It has been said
that at the start of a National Football League season, most defenses are
"further along" than most offenses. If this is actually true, the
teams that are on the New England Patriots' schedule are in serious trouble.
Even more daunting
for their opposition, Patriots' head ball coach Bill Belichick is known to use
the first month of the season as an extention of training camp, focusing on
fundamentals and for getting his pass catchers in sync with quarterback Tom
Brady - and scarrier still, it has been well documented that Belichick doesn't
expect his charges to be playing their best ball until around Thanksgiving.
Does this all mean
that Belichick's Patriots are still in preseason mode? Does this mean that they
will actually improve as the weeks go on?
Well, New England
has just entered the third week of the regular season and have scored
seventy-six points in two contests, or an average of 38 points per game. The
defense has allowed one lone field goal during the first two weeks, or an
average of 1.5 points per game. Are you telling me that, if they stick to
Belichick's time table, they will be even better when the meat of their
schedule comes due in mid-November?
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| Belichick tutors linebacker's coach Jerod Mayo |
Belichick's ways
and means are hardly a secret, and his formula for getting his team to play at
their best at turkey time is tried and true. So it goes to figure that if his
Patriots are playing this well right now, they will be an absolute juggernaut
by the time we're all wolfing down game birds, and will have clinched
everything there is to clinch sometime between then and Christmas...
...and then after
the new year is upon us, the road to the Super Bowl will go straight through
Foxborough, where the Patriots are nearly unbeatable to begin with.
Dandy thoughts for
the Patriots and their fans after only two games, months away from what friend
and foe alike figure will be a ninth consecutive AFC Championship Game appearance
and, more than likely, their fifth trip to the Super Bowl in the last six years.
The defense is
already playing at the highest level that even the most tenured of Patriots'
fans have ever witnessed, and appear to be a legitimate shut-down unit - and the
offense, which should be riding the coattails of that defense at this point of
the season, is thriving on it's own merit. So the question begs: Are we to be
witness to the greatest team that football has ever known?
To be honest, the
New England offense has it's issues, particularly with injuries along the
offensive line, but have managed to score on twelve of their twenty
possessions, or a clip of a full sixty percent. They have punted six times to
end drives, with the other two failed drives ending with a missed field goal
and a fumble.
Conversely, the
Patriots' defense have allowed their opponents thus far to score just once in
twenty-four tries. They have forced thirteen punts, including nine
three-and-outs, and have ended the other nine drives with five interceptions,
and by forcing opposing offenses to turn the ball over on downs four times.
The offense takes
the opposing defense on long rides, keeping them on the field and on their
heels for nearly four minutes per possession and are averaging well over six
plays per drive. On scoring drives, that number increases to nearly nine plays
per drive. The Patriots' offense is not a quick-strike entity. They prefer to
move the sticks in a methodical fashion, wearing down the defense with sheer
repetition.
The defense makes
short work of the opposing offenses, limiting them to a measly two minutes per
possession and an average of just over four plays per drive. They have allowed
just three drives of over ten plays each, one ending in a field goal for the Pittsburgh
Steelers and two ending in disaster for the Miami Dolphins.
Should the Patriots
continue with this level of domination, they would be able to claim the moniker
of the best team of all time. But it would be foolish to think that one team
could hold other professional teams to the level of mediocrity that New England
has over Pittsburgh and Miami for an entire season.
Besides, the true
mark of the best team ever would be to hold a record of 19-0. The Patriots came
oh-so-close in 2007, and did so without a defense as dominating as the one
we've seen thus far in 2019 - and also did so playing what was essentially the
same schedule as New England faces this season against the NFC East and the AFC
North in addition to their AFC East rivals.
Attrition happens,
and the Patriots are not that quick-strike entity that saw quarterback Tom
Brady regurgitating bomb after bomb to the likes of Randy Moss and Donte
Stallworth. That kind of playing style may have won them eighteen consecutive
games throughout that season and into the playoffs, but ended up killing them
in the Super Bowl because of their reliance to it.
The New York Giants
exposed that reliance by taking away Moss and leaving Belichick with a sub-par
running game which limited the effect that the play action usually has in
opening up receivers in the passing game - and Brady took an epic beating and
New England lost it's perfect season.
But Belichick is
not an error repeater, and has spent his cap dollars on building an offense so
diverse, so eclectic, that a foe can't just shut down what the Patriots do
best, because they do everything well. They can run the ball with power. They
can throw the ball to all three levels of the defensive formation with equal
success - and they still have Brady.
They still have
Belichick as well, and for the first time in his tenure as head coach, he is
the true defensive coordinator, and has built a unit of stoppers that appear to
be the proverbial immovable object, not the bend-but-don't-break defense that
causes folks to reach for the Xanax.
No, this defense is
special. So deep and so savvy to the nuances of the game that Belichick can
rotate players in and out of the game to keep them fresh for winning time
without any loss of quality. The offense is special because of it's redundancy,
shredding the game clock with protracted drives that keeps the defense off the
field.
That doesn't
necessarily mean that a perfect season is in the bag, and certainly not after
just two games. What it does mean is that this incarnation of the New England
Patriots are the deepest, most talented team that Belichick has ever put
together, and that the possibility exists that perfection is within it's
grasp...
...and not for any
other reason than because Belichick will never again paint himself into a
corner by being reliant on one phase of the game over another. The team that he
has built has very few super stars, but is a compilation of excellent players
that have been collected over a purposeful decade who buy into their roles,
with a mercenary or two mixed in to add another dimension that makes it
impossible for their opposition to fully game plan for.
Take Antonio Brown,
for example. The Patriots don't need him, but he does give them yet another
player that forces their foes to account for.
Football is nothing
but a non-lethal version of Sun Tsu's Art of War, wherein a commander knows his
team's strengths and weaknesses - and the best of the best employs strategies
to not only attack where his enemy is weakest, but also uses their strengths against
them.
Belichick, a
subscriber to the ancient philosophy, gains the high ground and forces his foes
into the valley and wears them down by relentless pursuit. He reserves his
defender's collective energy by this sustained offensive, ensuring that that are
at their physical peak each time they enter the fray. He lives off the land and
treats his potential conquests with respect and acknowledges their talent.
But most of all, he
knows when and where to attack. He sometimes zigs when the opposition zags. He
sometimes engages in hand-to-hand combat and forces them into retreat. It all
depends on matchup advantages and placing his charges in position to overwhelm
their enemies.
All the players
have to do is to execute when called upon, and his Patriots do that at a higher
percentage than any other team in the league, reliant only to the fundamentals
and faithful only to the cause.
And that cause is,
as always, a big shiny trophy. He has earned six of those trophies over the
years, with less talent than he currently employs. That doesn't ensure a
perfect season, but it does give him a better opportunity to earn that trophy
than he has ever had. To do that, he has to stick with what earned him the
first six, winning each war by winning the little battles - game after game,
series after series, play after play.
Thus far in 2019,
the Patriots have done just that.
Going 19-0 is not
the goal, but winning every play, every series, every game is. Those things may
seem the same, but they are not - not in Belichick's world, where simply
winning the war is not as important as how he wins it.
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