New England Patriots: How Can Josh McDaniels Get Most out of Offense in 2015?

Sterling XieJul 18, 2015

As much as we might try, it's hard to find much to complain about when it comes to the New England Patriots offense. The Patriots have finished as a top-five scoring team each of the past five seasons, and by Football Outsiders' DVOA metric, New England has been a top-seven overall offense every year since 2004.

Keep that in mind when reading this article. Because of how high Tom Brady and the Pats have set the bar, "very good" is not some praiseworthy achievement around the Patriots quarters. It's a harsh standard to live up to, but whatever retooling New England needs to do offensively is aimed at keeping the unit in its customary elite stratosphere.

Blount Force Trauma

Apart from Corey Dillon, the Patriots have largely eschewed big Pro Bowl-level running backs under Bill Belichick. Nevertheless, New England has remained an excellent rushing team without star-level talent in the backfield. Although the passing game receives most of the glory, the Patriots were actually a top-10 rushing team every season from 2006 to 2013, based on Football Outsiders' DVOA metric.

That streak ended last year when New England finished 14th in rushing DVOA, with an opponent-adjusted success rate 3.7 percent below the league average. Injuries and personnel changes caused the Patriots to have four running backs with at least 60 carries but none who eclipsed 100, so there's certainly multiple slices of blame pie to go around.

However, recency bias might pin a disproportionate amount of that blame on LeGarrette Blount, who ended the season as the team's unquestioned early-down back. After returning to Foxborough in Week 12, Blount led the Patriots with 107 carries, postseason included. But memories of miserable postseason showings against Baltimore and Seattle, in which he totaled a combined 41 yards on 17 carries, have lingered to create a general apathy surrounding New England's running back corps.

Looking back, it's easy to label Blount an uncanny Colts-killer who shrivels up against better run defenses. To examine this theory, I took Blount's yards per carry in every game he's had as a Patriot the past two seasons and graphed them against the rushing DVOA rank of the defense he faced. If Blount's performance is entirely dependent on opponents' strength, we should expect a strong linear correlation:

Taking the square root of the r-squared value on the chart, we get a correlation of 0.28 between Blount's yards per carry and the rushing DVOA rank of his opponents. The relationship is there, but it's fairly weak and wouldn't suggest that Blount is more dependent on opponent strength than any other running back. Every running back is going to perform better against poor run defenses (#analysis), but there are enough positive outliers in Blount's sample (like his 12-carry, 78-yard performance against the top-ranked Lions last year) to suggest that the postseason was an exaggeration of that effect.

It's hard to illustrate any running back's value through a series of screen shots (something football fans saw earlier this offseason), so instead, let's explain why Blount necessarily deserves a larger slice of the workload distribution in 2015.

Recently, Pro Football Focus unveiled a series of charting stats on running backs, and Blount stood out in two facets. First, he didn't receive a ton of daylight, averaging the ninth-fewest pre-contact rushing yards per carry (1.3 yds./att.).

Nevertheless, Blount often turned those pre-contact lemons into big-play lemonade. Blount created 10 or more yards after contact on 4.7 percent of his runs, the sixth-highest mark in the league last season. Though Blount's lack of top-end speed certainly created some of those aforementioned pre-contact issues, his physicality and consistent forward-running lean help him maximize his carries unlike any other back on New England's roster.

Since his 1,000-yard rookie season in Tampa Bay, Blount has never been the unquestioned alpha dog of a backfield. However, while the Patriots won't hand him that role, Blount's high floor and underrated consistency makes him the logical choice to receive the lion's share of the snaps over his inexperienced competition.

Improve on 3rd-and-Short

There weren't many situations where the Patriots offense struggled last season, but 3rd-and-short situations stood out prominently. According to FO's premium DVOA database, the Pats finished 30th last year in 3rd-and-short success rate, ahead of only New Orleans and Washington.

Because we're magnifying a relatively small situational sample, there's no need to get too carried away with those numbers. However, things become a little more alarming when looking at the Pats' 3rd-and-short trends over a longer period. Though New England has traditionally been an excellent 3rd-and-short offense, things have gone decidedly south the past two seasons.

