Patriots' defense last night

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Why? RB1 struggled as well.

The issue last night had nothing to do with the backup runningback.



You don't need to be 'smashmouth' against 4 man lines and/or 5 man boxes. You have a numerical advantage there - there's no reason that a zone scheme couldn't have popped open running lanes if the plays were executed.

I'm betting when the analysis is done on this you'll see a bunch of basic fundamental failures on the OL. Things where combo blocks and/or reach blocks just flat didn't get made. There were likely miscommunications where two guys focus on a single player and in the process someone else goes untouched. What we often see in plays where run blocking fails is a guy who's responsible for cleaning up the second level fails to disengage and go get their man.

I'm betting that play after play after play in those running situations we were just being out-executed. And this OL isn't gonna be a bunch of maulers going out there and throwing multiple guys out of the way, but there's NO reason they can't execute when they have the numerical advantage they had so often last night.

I expect they'll get a real thorough film-review session and we'll see some of that stuff tighten up.

They weren't executing last night, it was fairly easy to see. And not just the line. CEH missed a few holes because of bad reads, Mahomes overthrew some passes. The whole offense just executed poorly for most of the game.