First, Danny Amendola summoned his inner Gregory Hines for a proper tap dance in the back of the end zone that gave the Patriots their first lead of the game, and then cornerback Stephon Gilmore did his best Bobby Orr impersonation to knock away a desperation fourth-and-fifteen rocket from Jacksonville quarterback Blake Bortles destined for rookie wideout Dede Westbrook to preserve Amendola's heroics.
In that very instant, every Patriots' fan on the planet realized why general manager Bill Belichick went out and grabbed Gilmore in free agency. But it should have been apparent way before that.
After a tough start to his season, Gilmore has been the shutdown corner that Belichick envisioned and finished the season as one of Pro Football Focus's hottest corners (ranked 14th among 124 corners in the NFL - not bad for how poorly he played the first month of the season), and quarterbacks have been wary of targeting him of late, and for good reason: He's given up three catches on nine targets for 43 yards in the playoffs, physically breaking up four of the incompletions...
...the best being his aforementioned flying squirrel imitation on Westbrook to swat away a pretty deep ball from Bortles - who played well all game, except when he fell apart along with the rest of the Jaguars about halfway through the fourth quarter of the Patriots' come-from-behind 24-20 win.
Of course, the Jaguars didn't just fall apart all by themselves - they had a little help from the Patriots, who insist on doing things on their own terms. The philosophy has always been to take the other team's best shot, then when they have worn themselves down, the Patriots counter-punch with such ferocity and precision that it's awe-inspiring to witness, but not everyone understands it.
However, former Patriots' linebacker Willie McGinnest - no stranger to the way head ball coach Bill Belichick builds his teams - does, and he shared his insight with folks before the game on Sunday.
When asked for his prediction on NFL Network's NFL Gameday, McGinnest said that he picked the Jaguars to win the first half of the game and that he picked the Patriots to win the second half of the game, and to pull out the victory - and when his prediction came true, the other on air personalities on the program fetched him a king's crown, a silk cape and a scepter for his brilliance and accuracy in his prognostication...
...but he was speaking simply from his experiences as a three-time Super Bowl champion under Belichick - and also from how the Patriots' defense has trended this season.
Outside of their horrendous start to the season - sitting at .500 after four games and with the worst statistical defense in the league - finished the season ranked fifth in scoring defense at 18.3 points per game overall, and a mind-blowing 14 points per game when omitting those first four games - but it's how those points are disbursed throughout the game that tells the story that McGinnest capitalized on.
Including both playoff games, the Patriots have surrendered ten points per game in the first half of games, but just four per game in the second half. - tops in the league by a large margin in that time span - while their offense scores the majority of their points in the second and fourth quarters, which comes out to 18 of their 28 points per game.
Point being, when your offense scores twice as many points as your defense allows the bad guys, you're going to win a lot of games - that's just the nature of sports.
But lodged in between the numbers game comes the volatile nature of the defensive back. Other than the quarterback position, there is not another spot on the depth chart that is more in focus on a snap-to-snap basis as is the cornerback position - because it is always up front and apparent when a corner is having a bad day.
When Gilmore came to the Patriots, it was well-known that he does his best work when mirroring a receiver one-on-one, but it was also expected that the corner could competently play the zone game when need be - however, Gilmore struggled with lingo and boundaries and was a literal boy among men in the New England secondary, with fellow stoppers Malcolm Butler and Jonathan Jones picking up the slack.
It got so bad that Belichick and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia had to abandon their signature big nickel alignment in order to keep a safety over the top and a centerfielder in order to reduce the chance of the chunk play, which had a trickle down effect on the entire defense. In those first four games, the Patriots gave up more passing yards (324 per game), more rushing yards (133 per game) and more points (32 per game) than any other team in the league.
...but since have trimmed the aforementioned fourteen points per game off the total, as well as nearly 30 full rushing yards and nearly one hundred passing yards because of one anomaly in Belichick's makeup that separates him from every other coach in the NFL.
Belichick formulated a vanilla gameplan in week five when the Patriots visited Tampa Bay on a Thursday night, then took the ten days between that game and a visit to New York to play the Jets to structure the defensive philosophy to fit the personnel that he had rather than to try and fit a square peg in a round hole by riding out the Gilmore communication experiment, and the numbers speak for themselves.
But it wasn't just Gilmore, by any means. Injury ravaged the linebacking corps, which turned Belichick's original plan to run exclusively with a three-man line to a three plus-one line, using a rotating collection of rookies and never-have-beens to populate the front seven in what can only be termed as a live audition to find an efficient lineup on a fundamental level.
The result is something out of a cheesy football movie where a group of rag tag nobodies form into a cohesive unit just in time to win a championship, starring the likes of Deatrich Wise, Eric Lee, Marquis Flowers and Adam Butler combining with veteran stalwarts Trey Flowers, Lawrence Guy and Alan Branch - the whole thing led by Kyle Van Noy.
That's not the way it was supposed to be, but when the Patriots signed outside linebacker James Harrison just before their season finale, he completed what has turned into a real nuisance for opposing offenses.
How much of a nuisance depends on several factors, but in the case of their next opponent - the Philadelphia Eagles, who have the top-rated offensive line in all of professional football - they have to be intrigued by what they see on film when the Patriots notched eight sacks against the second-rated line, employed by the Tennessee Titans...
...especially since the Eagles' grade comes primarily from their run blocking dominance that yielded 4.5 yards per carry, but allowed their quarterbacks to be sacked 35 times - a boon for the Patriots' defense because in addition to the stats mentioned earlier, this rag tag group of nobodies, many of whom couldn't crack rosters elsewhere, now sport 53 sacks on the season.
Lately, a good majority of them have been the "coverage" variety of sacks, where the quarterback can't find a target, gets skittish in the pocket and bolts right into the waiting arms of a Patriots' defender - and for at least part of that you can thank Stephon Gilmore, who has turned a season that started off as a nightmare into a dream scenario, just one game to go to earn a championship.
All because he belongs to a group of defenders that Belichick collected and assimilated into a cohesive unit, allowing their skill sets to be the guide instead of trying to fit eleven square pegs into as many round holes.
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