That said, we don't need to get into some plagiaristic tome with charts and graphs - all we need to do is look at how the Patriots offense is constructed, because they are perfectly designed to take advantage of the weaknesses of the Jaguars defense.
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| Gronkowski is an issue for any defense |
And that is regardless of the status of quarterback Tom Brady's throwing hand, which has been the subject of much speculation and even some accusation of subterfuge among the more light-hearted of Patriots' fans, claiming that the Brady injury is simply a matter of head ball coach Bill Belichick climbing inside the heads of the Jaguars' and their coaching staff.
And, why not? Belichick resides in the frontal lobe of just about every coach who ever lived, and he savors his reputation as a "cheater", as it is the chisel that breaks through their skulls and into whatever gland that causes paranoid delusions touched off by such things as towel hampers and hearing static in headsets, or hearing nothing at all.
Hell, Belichick is such a sick bastard that he made sure that some poor slob on the field crew installed half a dozen temperature gauges - at eye level - on the bulkhead from where the visiting New York Jets' players would be emerging from their nice overly-warm locker room and onto the frozen turf at Gillette Stadium, just to reinforce the notion that they were preparing to play in the midst of an arctic cold snap...
...and then hung 147 rushing yards on them in 38 bone-chilling carries, building upon the nearly 200-yard rushing performance the week before against a desperate Buffalo Bills' squad - then hammering the Tennessee Titans with 101 yards on 27 carries in the divisional round of the playoffs.
You see, while production in the running game is important, it's not nearly as important as just running the ball. Those 27 carries against the Titans and the 38 against the Jets yielded only what amounts to three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust, but the effect on their respective defenses was colossal in that both units were exhausted midway through the third quarter, and that's when Brady had his way with them.
Sometimes, you get the five yards a carry like they did in 38 carries against Buffalo, when instead of Brady going off in the second half, he turned and handed the ball to Dion Lewis and had a chat with the referee.
The point is that New England doesn't need to see these advanced metrics - because they are the advanced metrics.
The stats tell us that teams that run with an "11 Personnel" package - one running back, one tight end and three receivers - are doomed against the Jaguars top shelf secondary, and there is a certain obvious logic to that in that for most teams that means playing right into the Jaguars hands - but not for New England.
The Patriots could come out in "32 Personnel" package - three backs and two tight ends - and still run most of the same concepts as if they were in an "11 Personnel", because the Patriots' offense requires all of it's skill position players to know the entire route tree, and to be able not just to run the routes, but to run them efficiently.
Now it goes to figure that typical vertical patterns would be fruitless without some speed to take the top off of a defense, but the Patriots make up for that with seam routes, wheel routes up the sideline and jailbreak screens where someone like Lewis or James White end up with the ball in the flat with a big ugly escort down the field.
It's not like they would do that, but the point is that could if they wanted to and that would attack the Jaguars' smallish but quick twitch linebackers and force the secondary closer to the line of scrimmage, essentially rendering them helpless bystanders.
That would be fun, but the Patriots can do that in the "11 Personnel" if they desired, with the same effect.
The trick - which really isn't a trick at all - is to dictate to the Jaguars' defense, to put them on the defensive, as it were, back on their heels and wondering where the ball is headed next. The Patriots can do that to anyone, because that's how they are built.
Brady's 337 passing yards against the Titans was just his third effort of over three hundred yards over the course of the 2017 season, and his first in nearly two months - which is a testament to the balance that the Patriots' offense enjoys. What that doesn't tell you is that between the running backs and tight ends, a full seventy percent of the Patriots' offense flows through them.
Seventy percent. No other team in the league can boast numbers like that, so maybe it's time to look at the Patriots offense as an issue for the Jacksonville defense instead of just being concerned that the Jaguars' defense will be an issue for the Patriots' offense.
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