New England Patriots "Heart Attack" Offense Still Needs Outside Threat

There's an old saying in sports, that if you control the middle of the field, you control the game.

It's no wonder, then, that the New England Patriots offense controlled almost every game they played in the 2010 NFL season. The Patriots offense focuses on doing just that every time they take the field.

This was explained to Boston Herald writer Ian Rapoport by an NFL executive whose team recently faced the Patriots (and remains nameless).

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The outside receivers are OK, they’re average to above average. They’re not a threat. Those guys don’t scare you. What scares you is what (Wes) Welker can bring to their offense. … If they ever got the running back now to go with Wes Welker and those two tight ends, they’re going to be (trouble). Because you get a tackle-to-tackle running back, and the linebackers have to play the slot and they also have to play the run, so he’s a real matchup nightmare for us.

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Hello, Stevan Ridley.

The LSU running back was under-hyped coming into the 2011 NFL draft, but 1,127 yards in the SEC is nothing to sleep on. It was a weak season for the SEC on the whole, but the defensive minds out there like Nick Saban, Les Miles and others are usually able to scheme against those guys.

Regardless, the beauty of Ridley's role is that he won't be relied on for too much. He will probably be second fiddle as a between-the-tackles back behind BenJarvus Green-Ellis.

A 1,003-yard season and a 4.4 yard-per-carry average for Green-Ellis should act as proof that he is the antithesis of Laurence Maroney. If those stats don't do it, perhaps his food-shaped number of career fumbles can do it for you. That food just happens to be a doughnut.

The executive continues showering praise on the Patriots offense, namely on Wes Welker, in another article posted by Rapoport.

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You almost have to have...a Charles Woodson type corner to say, ‘OK, I’m going to take Wes Welker away,’ which really frustrates (QB Tom) Brady a little bit. But, what New England did last year, and it really helped them out is they brought in those two tight ends (Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez). And now they can stretch the seam, which opens up a bigger space for Wes Welker. That’s why he’s a nightmare.

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How do you play defense when you have to account for a dangerous slot receiver (Welker, he of an 5.91 AYAC since joining the Patriots in '07), two explosive tight ends (12.7 yards per reception, 16 touchdowns in '10) in the seam, and two between-the-tackles backs who can both hit the hole hard?

While ruling the center of the field has its advantages, there are ways to counter it. We saw that hurt them against the Jets in the playoffs, when the Jets muddied the middle of the field by dropping most of their coverage into that area and bumping the outside receivers at the line.

The Patriots rely more on YAC than most other teams in the league, and opposing defenses know this. After a down year in 2010, a return to prominence for Welker could mean the improvement of the outside receivers, and the offense as a whole. After what we saw out of the Patriots last year, that's enough to make defensive coordinators shake in their headset just trying to stop the bleeding.

As that executive said, the outside guys don't scare defenses the way, say, Randy Moss did. We still await the progression of Brandon Tate and/or Taylor Price into an outside threat to complement Welker and the rest of the guys in the middle.

And I choose those words very carefully: outside threat. The Patriots don't have a "vertical threat" or a "field stretcher" as it were, but it's not necessary to their style of offense. The Patriots love to play small ball, so the guys on the outside simply need to be productive enough to command the respect of the defense.

If the defense has to respect the guys on the outside, it will allow the Patriots offense to do what they do best: rule the middle.

Tate and Price will have to become effective receivers against man coverage, because they will likely be dealing with a lot of that while defenses focus on creating a cluster in the middle to nullify the "heart attack" Patriots offense.

Erik Frenz is the co-host of the PatsPropaganda and Frenz podcast. Follow Erik on Twitter @erikfrenz.