5 takeaways from the Patriots’ sixth-straight win

Five takeaways after the Patriots pull away from the Packers to score a 31-17 victory and a sixth-straight win.

Brady over Rodgers oversimplifies it
The allure of Sunday night’s game for the national audience was the battle between Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, with two of their generation’s elite quarterbacks trading possession of the football, and with the Patriots’ victory will come the headlines that Brady outdueled his Packer counterpart.

But that assessment would be dramatically oversimplifying things.

Brady and Rodgers were both fine. Brady finished 22 of 35 for 294 yards and a touchdown; Rodgers went 24-for-43, totaling 259 yards and two scores. Their passer ratings were 99 and 89.2, respectively. Per that measure it was Brady’s sixth-best game of the season; only one of Rodgers’s eight games has been worse.

So Sunday was less of a duel than it was the Patriots overcoming a series of significant offensive injuries to take advantage of a Green Bay defense that has now allowed 29-31 points in six of its last seven games, and the New England defense making improvements against a Packers attack that entered as one of the top five offensive units in football.

To that end, the Pats held the Packers to 5.3 yards per play offensively, almost a full yard less than their season average coming in. They only had one sack, but a cast led by Adrian Clayborn and Trey Flowers kept the heat on Rodgers all night, and limited Green Bay to just four first downs after the Packers scored to tie the game at 17 on the first series of the second half.

Without Rob Gronkowski, Sony Michel, and Shaq Mason, the Pats’ offense was missing three key components that factor into every phase of their attack, and for a second straight week was struggling to finish drives. Brady, meanwhile, was uncharacteristically inaccurate early in the second half.

But ultimately the defense played well enough to keep the score even until the offense could figure it out, and even turned momentum by creating a turnover that 4 minutes and 46 seconds later was turned directly into the game-winning score. On that decisive drive, the biggest play was a 37-yard pass thrown not by Brady, not by Rodgers, but by a guy whose ceiling as a quarterback was realized at Kent State University – Julian Edelman. That was fitting on a night that came down to more than merely a couple of legends sharing the field.

“The defense played spectacular. Seventeen points against that offense is great,” Brady said. “That’s a tough offense to defend; he can put the ball in a lot of tight spots. They got off the field on third down, great rushing – it looked like they had to work for every yard. It was a great team win.”

Perfect timing for McDaniels
Although he was down his tight end, one of his primary tailbacks, and maybe his best offensive linemen, Sunday night was a good night for Josh McDaniels.

It began right away, when the Patriots took the opening possession and appeared to have the perfect approach laid out, marching 59 yards in 10 plays, and doing it so smoothly that only once did the drive even get to third down. Mixing the run with the pass, they started with a script that the Packers couldn’t catch up with, moving along easily until capping it with a well-constructed bit of deception where they faked a jet sweep in one direction, then pitched the ball to James White going the other, and he followed Trent Brown eight untouched yards to the end zone.

It didn’t look so easy after that – but when the Pats defense tilted momentum by creating a turnover, McDaniels again responded to the moment perfectly. New England took over at its own 24, quickly picked up three first downs to get into Green Bay territory, and that’s when McDaniels went to his bag of tricks and pulled out quite a treat.

On second and 6 from the 39, Brady threw laterally to Edelman, who slung it all the way back across the field to White, who followed a caravan of blockers down to the 2. Three plays later White rammed home the go-ahead touchdown. And the Packers never recovered from a play the Patriots had prepared well enough to execute flawlessly – and that McDaniels opted to use at the optimum occasion.

The lone turnover turns the game
Sunday marked the first time in six games that the Patriots failed to force multiple turnovers – but the one takeaway they did manage was certainly meaningful.

Before it, the Packers had started to feel good about their chances and the way they were playing. They’d successfully held the Patriots out of the end zone with a goal-line stand, withstood another Pats possession after punting from their end zone, and advanced into New England territory after starting a drive at their own 7.

They were essentially in field-goal range, but thinking bigger when Aaron Jones carried over left tackle on the first play of the fourth quarter. He was six yards down field when Patriots’ defensive lineman Lawrence Guy got his big mitt on the ball and whacked it free, setting off a scrum from which New England cornerback Stephon Gilmore came away with possession. The Pats took over at the 24, and within the next 13 offensive plays had built a 14-point lead.

There was a significant development on the other side of the turnover ledger, too. After giving the ball away three times against the Bears, the Patriots had coughed it up at least once in each of their first seven games this season. They protected it at Buffalo last Monday, then did so again Sunday night. The links between ball security and success are undeniable, and finally the Patriots don’t appear intent on challenge that convention.

Red zone troubles
When officials overturned what was initially ruled Cordarrelle Patterson’s second rushing touchdown, and instead placed the ball inside the Packers’ 1 yard line, the Patriots needed to pick up just a couple of feet to retake the lead in the middle of the third quarter.

They couldn’t, though. And their failure to convert put on display the fact the Pats don’t appear to have a reliable red-zone target for Brady to look to in those turning-point predicaments.

Sunday night New England couldn’t cash in on a couple of goal-to-go opportunities, and the first half of the season suggests that blaming it on the absence of Rob Gronkowski is far too simple an excuse – because Gronkowski hasn’t been much of a red-zone factor at all. He hasn’t scored since Week 1, and that came from 21 yards out. For the season, Brady has only thrown to him in the red zone twice, per Pro-Football-Reference.

Entering Sunday, White had been Brady’s top red-zone target (12 passes), followed by Edelman (eight), but they were both blanketed on third down after Patterson’s touchdown was overturned, and so on fourth down the choice was to throw toward Josh Gordon in single-coverage. Gordon slipped as he turned to adjust to the ball, and so the pass hit the defender and fell incomplete. It was Gordon’s fourth red-zone target since joining the Pats; only one has been completed. And it didn’t result in a touchdown.

If the Patriots can continue to run the ball effectively in short-yardage situations, they should be able to survive this shortcoming. They went 3-for-5 in the red zone Sunday by going to the ground game, with Patterson banging it in from five yards out between eight- and one-yard scores from White. The threat of rookie Sony Michel should help ensure that, and regardless of his numbers no opponent will dare dial back its attention paid to Gronkowski in those spots.

But through nine games, despite all their offensive talent, and having a decision-maker of Brady’s caliber pulling the trigger, it’s becoming evident that in order for the Patriots to produce at their full potential the passing game near the goal line needs to significantly improve.

Getting it in chunks
The Patriots typically make their living dinking and dunking and moving the ball by way of smaller gains, but Sunday night the Packers proved susceptible to bigger gains – and New England struck.

Most evident was the 55-yard dagger that Brady connected on with Gordon, then there was the 37-yard hookup from Edelman to White. But there was more. Brady and Edelman paired up for 33 yards off a flea-flicker. Gordon caught another ball for 29 yards, elevating over his defender to snag it. Patterson earned himself more carries with runs of 25 and 17, and all together the Pats had 10 offensive plays gain at least 17 yards. Unsurprisingly, all of those came as part of drives that led to points for the Patriots.

And just as unsurprisingly, here it is, November, and the Patriots are 7-2.