Patriots Offense Shows Ability to Attack Man Coverage in Win Over Steelers
This time, the Patriots ran their version of the 989 concept with verticals on the outside and an inside crosser from tight end Hunter Henry. The Steelers rotate into a cover-one robber scheme after starting with two deep safeties, and the post-safety shades towards Henry’s crossing pattern, leaving Agholor one-on-one with Akhello Witherspoon on the perimeter. Mac gives Agholor a chance to make a play on the ball, and Nelly rewards him with a terrific contested grab.
New England’s offensive performance was undoubtedly better than a week ago, and the ability to successfully beat man coverage is a massive step in the right direction. However, there’s still more meat on the bone from a creativity and personnel utilization standpoint.
Patriots head coach Bill Belichick gave a detailed answer to a question about the team’s lack of play-action attempts through two weeks, explaining that play-action doesn’t have the same impact against teams that blitz at a high rate and use man coverage more frequently. As you’d expect, Belichick’s reasoning is sound. With the Pats putting on tape that they can beat man coverage, maybe that leads to more zone and an uptick of play-action.
But New England ranking dead-last in play-action attempts (seven) and motion at the snap rate (4.3%) is forcing their offense to win one-on-one battles across the board without as much aid from the scheme.
Luckily, the Patriots won enough of their one-on-ones to get a victory over the Steelers. But they’re asking a lot from their skill players by playing stagnant offensive football. Hopefully, we’ll see more fakes and misdirection as everyone gets more comfortable with the new system.
If the Patriots add more motion and play-action (RPOs, please) to Sunday’s plan, they’ll have something to work with that we can get behind this season.
After Further Review, here are five more film takeaways from the Patriots win over the Steelers:
1. Belichick Buying into the Two-High Takeover Across the NFL?
As long as Bill Belichick is the head coach in New England, the Patriots will play man coverage at a league-high rate. However, over the last two seasons, Belichick is acknowledging that his personnel at cornerback and the league as a whole is turning to bend-don’t-break defense.
We’ve seen the Pats use this philosophy before. Still, a glance at film from around the NFL shows that every team is playing a similar style of defense by forcing offenses into long drives by limiting big plays with two-high safety zones. The rules are skewed towards the offense, and there are quarterbacks and playmakers galore, so the adjustment on defense is to limit the bleeding by forcing death by a thousand paper cuts.
In the first two weeks, the Patriots have played 21.9 percent of their coverage snaps in either cover-two or quarters (two-high safeties), and their most used structure by far is cover-three (41.5%). In total, the Pats have played zone on 69.3 percent of their defensive snaps.
As the rest of the league gravitates towards Vic Fangio’s two-high safety spin system, the Pats are doing things their way to limit chunk gains.
