Patriots' defense last night

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Dante84

Romo touched on this, but they had an interesting approach that looked like it gave Mahomes a bit of trouble at times.

They only had 3 DL, and their 2 DE's rushed up the field and held the sides of the pocket, creating a "box" around Mahomes to prevent him from rolling/escaping/doing his magic tricks. They then kept everyone else in coverage in his line of sight to limit his windows and throwing lanes.

The plus was he had lots of time in the pocket, the minus was he had no where to go to help his WR's get open via scrambling, reducing his throwing lanes/windows.

Thankfully our WR corps is very fast and can get open, but again, with reduced windows, it made it harder on Mahomes.

I would not be surprised if we saw this set up again this season a few times.

Gotta be able to run the ball better in those spots.

That’s where the offense failed. Any team can make it hard to find open WRs if they’re willing to abandon stopping the run. By and large, the Patriots did that.

And we weren’t able to punish them for it with the ground game. Get 5-6 yards on 1st down to keep them honest and that will stop. We weren’t doing that.

There wasn’t a good reason for it so we kept going back to the well expecting it to stop but it never did. They kept using 4 guys to kill our running game. Just cannot have that.

If they see a flaw in their run blocking and execution, they’ll get it fixed and that’ll be that. There’s no reason to have struggled that badly on the ground against a team that was barely trying to contain our running game.

[Dante84]

That's 2 effective approaches against us, though.

1 - Have a pair of superstars at DE and keep 7 in coverage, and hope that your DE's aren't gassed by the 4th quarter.

2 - Build a box to contain Mahomes and reduce his throwing lanes.


For 1 - Very few rosters can support that approach. It has to be sheer numbers. If I'm the Chargers/Raiders/Broncos, I'm going all out to get 3-4 Edge stars and penetrating DT.

[Deberg_1990]

Bellichek is a damn genius. With better QB play , they could have won the game last night.

[cmh6476]

Originally Posted by Dante84

Patriots' defense last night...

was better than the Ravens.

[CasselGotPeedOn]

They didn't respect our running game one bit, and we proved them right. Our between the tackles running has by and large been abysmal this season. Need to get that fixed.

[RINGLEADER]

Mahomes throws two balls three inches shorter and the Chiefs win 40-10.

Mahomes missed a few throws. It happens.

Nothing was “figured out.”

[Mecca]

We just aren't built to be a smash mouth run the ball offense so defenses are going to dare us to do that and until we prove we can expect more teams to try this.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Dante84

Agreed - we need a stronger RB2.

Why? RB1 struggled as well.

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

Originally Posted by Mecca

We just aren't built to be a smash mouth run the ball offense so defenses are going to dare us to do that and until we prove we can expect more teams to try this.

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.

[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.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

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.

Eh.

That 'congestion concept' BB wanted to use tonight showed up in a BIG way inside the red zone and it took some time for Reid to adjust to it. Especially when the running game couldn't punish the Pats in goal to go situations.

I mean the Chiefs had like 150 yards of offense in the 1st quarter. They weren't exactly tripping over themselves, they just couldn't finish drives because BB had a great plan in close early on. Score even 1 TD, let alone 2, and that whole narrative is a lot different.

I just think the idea that there was this overarching failure by the offense is overstating things. It was fine. They moved the ball well. BB just coached his ass off and REALLY did an excellent job in spots where we've seen the most development from the Chiefs over the last 18 months - situational defense.

3rd down and red zone stops. We've said for years that those are the two most critical areas in modern defensive football and it should come as a surprise to no one that the best defensive mind football has probably ever seen had his team playing extremely well in those 2 situations.

It happens.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Eh.

That 'congestion concept' BB wanted to use tonight showed up in a BIG way inside the red zone and it took some time for Reid to adjust to it. Especially when the running game couldn't punish the Pats in goal to go situations.

I mean the Chiefs had like 150 yards of offense in the 1st quarter. They weren't exactly tripping over themselves, they just couldn't finish drives because BB had a great plan in close early on. Score even 1 TD, let alone 2, and that whole narrative is a lot different.

They couldn't finish drives because they were making stupid penalties and getting the ball punched out and stuff. The first drive in particular had nothing to do with the Patriot defense and everything to do with Pat missing a couple of short throws.

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I just think the idea that there was this overarching failure by the offense is overstating things. It was fine. They moved the ball well. BB just coached his ass off and REALLY did an excellent job in spots where we've seen the most development from the Chiefs over the last 18 months - situational defense.

3rd down and red zone stops. We've said for years that those are the two most critical areas in modern defensive football and it should come as a surprise to no one that the best defensive mind football has probably ever seen had his team playing extremely well in those 2 situations.

It happens.

Yeah, I'm not suggesting the offense "failed". They did leave some points on the field, regardless of the strength of the opposing defense.

[SithCeNtZ]

Originally Posted by Mecca

We just aren't built to be a smash mouth run the ball offense so defenses are going to dare us to do that and until we prove we can expect more teams to try this.

What's baffling about this is we are generally a pretty creative offense. But we just kept running the same running plays over and over and over. It's not just that we weren't executing, but it's pretty easy to stop when you do the same thing every time. It made no sense why it took us 3 quarters to do something different and take the RB we drafted who is supposed to be good in space and, wait for it this is a crazy idea I can't believe it worked, put him in space instead of just pounding him up the middle. Not surprisingly the 2 best runs for CEH of the night were toss plays to the outside. Do that with mixing in some jet sweeps to keep defenses honest and that might help. Not "run up the middle every second down".

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by SithCeNtZ

What's baffling about this is we are generally a pretty creative offense. But we just kept running the same running plays over and over and over. It's not just that we weren't executing, but it's pretty easy to stop when you do the same thing every time. It made no sense why it took us 3 quarters to do something different and take the RB we drafted who is supposed to be good in space and, wait for it this is a crazy idea I can't believe it worked, put him in space instead of just pounding him up the middle. Not surprisingly the 2 best runs for CEH of the night were toss plays to the outside. Do that with mixing in some jet sweeps to keep defenses honest and that might help. Not "run up the middle every second down".

I also think it's obvious that unless they have to change it up the Chiefs are trying to win games showing the least amount of stuff on tape possible. This is about as vanilla as I can remember the Chiefs being on playcalling.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Mecca

I also think it's obvious that unless they have to change it up the Chiefs are trying to win games showing the least amount of stuff on tape possible. This is about as vanilla as I can remember the Chiefs being on playcalling.

This is a team that should be able to run some pretty clever inside trap plays, but unless I missed it, I saw few/none of them last night. I wonder if Osemele's lack of lateral agility and/or Wylie maybe not being at 100% prevented it.

With DE's bracketing and a light box....man, an inside trap should be REALLY easy to break. Especially w/ the threat of the pass making the DL need to hesitate just a tick more which would allow the G/T combo to get to the 2nd level a little easier.

Just not real sure why we didn't see more of those. Maybe we did and I missed 'em.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

This is a team that should be able to run some pretty clever inside trap plays, but unless I missed it, I saw few/none of them last night. I wonder if Osemele's lack of lateral agility and/or Wylie maybe not being at 100% prevented it.

With DE's bracketing and a light box....man, an inside trap should be REALLY easy to break. Especially w/ the threat of the pass making the DL need to hesitate just a tick more which would allow the G/T combo to get to the 2nd level a little easier.

Just not real sure why we didn't see more of those. Maybe we did and I missed 'em.

We saw an inside run to the left on the 1st series, CEH's first carry was for 5 or 6 yards. I don't remember seeing many more after that though.