Running Back James White has caught 43 balls on the season, twelve more than Danny Amendola, ten more than both Brandin Cooks and Chris Hogan and nine more than Rob Gronkowski, and is on pace to obliterate every existing team record for a running back in the passing game - not only that, but his total is good for a seventh-place tie atop the NFL...
...tied with Detroit wide receiver Golden Tate and Philadelphia tight end Zach Ertz, and just six behind Carolina rookie Christian McCaffrey for the most catches by a running back.
There is reason to believe that White would be on this pace regardless of Edelman's season-ending knee injury in the preseason, as in 2016 he grasped quarterback Tom Brady's trust with a season for the ages, breaking Kevin Faulk's team records for receptions and receiving yards in a season, then stamped his name in football lore with an MVP-worthy performance in the Super Bowl.
If White stayed on this current course, he would catch 86 balls for 730 yards and a couple of touchdowns, and should also contribute in the running game with 56 carries for 240 yards and a 4.3 yards per carry average.
In that light, the running back corps are naturally the most dynamic of all of the skill positions on offense, and have collectively handled the football in exactly half of the Patriots snaps this season - yet there is a disparity in plays called between the passing game and the running game, something that head ball coach Bill Belichick lamented in his weekly conference call following his team's win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
"We've got to do a better job of running the ball, period." the Dark Master emphasized, sternly. "That's coaching the running game, designing the running game, blocking the running game, running the ball and other things associated with it."
Belichick paused for dramatic effect, then offered, "We need to have more production than what we had yesterday or, I'd say, what we had overall over a period of time. We need to get more out of it."
Belichick's lengthy monologue was in response to a question about how teams defend the Patriots offense by dropping a strong safety into the box 90% of the time, specifically mentioning that teams routinely put a player in the six-technique over the tight end while everyone else is in a one-gap, gap-control alignment, which puts the running game at a disadvantage...
...which shows the respect that the opposition has for the Patriots' backs, an alignment that limits the backs in the ground game to four yards per carry on the season.
Which isn't bad, but certainly not elite - and that's not what the Patriots are about anyway. Routinely, the short passing game has been used in New England as an extension of the running game, which would account for the aforementioned 50-50 split in touches between the passing game and the running game, and if one looks at these numbers from that angle, the Patriots' offense features tremendous balance.
The problem with taking that angle, however, is that it masks the fact that the offense is pass-heavy, which causes the opposing defenses to load up the box with a strong safety at the six-technique to harass Gronkowski while the designated pass rushers go full-throttle after Brady, who doesn't necessarily have the play action to fall back on simply because the defense doesn't respect the run.
Yet some reporters queried Belichick on the "extended" usage of the running game against the Chargers, and what made him stick with the run even though it was clearly not working against one of the worst run defenses in the league, even though the pass-to-run ratio was a typical 60-40 split.
"You've got a ball carrier and you've got a quarterback, so that's nine against eleven." Belichick huffed, "So you can't get a hat on every hat on the field, but you can get a hat on a hat at the point of attack in the running game. In the end, you have to block them, and at some point, a good back needs to gain some yards on his own and break a tackle or make somebody miss on a player that's not blocked."
As usual, it's tough to decipher exactly what Belichick means by his ranting soliloquies, but if taken at face value, one could conjure that he was unhappy with the run blocking against the Chargers, and leveled a bit of criticism at his stable of backs for perhaps not doing enough to elude tacklers that are not blocked.
Regardless, the Patriots' backfield is a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust entity, but the criticism appeared to be leveled at Gillislee, who ran for exactly three yards per carry, but offers next to nothing in the passing game, rendering him a one-dimensional player whom the opposition can key on when he is in the game - which may be the reason why he has lost snaps to Lewis and Burkhead, who are far more dynamic.
Perhaps Belichick and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels expected the Gillislee would produce more towards his 2016 numbers when he subbed-in for Shady McCoy in Buffalo, averaging an absurd 5.71 yards per carry, 3.34 of which came after contact.
Absurd to think it, let alone expect it? Well, considering that Lewis is averaging 3.91 yards after contact for the 2017 season, it's not too hard to guess why the diminutive yet powerful Lewis has usurped Gillislee as the Patriots' lead back, as Gillislee's 2.6 yards after first contact isn't even in the same area code as Lewis, nor Gillislee's numbers in Buffalo.
One would think it was a scheme thing, and maybe it is as Lewis is accumulating that yardage behind an offensive line built more for a sliding zone blocking scheme rather than Buffalo's drive blocking scheme that Gillislee's skill set is more attuned to, while Lewis thrives in the zone scheme where a back must cut and explode through cutback lanes.
White is another back that is used to playing behind drive blocking units in college at Wisconsin, but has found his niche as a "draw" back, a passing down back that accumulates 5.5 yards after the catch and averages 4.3 yards per carry, as does combo-back Rex Burkhead, whose wares were on full display last Sunday against the Chargers.
With Lewis clearly on the fast track, White ingrained as the draw back and Burkhead finding his footing in the Patriots' backfield as a change-of-pace, all-purpose back, it seems that Gillislee's impact on the offense will be as the four-minute back, though Lewis has seen time in that capacity as well.
There may not be another team in the NFL that gets as much balance out of their backfield, and certainly not one that has four backs contributing consistently, but the bottom line is that even though the Patriots' runners handle the ball on half of the offensive snaps, true balance cannot be attained until the running game mirrors the passing game...
...as only then will the opposition respect the Patriots' ground game, which will force the defense to defend the entire field because the play action can be invoked properly. Until then, Brady will get the ball to his playmaking backs any way that he can and hope for the best.
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