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Bill Barnwell from Grantland on Patriots vs. Packers game.
If Sunday’s game between the Packers and the Patriots was actually a preview of the Super Bowl, we’ve got a very exciting game on tap in February. Green Bay’s 26-21 victory over New England was a rare bird, a game in which the Packers were favored to win from start to finish and yet never really enjoyed a moment when it felt like they had knocked the Patriots out until the final third-down conversion, when Aaron Rodgers found Randall Cobb just before the two-minute warning. Green Bay’s win didn’t reveal any fatal flaw in Bill Belichick & Co., but the Packers executed a logical, sound game plan and showed how they might again choose to attack New England if this does turn out to be the first in a series of two games.
Belichick’s reputation, going back most famously to his hit–Marshall Faulk game plan against the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, is that he tries to build his defensive scheme to take away the opposing offense’s most important weapon. His affinity for that sort of plan is overstated — everybody tries to take away the offense’s top player — but it still happens frequently enough that it’s worth mentioning. Two weeks ago, for example, Belichick built his game plan against the Colts around doubling T.Y. Hilton and hoping that the rest of his defense could hold up one-on-one, which they did comfortably.
This time around, perhaps anticipating that the Packers would suspect a similar sort of approach, Belichick went in a different direction. Facing a Colts-like offense — West Coast scheme, hurry-up possibilities, terrifying quarterback, several devastating receivers, decent running game, questionable offensive line — Belichick stuck his best guy on the most important target. Darrelle Revis began the game on Randall Cobb, but he spent most of the afternoon matched up against Jordy Nelson.
Revis was good enough to force Rodgers to look in a different direction for most of the day, holding Nelson to just two catches on six targets, but one of those catches was a 45-yard touchdown just before halftime, when Nelson created separation on his slant route and then accelerated past safety Devin McCourty for a touchdown. Revis claimed afterward that Nelson pushed off, which seems like an odd complaint from a Belichick defensive back, even in 2014. People will say that Nelson “burned” Revis because Revis’s rep leads him to take the blame for these sorts of things, but really, the bigger mistake came from McCourty, who didn’t do enough to cut off Nelson’s post-catch angle and allowed him to get to the pylon. A slant and a tackle, and the Packers probably kick a field goal.
With Nelson mostly subdued, the Packers made hay on offense by attacking the weaker points of New England’s coverage. The unlikely focal point was rookie wideout Davante Adams, who had the best game of his young career. Adams caught six passes for 121 yards, absolutely laying waste to overmatched Patriots cornerback Logan Ryan. Ryan was replaced during the game by Kyle Arrington and then by Alfonzo Dennard, but he somehow kept sneaking back in, only for Rodgers to find the second-year corner for yet another completion. It could have been worse, but Adams dropped what would have likely been a game-clinching touchdown on a slant after obliterating Ryan in the fourth quarter.
Ryan was the primary culprit, but other players had issues, including at a problem spot for what is otherwise an excellent New England pass defense. The Patriots were 30th in DVOA on throws to tight ends heading into the game, allowing a league-high 73.5 passing yards per game. The Packers don’t have a tight end who strikes fear into opposing defenses, but rookie Richard Rodgers came up with a 32-yard touchdown catch on a perfectly thrown ball over Patrick Chung. Chung has been a pleasant surprise in his return to New England, but the Patriots don’t have an obvious candidate to deal with tight ends, something that looms as an issue with the likes of Antonio Gates and Julius Thomas waiting in the January wings.
Poor Rob Ninkovich didn’t have the best day of his career, either. Ninkovich is a criminally underrated player, a versatile front-seven piece who does a wider variety of things than just about any defensive end in football while playing just about every snap. He played every defensive snap Sunday, but the Patriots asked too much of him. It showed most notably when the Packers went with a trips bunch to ensure a man-to-man look and lined up Randall Cobb in the backfield, only to run Cobb out on a wheel route against the overmatched Ninkovich for 33 yards. It was an interesting wrinkle, one the Packers pulled out more frequently earlier in Cobb’s career.
