New York Jets vs. New England Patriots Preview & Prediction | PFF

Your New York Jets kick us off this week with Thursday Night Football. The Jets traveling to New England uh to face the New England Patriots. It’s Rob Gronkowski week with him officially retiring as a member of the New England Patriots. They’re coming off of a road win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They’re just straight up one of the hottest teams in the NFL. And the Jets, well, they’ve unfortunately, it feels like, been on the headlines for nonwinning reasons. But coming off a big win this week, how do we feel about the Jets chances going into New England? You want to talk about the Jets or you want to talk about the Patriots? I I’ll go with the Jets offensive side. And obviously they’ve won two games in a row and Justin Fields was good a couple weeks ago against the Bengals, but this past week with less than 60 passing yards again. That’s the third time in the last four games that he’s had less than 60 passing yards. Plus, Garrett Wilson is going to be out multiple weeks. So, as we know, if the Jets are going to win at all on offense, they’re going to have to run the football. on the guy who is having a resurgent year for him as a guy that they did not trade at the deadline and maybe they’ll extend him in the offseason is Bree Hall. He’s had a solid year both running and catching the football. Had the big 42 yardd touchdown on the screen pass last week. That was the Jets only offensive touchdown. But you look at Bree Hall being really the one big threat now in this Jets offense. 24th in rushing grade, 4.8 yards per carry, is solid, fourth in the league and explosive 10 plus yard runs and also very good as a receiver this year. 11th among qualified running backs. This has to be the focus really. All the gravitational pull on New England’s defense should go towards Bree Hall in this game. If you slow him down, the Jets don’t have too many other options on offense. That’s both in the rushing and the receiving game. Obviously, Brilen Allen’s been out for a while. Isaiah Davis has played relatively well. But this Jets offense is basically right now the offensive line and the Bree Hall show. If New England can slow him down, especially with Robert Splain and their front seven, the way the run defense is playing lately, then they’ll probably hold the Jets to a pretty low point total. And then they just have to do something the Cleveland Browns couldn’t do and not give up two kick return touchdowns. Right. Right. You you can’t be giving up two special teams touchdowns and expect to win the game. Uh even the Jets will beat you if that is the case. You know, when we’re talking about the New England Patriots on their side of things with the offense, Drake May has been fantastic, right? He’s been in the MVP conversation. He’s a big reason why this team is playing the way that they are and why they are so successful. But outside of three or four like explosive plays, kind of broken plays against the Buccaneers last week, the Buccaneers actually defended the run pretty well and they actually defended Drake May pretty well. Now, it was those big plays that ended up being the reason why they lost. Of course, you can’t give those up. But I wanted to try to find, okay, where was the truth? And how did Todd BS for the majority of the game force Drake May to struggle in a way where we really haven’t seen too much of that from him this season. And what I found, Dalton, is that, you know, I I was like, okay, did he struggle under pressure? Cuz Todd Bulls likes to blitz quite a bit. And it’s like, well, he didn’t really struggle that much under pressure. But then as I kind of dug into the tape and and where some of her his his lowest graded passes or incomplete passes, just ones where he was really struggling was is it was when the Buccaneers actually dropped more guys in coverage. So when we think of Todd BS, we think of how aggressive he is, how he likes to send more guys in the blitz, all that good stuff. But in reality, the plays in which Drake May really struggled the most were those simulated pressures, those mug looks where the Bucks had a lot of defenders at the line of scrimmage and they were sort of, you know, like walking around the line of scrimmage. You don’t know where the pressure is coming from and then boom, the ball is snapped and all of a sudden there were six guys towards the line of scrimmage, but now two of them are fully retreating back into coverage. One of them is a linebacker or a safety spy on Drake May and then it was really only three players who were rushing. When you look at May last week versus the Buccaneers, 50.5 passing grade when the Buccaneers dropped eight or more in coverage. And like I said, they would show that simulated pressure look. A lot of them would drop back, but they also had that linebacker. A lot of times it was Lamonte David who would then be in a spy role so that if the Buccaneers were to get pressure with one of those three guys which normally they could get a little bit of it. Drake May as he would roll out of the pocket. Boom. That linebacker, whoever the spy was was triggering down on him and saying, “Okay, now you got to get rid of the football cuz now I’m coming to to sack you or attack you tackle you at the line of scrimmage, whatever it is.” So every time that Drake would maybe get out of the pocket, put his eyes back up field, then there’s so many guys in coverage, a lot more than he’s used to seeing because a lot of times it was pressuring him via the blitz, so there were less guys in coverage. I took that to more of a season whole scope because I wondered if it was just a bad day at the office for him in that regard. Drake May has a 42.0 passing grade when facing eight or more guys in coverage and he has an 85.2 two when it is seven or less. So, I’m not saying that like the blueprint is out on how to defeat Drake May, but it’s very interesting that even though they beat the Buccaneers and they got those big plays, for the majority of the contest, what Todd BS was throwing at him, he was not ready for. And he was not playing nearly as confidently as he has before. So, I’m curious if the Jets take anything away from what Tampa was able to do, if they put more guys back in coverage, or if they kind of stay a little bit more aggressive. We’ll see. Ultimately, I think Patriots win this game. I think they win it convincingly. Maybe not scoring as many points as some might think, but 24 to7. That is my final score here, and I’m going to have the Patriots win this one. Yeah, it’s a good call you make on May, but the Jets defense still usually stays pretty aggressive. Aaron Glenn likes blitzing. He likes his man coverage. And I think, look, part of the answer to that, too, is the Patriots have to run the ball a little bit better. Now, they got a couple home runs with Trayvon Henderson last week, so maybe that’s the start of something there. But they need to be more consistent in the run game to stay out of those situations where you would see those drop eights and spies and things like that. But you’re right. I mean, I I think New England obviously just they’re the home team here. It’s a short week. The Jets coming off two wins and they’re playing a little bit better, especially on defense since Germaine Johnson got healthy. I think Germaine Johnson and Will McDonald against the two Patriots tackles, Will Campbell and Morgan Moses is going to be a fun matchup, but at the end of the day, the Jets just don’t have enough offensive firepower here to go in and compete with New England’s offense. 28-10 New England for me. I agree with you.

