Breaking Down Patriots Renewed Offensive Balance

The Patriots locked up the top seed in the AFC Sunday with a 35-14 dispatching of the Dolphins, giving New England home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, an essential piece to the Patriots Super Bowl puzzle. The win was the Patriots 14th on the season, and while much of that success has been (rightfully) credited to the incredible resurgence on defense, a large component of this triumphant 2016 campaign has been the renewed balance between running and passing offensively. We know that Tom Brady has the ability to drop back and pass 50 times without much help from the run game and still will the Patriots to a win (see Divisional Round, 2014), but we have also seen just how vulnerable the Patriots become when Brady is asked to win the game by himself (see, 2016 AFC Championship Game). The lack of balance was one of the biggest factor that contributed to New England’s early exit last January, which is why instilling a consistent balance between run and pass will prove to be crucial as we head into the postseason.

Last season, according to Kevin Duffy of MassLive.com, the Patriots had their worst run/pass ratio in recent years, passing the ball 62% of the time and rushing on only 38% of plays. Coincidentally, the Patriots rushing attack ranked 30th in the NFL, which allowed teams like the Broncos to drop numbers off the ball and flood Brady’s passing lanes, without needing to give much thought to the run game. Granted, part of the lack of success running the football can be attributed to losing LeGarrette Blount to a hip injury in Week 14, but even with him, the rushing attack was still on pace to finish near the bottom in rush yards. The Patriots called upon the corpse of Steven Jackson and special-teamer Brandon Bolden to take the bulk of the carries in the AFC Championship Game, and as well as know, it did not go well.

For those that may have forgotten, Tom Brady (yes, Tom Brady) was the Patriots leading rusher in that game, with a total of just 13 yards. The Patriots abandoned the run early on, and Brady threw 77% of the time. He ended up throwing 56 passes, with two of those being interceptions, and completed just 48% of his throws. Obviously, the offensive line was atrocious in that game, rarely allowing more than 2 or so seconds for Brady to get rid of the ball, but part of the offensive line’s inability to stop Denver’s pass rushers was due to how predicable the Patriots offense became; Von Miller, Demarcus Ware, and the rest of the Broncos front seven were able to pin their ears back and get after Brady without having to pause to consider whether or not Brady would hand it off. Having a functional run game could have masked some of the issues in pass protection and would have given Brady an easier time in picking apart the Broncos secondary, but the Patriots were able to rush for just 2.6 yards per carry on the day and ultimately came up short.

However, this sort of approach is certainly not isolated to just that game. If anything, abandoning the run and having Brady drop back 50+ times has become a pattern in the Patriots recent playoff history. In the Divisional Round against the Chiefs last year, the Patriots passed 75% of the time, and rushed for just 2.7 YPC on their 14 carries. Go back to the 2014 Divisional Round against the Ravens, and you see that Brady dropped back to pass 80% of the time, and the Patriots ran for just 14 yards on 13 carries, averaging 1.1 yards per carry, an impossibly bad average. Three weeks later in Super Bowl XLIX, Brady threw 70% of the time, and the Patriots rushing attack gained just 2.7 yards on average on its 19 carries. Of course, the Patriots won all of these games, but becoming that one dimensional on offense in the playoffs will eventually catch up with you, just as we saw in Denver last January.

Luckily, the Patriots have addressed this issue, and have passed just 53% of the time this season, with the 53%/47% pass/run split ranking as the Patriots most balanced rate since 2010. This offense also has the largest shift in pass/run ratio from year to year of any offense in the Brady era, going from 62%/38% to 53%/47%, which indicates the Patriots renewed determination to run the football and remain as balanced and multi-dimensional as possible. The statistics further back up this claim, seeing as the Patriots rank 4th in passing yards and 7th in rushing yards (and 3rd in attempts), good for the 4th most total yards in the NFL. The Patriots are one of just two teams, and the only team in the AFC, that rank in the top 10 in passing yards and rushing yards.

To go one step further, lets compare the AFC Championship Game against the Broncos last year to this years Week 15 matchup between the two teams. As previously mentioned, the Patriots threw 77% of the time, the rushing attack was led by Brady’s 13 yards on the ground, and in total, the run game garnered just 44 yards on 17 carries, good for an average of 2.6 yards per carry. Fast forward to Week 15 this year, in which the Patriots actually rushed more than passed (a 45%/55% split in favor of running), and racked up 136 yards on 39 carries (a 3.5 yard per carry average), with Dion Lewis leading the way with 95 yards on 18 carries. The balance between run and pass was instrumental in the Patriots win, and showed that no matter how good the opposing defense is, the 2016 Patriots can remain multi-dimensional and balanced in their approach and still come out victorious.

That kind of strategy will most likely be needed if the Patriots end up facing a team like the Chiefs or Texans, who both possess menacing defenses that could potentially pose problems for the Patriots. The Chiefs are similar in makeup to Denver’s defense, with elite pass rushers on the outside (Justin Houston, Tampa Hali, and Dee Ford) and stars in the secondary in Marcus Peters and Eric Berry. Meanwhile, the Texans defense lead the NFL in yards allowed, are second in pass yards allowed (trailing only the No Fly Zone in Denver), and also boast tremendous pass rushing talent in Jadeveon Clowney, Whitney Mercilus, and Benardrick McKinney. Of course, Brady does have the best winning percentage among all quarterbacks ever in games he is forced to throw 50+ passes, but as I said earlier, that kind of approach only works for so long in the playoffs before a defense comes along that is capable of stopping it.

Because of this, look for McDaniels and Brady to continue the varied scheme that has gotten them to this point, which will hopefully signal the end of games in which Brady is forced to throw 50+ times in order to secure a victory. With the tremendous success the Patriots has had both passing and rushing the ball, this offense appears as hard to stop as any we have seen in the Brady era, and primed for great success in the playoffs.