The Patriots also used Ninkovich as a spy on Aaron Rodgers at times, a move I was surprised to not see more frequently. This was a first viewing and so the possibility exists that the Patriots did more to limit or spy on Rodgers than I saw at first glance, but Rodgers had a lot of freedom, especially in the first half, to move around and out of the pocket before making plays.
By the end of the game, Ninkovich and the Patriots pass rush both appeared to be gassed. Rodgers was left with stunning amounts of time to throw on a pair of key late passes, first on a second-and-5 in the red zone when the coverage held up forever and Rodgers had 11.5 seconds in the pocket before throwing the ball away (just before the Adams drop). Then, on the final meaningful play of the game, Rodgers had 4.5 seconds to find Cobb, who beat Ryan and then Dont’a Hightower, continuing his route to give Rodgers just enough of a window to win the game:
Per ESPN Stats & Information, opposing passers take 2.68 seconds per pass before throwing against the Patriots, the second-highest figure in the league.[sup]1[/sup] Some of that has to do with New England’s ability to cover in the secondary, but the Patriots are pressuring opposing passers on only 23.4 percent of dropbacks, which is 24th in the league. Both figures have gotten slightly worse for the Patriots since Chandler Jones went down with a hip injury in Week 7, and while New England has found unlikely pass-rushing contributions from Akeem Ayers and Deontae Skinner, the team badly misses Jones. Even an average amount of pressure on that last third-down play and Rodgers has to force a throw without the time for Cobb to get open.
For all of those faults, the Patriots managed to stay in the game by stopping the Packers in the red zone. Green Bay took four trips inside the 20 and came away with four field goals. That’s a trick Belichick’s defenses have come up with at times in the past, but evidence suggests it’s not a repeatable skill, and even this year, the Patriots haven’t been an especially good red zone defense. New England ranked 20th in points per red zone trip (5.03) heading into this week, even while delivering one of the better defenses in football outside of the red zone.
I was also surprised with New England’s game plan on offense. I was expecting to see the Patriots go after Green Bay’s 22nd-ranked run defense, perhaps employing some of the six-lineman sets they used with great success against Indianapolis two weeks ago to move the ball effectively while keeping Rodgers off the field.
The Patriots stayed away from the six-lineman sets[sup]2[/sup] and didn’t run the ball very frequently, which might have hurt them. They were very successful when they did choose to hand the ball off, with their four running backs combining for 85 yards on 17 carries, averaging an even five yards per attempt. The foursome — which included Brandon Bolden this week, almost surely to irritate fantasy owners who spent their life savings on Jonas Gray two weeks ago — never broke a big run, but they did run for four yards or more on eight of their 17 carries.
Instead, this was a more typical Patriots approach to winning a football game: daring the opposing team to stop Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman. Twenty-nine of Tom Brady’s 35 pass attempts were thrown toward Gronk, Edelman, or Brandon LaFell, with those throws producing 19 completions for 184 yards. The Patriots got some help when Sam Shields went down with a first-half concussion and was replaced by Davon House, which is the name you say to a Packers fan if you want them to cower in fear. House did his best, but LaFell took advantage of House’s inability to turn around to the football on LaFell’s second touchdown catch.
The Packers did just enough to hold on for the victory. They were maybe one Gronk roll away from trailing, as Brady managed to get Gronkowski isolated versus rookie first-rounder Ha Ha Clinton-Dix on New England’s final drive, only for Gronkowski to lose the ball as he was rolling in the end zone. That would have given the Patriots a 27-26 lead, pending an obvious two-point conversion try, with 3:31 left. Instead, Brady took a killer sack on third down when Mike Neal got around left tackle Nate Solder and forced Brady to step up into lineman Mike Daniels, at which point Stephen Gostkowski missed a field goal that would have brought the Patriots within two.
Belichick will look back on missed opportunities. He may rue punting twice around midfield on fourth-and-short in the first half. Perhaps he (and Josh McDaniels) should have run the ball more. Maybe they needed to spy on Rodgers on a more regular basis. At the same time, this wasn’t the sort of game where one fix could have dramatically affected the contest. Both teams made adjustments throughout and played at a high level. Somebody had to lose. Belichick will surely hope his opportunity to implement changes and get another shot at Rodgers and Mike McCarthy comes sooner rather than later. February would be soon enough.
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