Patriots vs. Vikings: What Are Experts Saying About New England?
Panic has never engulfed the always steady New England Patriots. Still, Bill Belichick's squad is reeling after its first opening-day loss since 2003, and legitimate questions have been raised about the personnel and scheme throughout this roster.
Still, reputations die slowly, and it will take weeks of similar ineptitude before panic is truly warranted. New England remains a solid favorite in a road contest against a young Minnesota Vikings squad that played one of its best all-around games in years under new head coach Mike Zimmer.
No one should assume the Pats will waltz out of the Midwest with an easy victory, especially considering the plethora of execution woes and questionable coaching decisions that arose against the Miami Dolphins. New England possesses potential remedies for its problems in the trenches and in the passing game, but until these fresh units prove capable over the long haul, it is fair to harbor concerns.
Patriots fans are undoubtedly plugged into local beat reporters like Mike Reiss (ESPN Boston), Ben Volin (The Boston Globe) and Doug Kyed (NESN), but after such a foundation-shaking defeat, it is more instructive to survey the national response to the game. By extricating oneself from the immediate voices surrounding the team, we can gain an understanding of how the national media viewed New England's listless performance.
With that in mind, let's take a look at some of the most noteworthy opinions surrounding a suddenly in-flux Patriots squad.
Chris Brown: Patriots' Atrocious Run Defense
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"Patriots had serious issues with Miami's gun runs (new MIA OC Bill Lazor came from Chip Kelly's staff). 2 safeties deep; LBs stuck on blocks
— Chris B. Brown (@smartfootball) September 8, 2014"
Chris Brown is one of the smartest X's-and-O's minds out there, but one does not need his insight into the game to realize how poor the Patriots' run defense fared last Sunday. According to Pro Football Focus (subscription required), the Pats compiled a minus-12.9 overall run-defense grade, which included six missed tackles on Knowshon Moreno.
Many Pats observers were up in arms during the game about Belichick's insistence on employing a two-gapping 3-4 scheme that required Chandler Jones and Joe Vellano to play the 5-technique, while Jerod Mayo and Jamie Collins adjusted to different run fits. Only Vince Wilfork appears to fit the old 3-4 system; in fact, based on his recent draft record, Belichick has seemingly moved away from the heavy two-gappers toward more athletic space-oriented front-seven players.
In essence, New England's inability to execute gap-fitting fundamentals bailed out Ryan Tannehill's inaccuracies, allowing Miami to run the same inside draw play after play. The Vikings would happily oblige if provided similarly generous treatment, especially given the talent and continuity along Minnesota's offensive line.
Considering that the Pats employed a similar look throughout the preseason, it is unclear if Belichick is willing to suddenly undo the change he installed in the offseason. Surely, there is some more reasonable endgame to his thinking, but based on all the empirical evidence we have, his current personnel is ill-suited to carry out 3-4 principles.
Neil Hornsby: Brady Under Pressure
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Sam Monson of Pro Football Focus incited a mild uproar this summer when he asserted Tom Brady's fall from the ranks of the elite quarterbacks. While there are still 15 games for Brady to repudiate that claim, PFF's Neil Hornsby (via ESPN, subscription required) notes that his colleague's argument has validity after Week 1:
"Of the 29 quarterbacks we've graded for passing so far in Week 1, Brady is listed at No. 25, sitting just between Geno Smith (24) and McCown (26). You can make any number of excuses you want for why Brady struggled, but regardless of the pressure he was under, he is going to have to do much better for the Patriots to succeed this season.
With the game in the balance Brady forced far too many throws, and later, when chasing the game, his accuracy went south as he overthrew multiple open receivers down the field. As PFF's own Steve Palazzolo has pointed out before, Brady has more issues with inside pressure than most QBs, and as we saw in the pass protection section above that was where the majority came from in this game.
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Even the most ardent Brady supporter cannot deny that the quarterback contributed to New England's problems against Miami. With just four of 24 passes traveling farther than 10 yards in the air, the passing game exhibited the limitations that paralyzed the Patriots at the end of 2013.
A ravaged receiving corps provided a reasonable excuse in January, but even with Aaron Dobson out and Rob Gronkowski still limited, those numbers are unacceptable. The continuity from last season's receiving corps seemed to bear fruit in the preseason, but for whatever reason, the passing game made little progress toward threatening the perimeter or vertical seams.
Again, much of that stems from a lack of protection, a variable that will stymie any offense. Still, for a quarterback who has built his reputation on elevating ho-hum supporting casts, Brady failed to match his lofty standards.
