I consider myself a fan of offensive football, but a student of defensive football, so I wanted to take another look at the game before posting my thoughts on the defensive performance against the Jets.
First a reminder that this is a young defense and they certainly showed it yesterday. I’m sure Darius Butler is getting killed on the Boston airwaves today, but let’s remember this is his second game starting.
With that said, this defense was carved up by Mark Sanchez yesterday. Woah, read that last sentence again. Scary, right? Well, it’s week two so let’s all relax and remember that the Jets offense is largely a veteran group. I’m not going to say that this is an excuse. The Patriots were outplayed by the Jets in all facets of the game. But you cannot be discouraged because we should see improvement as the season progresses.
Surely everyone out there is ripping the Patriots defense a new one today. But let’s just focus on the positives and most interesting points.
1. Devin McCourty, Brandon Spikes and Jermaine Cunningham all look like they will develop into solid players. Add in Chung, Brace, and yes even Butler and you have six defensive players in their first two years who are major contributors. This will pay off in the years to come. I know it’s hard to have this perspective now.
2. Welcome to bizarro world but Ron Brace was an excellent run stopper yesterday. Brace seems to be improving each week now, his development allowed the Pats to slide Gerard Warren over to RDE and put Mike Wright in the situational role he seems most suited for. This is an encouraging development.
3. Undrafted rookie Kyle Love is getting playing time as a backup nose tackle.
4. Anyone else notice it’s not Jonathan Wilhite getting toasted every play now? Granted Butler is, but hey maybe Wilhite is improving?
5. Cunningham got time at ROLB and DPR (designated pass rusher) and had a heads up play to not lose contain on a reverse. He improved from last week to this week and that’s a very good sign.
6. Brandon Spikes continues to make a big difference in the run game. The Jets ran all over the Pats sub packages but that was not when Spikes was in the game. He looks fast to the ball and by buttoning up the base run defense his impact has been huge. He’s also being used as a down lineman in the goalline package which is interesting. I expect his role to continue to increase.
7. Brandon Meriweather needs to get it together. This defense badly needs him to play well. He’s primarily being used in passing situations now, and you can’t discount his regression when talking about how the Patriots defense has lacked luster. When we see him starting we’ll know he’s turned it around. Let’s remember he led the Pats D in snaps played in 2009.
8. Rob Ninkovich is playing a much bigger part in the defense than any of us would’ve predicted. His missed tackle on Ladainian Tomlinson’s long 4th quarter run was a back breaker. But Ninkopoop had been fairly strong against the run to that point.
9. Didn’t see a lot out of Patrick Chung yesterday.
10. No big plays from the defense against the Jets. No interceptions or forced fumbles. This is not a hallmark of a great defense, and something that needs to change.
The Bills have been trying to run a spread offense much of the time so far this season. They haven’t put up many points but they’ve given up less than the Pats have. This will be an excellent test for the Patriots defense because we know they’re going to attack what the Pats don’t do well at… short passes and runs against their subpackages.
