Good to see the performance of the Pats defense improve during the game.
I always felt that the Pats front seven was solid throughout the season. Starting last week, however, after the bye, the front seven appeared flat-footed. This seemed to continue into this game with the first quarter performance. It seems that the front seven got out of its funk after the first quarter and will hopefully continue doing what they were doing in the first half of the season (applying decent pressure, and excelling against the rush) throughout the second half and into the playoffs.
The secondary was something that clearly needed a lot of tweaking over the course of the season. McCourty was switched to safety (due to need with Chung and Gregory sidelined). But with his performance improving, it appears that the team has the intention of him remaining there. His football intelligence (and general intelligence) is an asset to him at safety...but not as much as CB.
We've seen the team make the switch to Dennard who has proven to have a degree of consistency. With Talib, we now have two CB's who appear to perform at a level that can perform at a high level. Who would have guessed that these two players would be our starters at this point in the year?
Changes to defensive backfield:
1. Cutting Sterling Moore
2. Moving McCourty to safety
3. IR for Dowling
4. Moving Dennard to starting on the defensive right side
5. Moving Arrington out of the starting role at his defensive right side
6. Cole gaining more playing time at nickel/dime in slot coverage
Some of the above changes (not sure if I missed a big one) were out of need (like Dowling going to IR), but were also made out of tweaking the secondary. This isn't anything earth-shattering. Sometimes players don't perform as well as expected and changes need to be made. But to some degree, this is evidence of the coaches giving the current guys and the status quo some time to work out, and then moving on to other options. It's good to see the active management work out.
Last year, the Pats secondary was equally lackluster as the first of this season. In 2010, however, we may have forgotten that the secondary was actually decent. They had the most interceptions of any team in the NFL, and it wasn't just because of McCourty's great season. The team largely had different players that were key to that secondary, but it goes to show that this team CAN have a quality secondary. The achilles heal of that defense/team was the abysmal pass rush. Now we've got one, even if one were to call it average, at least it's existent.
As mentioned by others, this is only one game, but this could be the culmination of an improving defense (not to be confused with a dominant one).