ESPN Stats and Info: Brady-to-Gronk Was Rusty
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"Tom Brady was 4-of-12 for 40 yards and a TD targeting Rob Gronkowski on Sunday
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) September 7, 2014"
Despite impacting Miami's red-zone defense early in the contest, Rob Gronkowski's imprint on New England's season opener was relatively muted. That's not necessarily an ominous sign; for despite his otherworldly physical tools, Gronk remains genetically human. After returning from a debilitating ACL injury roughly nine months after surgery, Gronkowski should not be graded too harshly.
The greater concern remains Brady's propensity for forcing the ball to his All-Pro tight end, regardless of coverage efficacy. While Gronk's immense catch radius makes him an inviting target, Brady appeared overzealous in targeting him on numerous well-covered hitches, sticks and other intermediate interior concepts.
Indeed, on passes that traveled 10-19 yards in the air between the hashmarks, Gronk caught just two of seven targets. While one of those was a third-down drop on the game's first possession, it is fair to mostly pin that on Brady's decision-making and Josh McDaniels' play-calling. In general, McDaniels was not particularly imaginative, frustratingly insisting on deep dropbacks from under center that effectively served as an open invitation to Miami's pass-rushers.
But of all New England's problems, Brady-to-Gronkowski seems unlikely to remain a significant issue. As Gronk's workload increases, he should recover some of his speed and agility, which should improve the timing between him and Brady.
The Patriots possess proven high-end talent to solve the problems we have addressed thus far. The next issue, however, presents a thornier proposition.
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Bill Barnwell: What to Do About the Offensive Line?
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Panic about New England's offensive line was pervasive following Sunday's debacle, and Grantland's Bill Barnwell provided a particularly legitimate cause for concern:
"When the Patriots traded Logan Mankins to Tampa Bay in August, the surprise wasn’t that they would move on from a popular veteran before anybody expected. The surprise was that they were getting rid of a veteran lineman and replacing him with a much younger player without having Dante Scarnecchia around to teach him the ropes.
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Whereas the concerns surrounding the run defense and passing game have likely solutions, the road forward for the offensive line is much hazier. The unit already faced uncertainty following Dante Scarnecchia's retirement this offseason. Coupled with the shocking Logan Mankins trade and a haphazard succession of first-team lines throughout the preseason, it is hardly surprising that the line struggled against a talented Miami front.
Every single offensive lineman graded negatively on the day, and while the likes of Nate Solder and Sebastian Vollmer figure to straighten their performances out, the Pats cannot expect any consistency without settling on a defined interior combination. Multiple miscommunications (including on Cameron Wake's game-changing third-quarter strip-sack) sabotaged plays before they could even develop.
Those problems are avoidable; for now, the Patriots should probably stick with their most experienced line, if only to hasten the development of continuity. That would likely mean an interior of Marcus Cannon, Ryan Wendell and Dan Connolly. Wendell in particular could be vulnerable if Bryan Stork is healthy, but if the rookie forces his way into the starting lineup, that is not exactly a problem the Pats would be unhappy with at the moment.
Rivers McCown: No Need to Panic
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Thus far, we have only addressed New England's problems. That's not an unreasonable agenda after such a concerning performance, but as Football Outsiders' Rivers McCown notes, the numbers suggest that panic is unwarranted at the moment:
"The odds are that, as usual, this won't be the end of the New England dynasty. There's still a lot to shake out about their offense, especially at receiver and in the interior of the line. These kinds of games can happen while plans are in flux.
...[Given] what we know about the past, it's hard to believe there wasn't at least some element of flukiness in the results of this game.
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If you click on the link, you'll see a table McCown constructed illustrating the worst season openers from a team that finished as a top-five squad in FO's DVOA metric. New England's minus-25.2 percent DVOA is cringe-worthy, ranking 20th in the league after the first week, but it is far from the type of flagrantly heinous showing that would portend a significant fall to the bottom of the league.
In fact, using a formula that combines preseason projections with the small-sample size of DVOA data after Week 1, FO's Aaron Schatz illustrates that the Patriots are still ranked fourth in the league. We can debate the merits of ranking anything after one week, but ultimately, it would be fallacious to stray too far from the widely accepted perception of the Patriots as top Super Bowl contenders.
New England is far from that championship form at the moment, though apart from the Seattle Seahawks, no one distinguished themselves as ostensibly flawless squads. The Patriots' mantra entails peaking at the end of the four-month regular-season journey, so while they may have stumbled badly out of the starting blocks, New England's track record suggests that a recovery lies in imminent order.
*All stats via Pro Football Focus (subscription required).
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