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The New York Jets and The New England Patriots.

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24 comments

  1. The fact that Drake "Drake Maye" Maye has trouble with 8 in coverage and still managed to beat Tampa Bay in convincing fashion bodes incredibly well for Drake's future development. To have a bad game and still walk away with a win? Lots to learn, and you get to feel good about learning it. Even if the Pats drop this game to the Jets (short week, that Tampa game wasn't easy by any means) I won't be too disappointed. It'd be nice to keep that lead on the Bills tho.

  2. What that tells you is that Drake Maye is good enough at beating the blitz that it makes sense not to blitz him. It's a rite of passage to blitz young QBs until they prove that they can beat it. Given how blitz happy the Bucs are, how many QBs stop the Bucs from blitzing? Not many. But I agree with FOrger… Maye is still in his developmental period. And this result bodes well for Maye in the long term.

    That said, it's an "Any given Sunday, any given Monday, any given Thursday" league. It's a short week, which can be a tremendous equalizer, and this is a divisional matchup. Anything could happen, and it often does. Since I doubt Vrabel or the Pats are taking this game for granted, as a fan, I certainly don't either. I'm just hoping for better quality play than we all saw in either the Broncos-Raiders, or Eagles-Packers tilts. Yeesh.

    I think the league should consider changing the Thursday night game to Friday night. One more day of rest and planning might wind up making it a much better product.

  8. The PFF boys get this correct, the Patriots will win against the Jets. The final may be closer than you both think, it is a Divisional game after all. I go NE 21-NY 10.

  11. I love the take "simulated pressure was where Drake Maye struggled". For "simulated pressure" to work, you need to do "unsimulated pressure", however on the "unsimulated pressure" Maye and Henderson cooked Bucs. 3 big plays Maye delivered was on blitz's where safety got too aggressive at the line of scrimmage. Other two big plays, Henderson's runs, were also on the aggressive play of the defense, they did not respect Pats run, didn't maintain gap integrity, DE tried to go past the blocker on the outside and got punished. 2nd run TD was again, aggressive run stop, everyone hit the line and Tonga was able to seal the edge for Henderson to use his blazing speed. When a team relies on Blitz to create pressure on QB, like it or not, you roll the dice. If QB is willing to stand in and deliver a pass, you will likely get burned for a huge play. Same goes to RB, if RB goes past the line of scrimmage, they are free to run. It's stupid to say "take this 2 plays out, they didn't do much". Well, by stacking 2 safeties and 3 LBS on the line of scrimmage, you either stop them for a little to no gain, or they will break out a huge play. It's baked into the cake. Most of the time, odds are in the defense's favor, but when they are not, it results in a huge play. Good teams seize the opportunities; bad teams squander them.

  12. Wow! So if the defense drops more guys back into coverage the qb's pff rating goes down and if they have less people in coverage then it goes up! This is next level analysis! My god these guys really have figured this football thing out!

  20. I must have missed something. Did you say the Jets are at their best running the ball… without mentioning the Patriots' run defense is outstanding? This could go from 0-60 ugly in 2.31 seconds. I wasn't listening at 100% though so, as I mentioned, I may have missed it.

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