No Paper Tigers, These Patriots Are Mean Counter-Punchers

"In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined." - Dr Thomas Szasz

The noted Psychologist Thomas Szasz stated that little ditty in response to critics of his postulation of the quick and the dead. "The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself." the doctor was quoted in The Columbia Law Review in 1958, "In the typical western, two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground. Whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives, his adversary is shot and dies."

"In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words. Whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim."

Lewis has been under-used in Patriots' offense

That said, in the never-ending struggle for the media and fans to define the New England Patriots, they have instead defined themselves, and it's nothing like what anyone was expecting.

The New England Patriots' secondary was considered among the best in football coming into the 2017 National Football League season.

And why not? After all, defacto General Manager and head ball coach Bill Belichick signed cornerback Stephon Gilmore away from Buffalo to go along with Pro Bowl corner Malcolm Butler and up-and-coming winger Eric Rowe - and when combined with the best, most versatile safety corps in the league, the optimism was hard to argue with.

But now, a full one-third of the way into the season, the Patriots are ranked dead-last in the league in both passing yards yielded and in total defense, yet they stand atop the AFC East with a 4-2 record.

The Patriots skill positions on offense had fans and foes alike thinking juggernaut, but after an initial four-game spread that saw them scoring over 32 points per game, they have been held to a measly 21 points per game in their last two - yet they stand atop the AFC East with a 4-2 record.

How this is possible is testament to a coaching staff that has scrambled to minimize the impact of injury, and to a group of players that are true Patriots all the way down to their spleens: toiling in the trenches, stuffing the run when they absolutely have to, scoring when they need it the most, most of their games coming down to the last possession...

...and were it not for a missed assignment here and a missed tackle there, this rag-tag team, warts and all, would be undefeated - but by the same token, were they not so fortunate on a couple of occasions, they would be winless and talk of the Patriots' dynasty being done would be factual.

But 4-2 is where the team stands after Sunday's gut-check against the Jets at MetLife Stadium, a game that's script has become all too familiar to Patriots' fans - but a rough draft that will pay dividends down the road, should this year's version of the New England Patriots ever put the entire thing together and play like the paper version of themselves indicate they should be.

Paper tigers? So far this season they have yet to live up to the media-generated hype surrounding the roster, and instead have reset to their default settings to get them through, a state of being ruled by Belichickian mystique and fundamentalist philosophy that dictates that no matter how lousy the team plays through bulk of the game, they almost always in a position to punch through the crust when winning time arrives.

It's not pretty, but that's their identity. They have been defined as a team full of Keystone Kops that magically and collectively transform into a battlefield juggernaut, seemingly oblivious to their maladroit antics that allow their foes to have the upper hand for much of the battle, their brazen and pretentious efficiency at the most opportune of times laying waste to any clumsiness beforehand.

It's as if they are somehow piggy-backing off of their epic comeback in Super Bowl 51 to introduce Patriots' fans to their new persona: fall behind, often on plays that display a lack of discipline not seen in Foxborough in decades, then staging mind-boggling comebacks where they briefly look like the team everyone expects them to be...

...as if the entire act is purposeful, toying with their prey until that Darwinian time comes to eat or be eaten; for a brief moment rising above their status as paper tigers of which they have been defined just long enough to put a crooked number in the win column.

For certain, it leaves their fan base reaching for xanax and whatever blood pressure medicine they have been prescribed, washing it down with ice cold beer while muttering epitaphs of rude discontent - and if that's the way things are going to be in Foxborough this season, their fans should seriously consider auto-refill at their pharmacy of choice.

For instance, the Patriots victories in the past two weeks have been scandalous - a 19-14 victory over Tampa Bay which was decided for them by the Buccaneers' kicker who missed three field goals that would have provided the winning points, and Sunday's 24-17 adventure that was essentially decided by the referees invoking an obscure rule to nullify a New York Jets' touchdown.

Patriots' fans can take solace in the notion that even if Tampa's Nick Folk would have nailed his field goal attempts and had Jets' tight end Austin Sefarian-Jenkins not bobbled the football while falling out of bounds across the goal line to cause a touchback, the aforementioned mystique coupled with the Dawninian-inspired flipping of the switch would likely have been plenty enough to save the day, regardless.

So, that's their identity - and it could be worse.

