Patriots-Seahawks Film Review: Defenseless Edition

 

After yesterday’s piece I’m not looking to pile on the Patriots defense today in the film review. They’re getting killed throughout the Pats punditry this week and rightly so, but still, there’s a ways to go and there are plenty of talented players who should start playing better. And it’s not like it’s a murderer’s row in the AFC. I still like the Patriots chances against just about anyone. Then it’d be on to the Super Bowl and I’m sure that one would go down to the final play like it always does.

So for all the alarm about the Patriots defense, let’s just remember they’re well-coached, always play their best football in the winter and, oh yeah, still have the best quarterback and best offense in the league. They’ll make a strong run as long as their injury luck continues.

Let’s dive in and take a closer look at some things that stand out, without just trying to take another unnecessary massive shit all over the Patriots defense.

One great tidbit to start with comes from Doug Kyed at NESN.

The Patriots allowed Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson to go 12-of-17 passing for 147 yards with a touchdown in zone coverage. They also had a sack, defensive pass interference and offsides penalties, and allowed a 6-yard scramble for 158 net yards. Wilson went 13 of 20 for 201 yards with two touchdowns in man coverage. The Patriots also had two sacks, a defensive pass interference penalty and forced intentional grounding for 194 net yards.

I think it’s important to take this into consideration. The Pats gameplan called for mixing coverage, almost half zone, half man. This is a departure from recent seasons when they’ve been mostly man with a sprinkling of zone, but it shows they wanted to keep their defenders with eyes on Russell Wilson. Unfortunately nothing seemed to work, so again, can’t really point to one kind of coverage, we have to look at just the overall play.

Here’s Bedard’s grades if you care for that kind of thing.

Patriots-Seahawks chart. See you from 2-4 on @FelgerAndMazz pic.twitter.com/Zn3NlQJfd6

— Greg A. Bedard (@GregABedard) November 15, 2016

And if you want a good read where the Seahawks did major damage, check this out from Greg Cosell on the Seahawks usage of empty sets. That’s where the biggest damage was done.

— The first drive ended on the nine yard line with an incomplete pass. Classic first drive bend-don’t-break here. Feel like the Pats always stink on the first drive, or at least allow a bunch of plays as they feel out how the offense wants to play the game. The worst play was the 36-yard pass on the second play of the game to Lockett. Pats were in man, just a great throw from Wilson, although he had another guy wide open in the slot too.

— Hightower seemed to be playing a bit more on the edge this week and even showed some good push on the final third down stop, running a nice little game with Ninkovich that prevented Wilson from making a good throw. All things considered, it’s one of those drive where they made some plays, we made some plays.

— The second drive started off great with a sack from Flowers along with a drawn hold by Malcom Brown. These are the plays we’ve been missing. Too bad the Seahawks erased the seven-yard loss on their way to another field goal.

— Few plays later Shea McClellin got badly toasted in third down coverage of Prosise for 18 yards. He’ll cost $1.6 million in cap space to cut next year FYI.

— On the third down stop that forced the field goal I thought the defense did a okay job of rushing Wilson into an early throw that fell incomplete. At least it looked like a little bit of disruption. Grasping at straws here.

— Seahawks got some good running plays going on the third drive, busting off a three play stretch of ten, eight and nine yards, all attacking the edges. On one I think Elandon Roberts, who had his first down game as he was promoted to play 83 percent of the snaps, looked at times like he was overthinking things a bit. On another it appeared Hightower and Sheard shifted assignments but then Hightower got caught inside after telling Sheard to go inside. You could see his frustration after the play.

— Best drive of the game came in the mid-second quarter after Brady’s interception. Brown forced a fumble (Seahawks recovered) and Ninkovich got a third down sack. The confusion up front finally worked with the entire OL blocking two guys leaving Nink isolated on the running back. Thought there’d be more of this kind of stuff this year.

— The touchdown drive before the half was painful and it all could’ve been prevented with a stop on third-and-9 at the Seahawks own 25. This was one of the more interesting play calls of the game, with the Pats blitzing Logan Ryan from the slot and Patrick Chung (who might’ve just been green dogging the RB who stayed home) and dropping Chris Long, Hightower and McClellin. Yes, it appears that Long was covering Jimmy Graham (with help from McCourty) so I get why people were like WTF? But at the same time, this is what we want from the Patriots defense. Long hadn’t dropped all game to this point, nor had they blitzed a corner. They were going for surprise but Wilson rolled to the void Long vacated to avoid the pressure and threw an on-the-move dart for the first down. Lot going on there, and the Seahawks deciphered the deception. Biggest problem might’ve been that Flowers rushed too much inside and there was containment for Wilson.

— The next three plays were a nightmare — 24 yard pass against a three-man rush/eight-man zone, 12-yard checkdown to Prosise, and then the killer 18 yard touchdown to Baldwin. The thing with the zone defense is that it seemed like initially all was well with the coverage, but as Wilson drew the play out, Patriot defenders started to float out of position and thus left guys wide open.

— A three-and-out to start the second half was nice, but that was the last time the Patriots would stop the Seahawk offense.

— The second down stop on this drive that held Seattle to a field goal was good team defense. McCourty disguised his coverage of Graham and that made Wilson reload the ball. That extra time was just enough to let Flowers get the sack. This is one of the only times I saw a pass rusher actually beat his guy one-on-one. On the next third down that got the red zone stop, Ninkovich had another pretty good pressure to break the play. Wilson scrambled then intentionally grounded it. Nink showed up more in this game that I originally realized. That’s a good sign going forward.

— The 38-yard pass to Prosise with Roberts in coverage was one of those plays that is won before the snap, and maybe even before the game. Everyone wants to lament not having Collins to cover RBs anymore, well, he wasn’t really an RB cover guy. The issue though remains and Seattle exploited it. Even the pass rush was just about to get there. Wilson just got the pass off because he knew where he was going. McCourty was a step late and Roberts was a step slow, but that’s the NFL no matter how close it was.

— I know we all want to kill the Pats defense in this one, but it’s fair to say that Wilson had maybe the best passing game of his career. He was nearly perfect.

— Not a great time for a Julian Edelman fumble at midfield, down one, with 8:29 remaining.

— The last touchdown the Pats rushed five, but it was another empty set and they had McCourty on Prosise, who walked out wide. This took McCourty out of the box and opened more space in the middle. With Harmon helping on Graham, Ryan had no help and got caught flat footed in no man’s land. Perfect throw by Wilson and that was it for the Pats defense on this day.

I always feel better after watching the emotionless All-22. Yes, there’s a lot of problems but you see how one split second play here and another there and the Pats would’ve won this one. I know it’s no consolation, but when they click you see the potential and you see what they’re trying to do.

Over the bye I called for more simplification of the roles on defense to let the guys focus on winning their battles. That’s the opposite of what they did here, spinning the dial between zone and man and picking their spots with rushers. I wonder how they’d change things up in a re-match, because this wasn’t the 2014 Seahawks team. This was a spread team that did to us what we usually do, pick the right matchups and sling it.