28 October, 2019
Jonathan Jones has world-class speed, and
apparently carries a wicked overhand right.
He's not a track star nor is he a prize fighter -
just a little nickel cornerback for the New England Patriots who on Sunday
afternoon saved his team's bacon by combining both skills to chase down
Cleveland Browns' running back Nick Chubb, then punch the ball out of his
grasp...
...the fumble deep in New England territory
preventing a sure Browns' touchdown and, most importantly, deflecting a huge
momentum shift in Cleveland's favor had Chubb found the end zone.
That was part of a first quarter drive-by punking
of the Browns that saw the Patriots' defense force two fumbles and one weird
interception on three consecutive Cleveland offensive snaps, the 10 points
scored off of those turnovers putting the Browns in an early hole that they
would never recover from.
Not that they would have anyway, regardless of
when the Patriots scored on offense, because that three-play sequence took the
Browns out of their game plan, a fantastic game plan that could have – should
have – helped Cleveland hand New England their first loss of the season.
 |
| Jonathan Jones forcing Chubb's fumble |
After all, had Jones and his 4.33 speed not caught
up with Chubb, who had also coughed up the ball to Hightower on their previous
offensive snap, had Jones not tomahawked the ball out of Chubb's grip and had
safety Devin McCourty not recovered the loose ball deep in New England
territory, the Browns would have been down by just three points...
...and had Chubb not been stripped of the ball by
his own offensive lineman on the previous play, and had Dont'a Hightower picked
it up on the fly and floated into the end zone with it, the Browns would have
been up by four and feeling like world-beaters.
Hypotheticals aside, those things did happen – and
in such rapid sequence that a guy could have gone outside for a smoke with the
Patriots up by three with six minutes remaining in the first quarter, and come
back in five minutes later to find New England up by seventeen and commentator
Tony Romo sputtering platitudes about the dominant defensive performance he was
witnessing.
Two plays after doomed kicker Mike Nugent put the
Patriots up 3-0 with 6:38 left in the first quarter, New England linebacker
Kyle Van Noy upended Giants' right tackle Chris Hubbard to set a hard edge
against Chubb who was attempting to climb to the corner, Hubbard's flailing
foot kicking the football free and Hightower scooped the ball off the turf and
followed a six-player-strong escort to paydirt.
Punter Jake Bailey sent the ensuing kickoff into
the Browns' bench to give Cleveland a short field to work with, and quarterback
Baker Mayfield went right to Chubb on another strong-side edge run, but this
time he cut back to the inside, juked the entire Patriots' defense out of their
socks and turned on the afterburners at the left hash with nothing but the
light tower in sight – but Jones, who had been planted by a Browns' tackle
Chris Hubbard about 15 yards up the field, got up and started sprinting
diagonally to try and catch Cleveland's marvelous sophomore back...
...going to warp and closing the gap on Chubb with
freakish speed, catching him just inside the red zone, securing Chubb with his
left arm and then punching the ball out with his right – the McCourty twins
diving for the loose ball with Devin coming out of the scrum in possession.
Chubb was noticeably distraught, but gained a
measure of solace when the Browns' stoppers pulled the plug on the Patriots'
next possession – that relief lasted all of one play, as defensive tackle
Lawrence Guy split a double team to wreck a Mayfield forward pitch intended for
Jarvis Landry on the first play, the ball landing right in Guy's hands to
complete what should now been known as a “Browns' Hat trick”.
The Patriots did score after Guy's interception,
Julian Edelman taking a Tom Brady offering eight yards for what proved to be
the winning points. After that the game slipped into a punt-fest as both
offenses bogged down in the face of two pretty good defenses – the main
difference between the two offenses being New England's almost fanatical
adherence to fundamentals and Cleveland's panic-driven abandonment of them.
Which goes to figure, right? After all, when a
game is tightly contested, the advantage goes to the team that sticks to their
game plan, and New England's offense is so entrenched in the details that at
times their methodical approach is about as exciting as watching products being
put together on an assembly line...
...while the Browns seem so erratic under pressure
that the fundamentals are eschewed in favor of expediency.
That is all coaching and experience, which the
Patriots have over every other team in football with Brady and head ball coach
Bill Belichick calling the shots - and which was on full display in the second
half, when New England trudged along and wore down the Browns' defenders while
Cleveland abandoned what they do best on offense – and the results were what
one might expect.
Trailing by ten points at the half, the Browns
took the second half kickoff and drove down the field only to be denied deep in
Patriots' territory, settling for a field goal to make it a one-score game, but
Brady responded by leading a seven-play drive capped off by Edelman's second
touchdown reception of the night to build the Patriots' lead to fourteen.
Fundamentally, the Browns are a run-first entity
despite all of the receiving talent they possess, and for three quarters their
ground game actually had the advantage over the Patriots' run defense – but as
the clock ticked down to the fourth quarter, Cleveland head coach Freddie
Kitchens panicked and abandoned his running game and put his hopes on the arm
of Mayfield...
...taking the ball out of hands of Chubb, who had
rebounded spectacularly from his dismal two-fumble start to the game and ended
up with 131 yards on just 20 carries – but only three of that total coming in
the final frame on just one carry.
Putting the game on Mayfield's shoulders played
right into what New England's defense does best, the Patriots drawing two
offensive pass interference calls on deep balls and sacking the second-year
quarterback twice in the fourth quarter, one of those an Adam Butler sack on
fourth down from the Cleveland 19-yard line that effectively salted the game
away.
Yardage-wise, New England's 27-13 victory at
Gillette Stadium was their defense's poorest performance of the season.
Realistically, however, the Patriots' vaunted stoppers collected five sacks and
forced those three first-quarter turnovers to counter the 318 yards of total
offense collected by the Browns...
...consistently coming up with stops when the
chips were down, dominating on third-down and getting off the field, holding
the Browns' potent offense to just three conversions in twelve attempts while
the Browns fell apart, collecting thirteen penalties for 85-yards in the
process.
That's what the Patriots do to everyone, and in
the end, ugly or not, they always seem to make the crucial plays on both sides
of the ball to come out on top.
Most teams would consider holding their opponent
to barely three-hundred yards of offense a good effort, but Patriots' fans have
been conditioned to expect their defense to be far stingier. Fair or not, the
Boogeyman defense drives those expectations from their domination of opposing
offenses through the first half of the season against a schedule that featured
a less-than-imposing list of foes...
...but if Sunday's victory over a talented
Cleveland offense teaches us anything, it is that New England dominates through
adherence to the fundamentals, staying the course through adversity and
dictating play – and that, more than anything else, makes the Patriots almost
impossible to beat.
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