What we learned: With Tom Brady, Patriots ‘always have a chance’ – WEEI | Christopher Price
The Patriots were in no huddle for 44 of their 83 plays on the season (53 percent), far and away the highest percentage for a team that was running no-huddle on just five percent of their offensive snaps through the first five games of the year. Two things to keep in mind: One, New England wasn’t playing uptempo, but once the play was done, they’d get to the line of scrimmage fairly quickly. It wasn’t necessarily fast football, but would prevent substitutions on defense for New Orleans, and so quite frequently, the Saints weren’t able to make the necessary personnel changes. And two, this was a formula the Patriots used to beat the Cowboys in 2011 – that year, Rob Ryan and the Dallas defense were able to keep Brady off balance early, but New England went no huddle for much of the second, third and fourth quarter, eventually running it on 52 percent of their snaps, a season-high.
