yards off the LOS.

Have we run similar looks in that situation in the past? Could be an example of Flores’ stamp on the D.

Worth noting that red zone defense has the luxury of a condensed field. I'm not sure we can arrive at any conclusions without a larger sample size. Interesting to speculate, for sure.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

Can someone with good insight explain why the Pats run D was so abysmal (167 yards)?

 

[luuked]

Can someone with good insight explain why the Pats run D was so abysmal (167 yards)?

I know this answer is getting boring but to me this is situational football. You are up two scores and primarily taking away the big play. They were still 2/11 on third downs and held pretty well in the red zone.

 

[WaterfallJumper]

Can someone with good insight explain why the Pats run D was so abysmal (167 yards)?

I plan on going through this later to talk about down and distance per rush. Remind me if you don't see an update by tomorrow. Aside from the 31 yard dash down the sidelines, the Texans didn't have a lot of early game success running the ball -- most of the damage seemed to occur during clock-killing time after Bentley rotated out of the lineup. I'll try to address this more comprehensively when I have time later.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

I plan on going through this later to talk about down and distance per rush. Remind me if you don't see an update by tomorrow. Aside from the 31 yard dash down the sidelines, the Texans didn't have a lot of early game success running the ball -- most of the damage seemed to occur during clock-killing time after Bentley today rotated out of the lineup. I'll try to address this more comprehensively when I have time later.

Thanks! Looking forward to your analysis. It seems like most of their damage running the ball came in the second half when Bill probably decided to play more Big Nickel. Alfred Blue ripped off a couple of good runs too.

 

[captain stone]

Can someone with good insight explain why the Pats run D was so abysmal (167 yards)?

Didn't Houston gain a lot of those yards later in the 2nd half when they were still losing by multiple TDs? I also believe that Elandon Roberts received most of his snaps during that same time. Coincidence?

 

[Ras-IR Dowling]

Can someone with good insight explain why the Pats run D was so abysmal (167 yards)?

I would say they sacrificed it to stop the pass. Lamar miller is not going to beat you at that point. Watson and Hopkins can.

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

 

[patfanken]

Thanks guys. This is, by far, my favorite thread of the week. I enjoyed what what done so far, and look forward to what you accomplish when the all 22 comes out. Reading this thread should be a requirement for patsfans.com membership.

BTW- finding out why Houston's run game was so successful will be the one thing I'd wanting to know. "Situational football" might be part of it, but it doesn't excuse that awful performance on that TD drive.

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

Thanks guys. This is, by far, my favorite thread of the week. I enjoyed what what done so far, and look forward to what you accomplish when the all 22 comes out. Reading this thread should be a requirement for patsfans.com membership.

BTW- finding out why Houston's run game was so successful will be the one thing I'd wanting to know. "Situational football" might be part of it, but it doesn't excuse that awful performance on that TD drive.

We'll definitely wait to hear from the film guys. But, from my memory (those 3 10= yard gains on the same drive), seemed their right side was pushing our DL back to make a nice 3-5 yard clean path for their RBs.

 

[WaterfallJumper]

Pretty neat stuff to review:

Tom Brady Week 1 Passing Chart

Just as a follow up, last year Brady threw most of his red zone TDs to the back left corner of the endzone -- sure, he had success across the entire field, and he spread it out pretty well, but it's not surprising to me to see that he's still favoring throws to the left for touchdowns. Not every quarterback excels throwing across his body, but Brady did a pretty good job of identifying where he wanted to go with the ball.

He also threw the ball in 2.57 seconds on average, which is better than the usual mark across the league. I'm sure this helped mitigate some of the Texans pass rush firepower. Watson, on the other hand, was only behind Josh Allen (3.72 seconds to throw) with 3.42 seconds. That's worth keeping in mind when looking at our pass rush prowess. I think a lot of it has to do with improved coverage, but unfortunately, it's probably also because of Watson knocking off the rust. Bortles wasn't terribly far behind Brady with 2.75 to throw.

We had no player in the fastest sacks category, so that's not a great combination, but it looked like the Patriots were trying to contain Watson in the pocket and collapse around him for pressure, not just chase him out of the pocket. Also, Garrett is a freak of nature.

Top Plays | NFL Next Gen Stats

 

[luuked]

On the big "aggressive or not" debate Dussaults opinion is closer to what @AndyJohnson has been saying:



The team is just winning more individual matchups. Which might be because of simpler schemes or just young players making jumps. I really don't think any of those Patricia vs. Flores discussions are a useful use of time because there are so many variables involved. But whatever floats your boats guys.

 

[luuked]

Also just for completeness sake the Lazar Twitter thread of his tape review starts with this tweet:



So if anyone wants to go back at some point in the future this is a good starting point for game 1.

I didn't want to post all of his tweets in here because there are dozens. But if I find a couple that I was curious about I will post those.

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

Pretty neat stuff to review:

Tom Brady Week 1 Passing Chart

So the left hash mark to about 3.5 yards towards the sideline might be a weakness

 

[luuked]

Here is Lazar on the long Miller run. One missed tackle and the focus on not allowing big pass plays means that once Miller is through the first level he will gain some yardage.



Still better then allowing homeruns to Hopkins.

More run defense stuff:



Losing some 1v1s..

 

[luuked]

Another great play by the defense on so many levels there were troublesome to us last year (as Lazar points out):



Improvement against bunches and by LBs in space is huge. This doesn't mean that we should expect 100% success rate. Just double the success rate from last year and its enough to give us a much bigger margin of error overall.

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

On the big "aggressive or not" debate Dussaults opinion is closer to what @AndyJohnson has been saying:



The team is just winning more individual matchups. Which might be because of simpler schemes or just young players making jumps. I really don't think any of those Patricia vs. Flores discussions are a useful use of time because there are so many variables involved. But whatever floats your boats guys.

Idk about Andy but I've literally been the only one saying this all offseason lol. W/e "scheme" were using is completely dependent on the players & pointed out they were winning 1 on 1's since the preseason.