Embarrassing Defeat: Time To Re-Evaluate

Many Patriots fans, including this writer, had been happy with the way this year's team was developing.  We thought that the young defensive backs were coming along well.  The pass rush wasn't all we'd want, but overall, things weren't bad.  The offense looked only a half-step less powerful than the 2007 16-0 juggernaut's.  The team was walloping the league's weak sisters and beating the middle-rank teams.  Losses at Denver and Indianapolis had been hairsbreadth, caused by easily fixable things. 

When the Patriots went into New Orleans, the illusion lasted for about a quarter.  New Orleans moved the ball on its first drive, but the Pats stiffened and held the Saints to a field goal.  They responded with a grinding ball-control drive that punched into the end zone for a touchdown.  On the next series, the Saints were three and out, and after Wes Welker returned a punt 41 yards, the Pats were in position to open up a significant lead.  Then the bubble burst; Tom Brady threw a horrible pass right to a defender as Randy Moss broke off his route, and the rest of the night was just playing catch-up against a team that wasn't about to let them catch up.

There was blame enough to go around.  The coaching is a good place to start.  The Pats had shown that they could run on the Saints.  For some reason they stopped doing it.  The kind of crunching running attack they showed on the first drive was ideal for keeping the ball out of the hands of Drew Brees, and it would keep the Saints' pass rushers back on their heels when the Pats did throw.  But the Pats abandoned that approach.  On defense, against a sophisticated passing attack, they had scratched Shawn Springs, an experienced defender, for the game even though he was healthy, while the green Jonathan Wilhite was put on receivers he wasn't even close to ready to cover.

The offensive line did fine on its rush blocking.  It punched the Saints' defensive front off the line of scrimmage, creating some good holes for the runners, who did their job well.  Laurence Maroney, Sammy Morris and Kevin Faulk were all fine with the ball. 

When called upon to protect Brady, though, the line was less impressive.  The Saints got a good rush on Brady even when they dropped eight men into coverage.  That has always been the key to stopping the Patriots, and it was the key Monday night.

If three men can get pressure, then there are three or four men available to cover the short zones where Wes Welker usually feasts on defenses while also keeping two safeties back in the deep zone to shut off Randy Moss. 

That means that the Patriots' best approach was exactly what they did on their opening possession--grind it out and wear that defensive front down.  Exhausted defensive fronts don't put on very good rushes.  For whatever reason, however, the Pats stopped running. 

In the passing game, Mike McKenzie was playing Moss extremely aggressively. He was in man coverage--there was no time for him to learn zone schemes--and was jumping Moss's first move again and again.  Yet there wasn't a single double-move pattern called to catch McKenzie going the wrong way.  It's not as if Moss doesn't know how to run that kind of pattern.  He's been burning defenders with those for years.  They just didn't call it.

The rush defense was sloppy.  The defenders were there.  They were getting to the runners at the line of scrimmage.  Somehow, however, they just weren't making the hits stick.  Again and again the pile moved three or four yards.  These New Orleans runners are middle-sized backs.  There is no way that 215-lb runners should be dragging 250-lb linebackers four yards after initial contact or running through their tackles. Again and again the Saints got six or seven yards on what should have been one or two yard gains.  The Saints' running game was pretty good, but they should not have beaten the Pats' rush defense like that.

The utter disaster was the pass defense.  The Patriots were simply confused out there, looking like a bunch of rookies in their first pro exhibition game.  They blew their assignments again and again.  The Saints didn't mind running double moves, and again and again the horribly overmatched Jonathan Wilhite was running after receivers who had beaten him.  Leigh Bodden did better on the other side, but he had trouble, too.  Drew Brees faked the safeties out of their socks repeatedly. 

One thing that has been incomprehensible ever since the Pats got Adalius Thomas has been their refusal to use him as a pass rusher.  He has been back in coverage almost all the time.  This is a man who was a top pass-rushing backer with the Ravens, but the Pats, because of his quickness, have him drop back almost all the time. In the meantime, they have no pass rush. Opposing quarterbacks have had time to throw all season, and on Monday night, Drew Brees punished the Pats for it.

It's too late to do very much about the defense this year.  The offense should be all right; when something's working, they just have to keep doing it and avoid stupid mistakes like the first interception (the second was just a desperation heave in a lost game).  You can be sure that every offensive coordinator in the league is looking at the tapes of this game and planning to do what the Saints did. If Belichick can't figure some kind of response, only the weakest teams will fail to pass effectively on the Pats.

They should still win the division.  I think 12-4 is too optimistic; 11-5 is more likely and 10-6 is possible. Someone's going to use the New Orleans game as the model to blow them up.  When the playoffs come, they might win a first-round game at home.  Once they have to play a top team on the road, they're done. Sean Payton and Drew Brees have shown other teams how to do it.