Their biggest weakness is their head coach who played not to lose against the Ravens. It was embarrassing to give up two passing touchdowns to Lamar Jackson in the 4th quarter because they stopped playing defense and ran the ball on offense to kill the clock as compared to letting their elite QB pass for first downs and maintain possession.
Their second biggest weakness is their secondary which sucked against the worst passing attack in the NFL when it mattered most. Their third biggest weakness was their offensive line - the Ravens spent all afternoon in their backfield.
The Chargers obviously don't understand what it takes to win in the playoffs. Patriots 34, Chargers 14.
Maybe the Chargers suck, or, they were just nervous because Ray Lewis killed a guy.
Hard to put that garbage time stuff on the secondary, they went prevent for most of the 4th quarter.
I don't see us in the backfield as much as Baltimore, those cats completely sold out on the blitz, I haven't seen the official numbers but they had to have blitzed well over 75% of the plays.
Our STs will have some big plays in this game and maybe the difference in the game. They gave up a punt and FG block yesterday, which is something the Pats have been excellent at this season.
I see the Pats mostly sticking with their normal style of play on Defense with a few well timed A gap blitzes on mid-range 3rd downs and the ameoba front on 3rd and long.
I think we will see a lot more stout fronts or heavy package on Defense to stop Gordon. We absolutely cannot allow them to ground and pound. I see a lot of man, the secondary will be asked to do this without a lot of nickel and dime packages i.e. a lot more 4-3 and a lot less 4-2-5. And the Pats play a lot of hybrid 4-3 with Chung playing OLB with Harmon as the traditional Star/SS, I don't see that happening much in the 1st half as they will focus on stopping the run.
It will be a steady diet of High, KVN and Roberts early. Which can be scary having one of those guys covering a wheel route, which is part of what makes stopping Gordon tough. The guy can kill you on the ground and in the air (50 receptions). That is where the Pats will be vulnerable on D in the heavy.
Offensively they should be able to run the ball, the Chargers sold out on the run yesterday after getting sliced up by the run game a few weeks ago by Baltimore and were not going to let that happen again. But there was almost a zero threat from the passing game. Will they be able to play and stop a balanced offense? This seasons history says no.
LAC have played five games against top 10 scoring offenses this season and have allowed 29.6 ppg in those games. Those offenses averaged 31.4 ppg for the season, so they slowed them down to the tune of 1.8ppg.
**** sorry for the long reply.