The Patriots were actually average in terms of conversion rate; New England's 59 percent first-down rate on third down with three or fewer yards to go was the exact same as the regular-season league average, per Pro-Football-Reference. Nevertheless, the passing game dragged down that overall average—when New England passed on 3rd-and-3 or less, it converted just 51.3 percent of the time.

Unsurprisingly, Brady saw his numbers dip in such situations, as No. 12 went 21-of-36 (58.3 percent) for 222 yards and a meager 6.2 yards per attempt that lagged well behind his overall 7.1 Y/A average. Rewatching some of those plays, a few play-calling trends stand out. First, the good:

In a shocker, the Patriots offense tends to operate better when Rob Gronkowski has the ball in his hands. Brady targeted Gronk nine times on 3rd-and-three or less, and the All-Pro tight end caught seven of those for first downs. Most of those receptions came after the Patriots isolated Gronkowski on one side of the formation, allowing him to establish body position on a juicy one-on-one matchup, as he did in both screen shots above.

On the other hand, there were a surprising amount of protection issues in these situations. Granted, not every 3rd-and-short throw is a one-read pitch-and-catch like those Gronkowski plays were. Defenses do like to disguise their fronts in these situations precisely to take away those easy conversions, but some of these pressures were just frustratingly quick wins from the defense.

The above play was designed as a slip screen to Shane Vereen, who came open after wriggling away from the middle linebacker. Unfortunately for New England, quick pressure sabotaged the play and prevented Brady from hitting the open running back. The play ended after Brady threw an incompletion at the feet of Vereen, leading to a red-zone field goal.

The good news is that the Patriots were a very solid rushing team on 3rd-and-short, as their 66.7 percent first-down rate tied for 11th-best in the league, per PFR. Though it's become unconventional to run on anything besides 3rd-and-1 or 3rd-and-inches, the Pats could do worse than leaning on Blount and his high yards-after-contact running style to goose their conversion rate in 2015.

Stretch the Field...with Garoppolo

Patriots fans surely hope this section becomes a moot point in short order. But until we receive word on the Brady appeal, it's best to prepare as though he'll miss action. Even if Brady receives an injunction temporarily lifting the suspension, an unfavorable court decision could potentially cause him to miss games later in the season.

The Patriots already prepared for the worst by giving Jimmy Garoppolo a hefty share of first-team snaps during OTAs, and McDaniels has likely worked on a contingency plan for how he'll reshape the offense around Garoppolo, if necessary. While New England could probably utilize some moving pocket wrinkles to take advantage of Garoppolo's mobility and stave off pressure, the most obvious change would seemingly be to make the offense more vertical.

Coming out of Eastern Illinois, Garoppolo's most noticeable assets were his quick release and impressive mental makeup. However, anonymous scouts gushed over Garoppolo's fade route throws to the Journal Sentinel's Bob McGinn leading up to the draft, noting how that ability is especially advantageous in the constricted red zone:

"
Gets the ball out very well. He doesn't have the same arm as Carr but he's got great feet, a quick release and he's accurate. He played with some very pedestrian football players. Believe it or not, he has a lot of similarities to Drew Brees...Really, really quick release. He's lethal in the red zone. Maybe the best I've ever seen throwing fades. His accuracy is just OK. Outstanding kid.
"

If Garoppolo does play at all, it seems likely we'd see a lot more deep shots on the perimeter, even if New England's receiving corps isn't generally designed to play in that kind of system. McDaniels surely wouldn't transform New England into an Air Coryell type of offense, but when looking back at Garoppolo's preseason, many of his best throws were on those fade routes that scouts loved so much:

Garoppolo's deep ball was arguably the decisive factor in helping Brian Tyms earn a surprise roster spot, as it became extremely difficult to cut Tyms after he averaged an eye-opening 17.1 yards per reception during the preseason. And even though the sample is tiny, Garoppolo did throw 22.2 percent of his regular-season pass attempts deep (≥15 yards), well ahead of Brady's 17.8 percent rate, according to Advanced Football Analytics.

Low-efficiency deep balls go against the mantra of New England's uber-efficient passing game, but it's doubtful Garoppolo could execute the timing-based offense with the same level of precision that Brady does. Deep passes would not only tap into one of Garoppolo's greatest strengths, but a couple big plays each game could afford the Patriots offense the increased margin of error it would need without Brady.