It could be a hell of a lot worse. But no matter what is going on with injury and illness, this team has the veteran leadership with just the right infusion of youth to keep pulling off this magic act until they either run out of fairy dust or bring home another trophy - and we've seen enough from the Patriots in the first six weeks of the season to be able to make that kind of claim.

They haven't improved, they've just adjusted and have learned how to work around their shortcomings. On defense, that means that they are leaning heavily on fundamentals and playing a basic, vanilla type of ball that has seen them collect six sacks, pick off two balls, force three fumbles hold their opponent to just 13 of 30 on third down and have allowed just 3.7 yards per carry in the running game for the past two weeks.

None of those are elite numbers, but they are adequate - adequate to the point that they have surrendered an average of just 15 points in those games - which is a good thing since the offense has taken a nose dive in point production over that same span, scoring just twenty points per contest after averaging 32 in their first four contests.

That is a huge decline against middle-of-the-pack defenses that featured sincere matchup advantages for New England that the offense failed to take advantage of.

Despite having three quality running backs, all of whom are capable in the pattern, the offense has targeted them in the passing game just 49 times for the season, 42 of those going to James White, who leads the team in both categories - while human joystick Dion Lewis has been targeted only seven times and Mike Gillislee none - accounting for only 21% of the team's production through the air.

That is the same percentage of passing attempts to the backs as last season, when Julian Edelman was busy hogging up close to one-third of the team's total targets in the pattern. Just that number alone should give one an idea of just how dependent this offense was - and still is - on Edelman.

Part of the reason that the backs haven't been able to assuage the loss of Edelman is the fact that opposing defenses rightly viewed Edelman as quarterback Tom Brady's security blanket, and now that he's no longer in the picture, they smell blood in the water and are being aggressive in both coming after Brady in the pocket as well as trying to punk his receivers coming off the line.

This causes an interesting phenomenon called having to keep your backs in to pick up blitzers, which limits their opportunity in the pattern. Still, the Patriots lead the league in passing yardage and in total yardage and in red zone scoring opportunities - and that's where the wheels seem to fall off.

The Patriots have been in the opponent's red zone 25 times this season, converting that into just 12 touchdowns - and if one couples that number with turnovers within Stephen Gostkowski's field goal range, New England has left an alarming 62 points on the field this season, missing out on a little over ten points per game.

Now, to expect the Patriots to score a touchdown on each possession is unrealistic, and to say that the offense is experiencing a bit of a slump is missing the point. This team is riding a wave of expectancy, which has turned them from the aggressors they were in the past to mean counter-punchers in the present, with the ability to land a finishing shot to end what has become bloody trench warfare...

...going toe-to-toe with the Chiefs until they got stuffed on a fourth-and-one at midfield, setting off a Kansas City blitzkrieg, and then grinding the Saints in oblivion before trending into the pugilists that we are currently witnessing.

They answered thirteen straight points from the Texans with a last minute touchdown dime from Brady to newcomer Brandin Cooks, erased a fourteen point deficit with two touchdowns in four-and-a-half minutes to knot the score with the Panthers before losing on a last-second field goal, converting field goals that Tampa Bay could not and then gutting out a still-controversial win over the Jets on the strength of two second half scores.

In that respect, this team resembles the 2011 squad that finished the season one play short of the Lombardi trophy, losing to the Giants in the Super Bowl - reaching the big game despite being next-to-last in the league in total defense.

The job that the coaching staff pulled off in 2011 was perhaps the finest in Bill Belichick's tenure as head coach, doing just enough on offense to pull games out despite Brady being sacked 32 times and despite being decimated in their secondary and linebacking corps - people should remember the biggest defensive play of the season being unknown safety Sterling Moore stipping the ball out of the hands of Baltimore's Lee Evans int he end zone...

...which was a sure touchdown otherwise, then being the beneficiaries of kicker Billy Cundiff pulling the subsequent 32-yard field goal wide left with eleven seconds remaining in the game.

The point being that if the Patriots play their hearts out and leave it all on the field, they are going to be in every game, and with Brady being Brady, they are going to win the majority of those close games.

It almost makes things like missed field goals and nullified touchdowns seem almost karmic in nature, but while you can't live on luck every week, the Patriots always seem to do enough to put themselves in position to win - and if that's the way New England is defined, fans should stock up on the heartburn and blood pressure meds, but always with the thought that their Patriots are playing hard and doing their jobs.

It's not pretty, but football isn't supposed to be.