When will we learn that the New England head coach is simply going to outsmart opponents
Connor Lothrop
Midway through the fourth quarter of the Patriots’ 41-28 drubbing of the LA Chargers, CBS color commentator Tony Romo encapsulated the Patriots approach under Belichick in one sentence: "The Ravens did a good job of containing the Chargers last week, so Belichick decided to say, 'Let's go out, stay after and work hard an extra two hours a day, and we're going to become the Ravens.'" And emulate Baltimore they did. The Patriots had an almost perfect first half performance, jumping out to a 35-7 lead at the break. All of this is due to what the Patriots have done best for nearly 20 years in the playoffs; creating a gameplan and executing it.
The previous week, the fifth-seeded Chargers bottled up the lightning Lamar Jackson, the latest in a succession of running quarterbacks. In order to counter his speed, the chargers mainly left four linemen in the game and dropped 7 defensive backs with no linebackers. This allowed Jackson to average 6.0 yards on 9 carries, but his long on the day was only 17 yards. The other 2 ball carriers for Baltimore averaged 2.6 yards on 14 carries. They forced Jackson to beat them with his arm, and he wilted under the pressure, posting a QBR of 78 and getting sacked 7 times. Their system prevented Baltimore from scoring until 6:00 remained in the game and the damage was done.
However, the Chargers’ offense was a different story. They scored a whopping 5 field goals and netted one late touchdown on a goal line dive. They consistently did barely enough to sneak into field goal range, and let Mike Badgely kick them into the Divisional Round. LA's offense generated 249 yards all game on the road against a stingy defense in Baltimore and did just enough to get the job done. Whether or not they could do that against New England was another question.
The answer to that question would be a hard no. On LA's first drive, Stephon Gilmore blew a coverage and Philip Rivers dropped a 43 yard ball into Keenan Allen's hands for 6. They would not score again for 27 minutes. Gilmore and the Patriots secondary played lockdown D, and Rivers was pressured or hit on nearly a third of his dropbacks. By the end of the game, his body language resembled that of a toddler who’d had his dessert taken away for a week. A week earlier, the Ravens had taken away the Chargers run game and outside receivers. The Patriots followed this gameplan, and with a few trademark Belichick tweaks, manhandled the Chargers offense.
The story was much the same on the other side of the ball. However, this time, the Patriots learned from the Raven's failures. Belichick drew up an offensive scheme that had a nearly perfect first half. To avoid the All-Pro corners across the line, Brady constantly threw screens, checkdowns, and slants to shred the weak interior of the Chargers secondary. But the main thing the Patriots did was punish LA with a vicious ground game. Sony Michel gave them 129 yards on the ground and did an invaluable job of keeping the ball away from the LA. The greatest pass catching tight end of all time, Rob Gronkowski, also had a monster day...as a blocker. Countless times, he and fullback James Develin opened Gargantuan holes in the 7 DB Chargers for Michel and Rex Burkhead to sprint through. This enabled a total domination of an LA team that had come into Foxboro brimming with confidence.
Bill Belichick has a long history of beating the odds with phenomenal gameplanning. In the 2001 Super Bowl, he faced a Rams team with a lethal dual-threat back, Marshall Faulk. He used creativity to neutralize Faulk, and one of the most dangerous offenses of all time. In 2007, he used his extensive weapons on both sides of the ball to come within one Helmet Catch of an undefeated season. And, with a lack of weapons this year, he ran the ball and rode defense all the way into this weekend's AFC Championship. However, the another question is posed: Can Belichick strategize a way past the high-octane offense of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Belichick has a few options to get past a more talented Kansas City team. The main one is to exploit their awful run defense. New England is fresh off of running for 4.6 yard per carry against a relatively stingy LA defense (4.3 YPC in 2018). However, the Chiefs give up a whopping 5.0 YPC, good for the second worst rate in football. Continuing to use Develin and Gronkowski as blockers against a small KC linebacking corps would also help to keep the lanes on the ground WIDE open. If New England can effectively keep the ball on the ground, especially if the temperature is as low as predicted (under 10 degrees at kickoff), then they can work up the field and keep the ball out of Patrick Mahomes's hands. New England will need to find a way to stop the gunslinging quarterback from shredding their defense. As much as weather might play a factor, the Patriots will still need good pressure from their front 7 and flawless press coverage on the outsides from Gilmore and Rookie JC Jackson. Even if Kansas City keeps the ball out of the air, Belichick will need to counter creative play calling for speedsters Tyreek Hill and Damien Williams.
To counter all of this, they might want to take a page out of the Chargers’ book. Their 7 DB look stalled out a Ravens offense full of quicksters. New England could very well put 6 in the secondary on every play to try and deal with the Chiefs' unmatched speed. The risk of this means that pressure could be lacking, and the thought of Patrick Mahomes with time to throw is always a scary one. New England put extensive pressure on Rivers, but often needed 6 or 7 blitzers. That is a luxury they won't be able to afford often at Arrowhead. New England will need everyone to execute a well thought out gameplan to reach the Super Bowl. But Bill Belichick and Co. have done it before, and they can sure as hell do it again.
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