This Patriots team keeps checking boxes. All right. Welcome in. It’s the Brewer Report for December 2nd. This is our very first Brewer report for the final month of 2025. Week 13 is now in the books, and we’re gonna start as we always do with the last thing we saw, which was the New England Patriots absolutely bludgeoning the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. This is two teams going in very, very different directions. A 9th straight loss for the Giants. This wasn’t like many of the previous ones where they built a lead and blew it in the 4th quarter. In this case, they were just blown off the field altogether. And I was at the game and I can just tell you, this is a team that did not look like it had a lot of energy going in there. It did not look like a team that really wanted to be there, and that was reflected in the way that they played in the first half. And as for New England, This Patriots team keeps checking boxes, and I still don’t think the roster is completely there yet, but they absolutely hit a home run with the quarterback, they’ve hit a home run with the head coach, and they’ve got a roster full of tough, smart players that have bought into Mike Vrabel’s play style. And I think maybe this is best illustrated by how complimentary the game that they’re playing is right now. And that was illustrated best in the 1st. Quarter of this win over the Giants. They went, they came out of the first quarter up 17 to 0, and they got to 17 points with just 110 yards of offense, and they did that by playing, again, a very complimentary style of football. A long kickoff return, sets up the first drive, which ends in a field goal, then they have a punt return for a touchdown, then they go on a drive and score another. Touchdown and the game effectively at that point is over. The Giants are there with a rookie quarterback. They’re not coming back from a 17-point deficit against a team that’s playing this well. Um, and I think so much of it again, has to do with the buy-in that Mike Vrabel is getting across the board from the players. And again, it shows up in the play style. You know, everybody saw the hit Christian Ellis put on Jackson Dart in the game. That Sort of indicative of the way that this thing has gone. And, you know, I think you see across the board a team that’s playing a tough, smart style that doesn’t beat itself. One of the first things Mike Vrabel said when he got to New England was that he wanted to have a team that was going to take advantage of a team that plays bad football. The Giants put some bad football out there. The Patriots were able to take advantage of it. And, you know, so much of this, and I know this is a buzzword comes back. To culture and what Mike Vrabel has been able to build in less than a year’s time there now, and I think so much of it, and I don’t want to be corny about this, but it comes down to Mike Vrabel investing in the people who are in the building, the people that he inherited, the people that he brought in, they know how much he cares about them and in creating that sort of feel inside the building . He, that’s being reciprocated and you’re seeing so much of it show up. And again, how hard the team plays, how fast the team plays, it’s not the most talented roster in the NFL. I think they still have a ways to go and building that up, and they’ll have 10 or 11 draft picks in April to continue to do that in a ton of cap space, which is kind of scary about where they are. But with what they’ve got right now, they’ve been able to win 10 straight games. They’re now 11 and 2. Um, they, I don’t think control their own destiny in the AFC, but they’ve got an easier road from here on out than Denver does, and Denver be the team to be in contention with them for the number one seed, and I can’t even believe we’re saying that. So now the Patriots go into their buy, again, a ton of momentum, a quarterback in Drake May, who’s probably the front runner for MVP, a coach who probably is the Coach of the Year in Mike Vrabel. You got those two boxes checked. You’re gonna be in good shape for a long time. That’s where the Patriots are, and we’ll learn more about them coming out of their buy. Buffalo at home and then a trip to Baltimore. Those two games, I think, will be good measuring sticks for where the Patriots are in 2025. But make no mistake about this. Again, you look at where they’re at from a roster standpoint, the flexibility they have coming out of this year, the quarterback they have, the coach they have. This is an organization that’s once again in great shape. After a half-decade of being one of the worst organizations in all of the NFL, they have bounced back like that with a quarterback turning a corner in year 2 and a first-year coach coming in and making a massive, massive difference. All right, our second takeaway from the weekend, from week 13. The Houston Texans are a team that now looks like they’re turning a corner and what they were able to do against the Colts on Sunday, I, I just think you look at the way the defense is playing and the consistency that defense is playing with, and the rhyme and reason in the way that that defense was built, right? Like when you see the investment upfront, and it’s Will Anderson. and Neil Hunter, but it’s also the way that they’re able to come at you in waves, you know, with guys like Tim Settle and, and Sheldon Rankins, accomplished veteran players, and then the guys they have in the back end, maybe the best corner duo in all of football in, in Kamari Lassiter and of course, the All-Pro Derrek Stingley. So you have that, and that’s been the baseline for them all year. And now you’re starting to see the offense come along, and this is why the Texans could be a very dangerous team when we get to January. They’ve had injuries on the offensive side of the ball, obviously losing their quarterback. They had injuries to the skill position players, they had to play a stretch without Nico Collins. No Joe Mixon, um, to this point in the year, doesn’t look like they’re gonna have Joe Mixon back in 2025. And so what they’ve had to do is they’ve had to rely on some younger people, um, in a lot of these spots. That includes the coordinator spot where they’ve got a first-year coordinator and Nick Haley and then a bunch of rookies in key positions. Woody Marks looks now like he’s gonna be the answer as far as replacing Joe Mixon at tailback after they had to duct tape it together with Nick Chubb, who’s been a great, great player over the course of his career, but I don’t think anybody would argue that he is what he was for all those years in Cleveland. You’ve got Jaden Higgins at receiver, who looks like a real matchup problem now when you’re putting him opposite Nico. Collins, the size of those two guys on the outside is an issue for defenses. And then this is the real key, Ariante Ursay at left tackle. It looks like they hit on a left tackle there and they did it in the 2nd round of the draft, and that offensive line was the biggest problem coming into the year. They traded Laremy Tunsil in the offseason. They’ve got a bunch of new starters up front. And that group now is not the liability it was 3 months ago, and a huge part of that is that rookie coming along. So you’ve got, again, first-year guys, whether it’s, whether it’s the coordinator, Nick Haley or all those rookies, Woody Marks, Jaden Higgins, and Ariante Ursay, who are Going up now. And so you have that, you plug the quarterback back in. I think you’re giving the quarterback now a chance to recapture some of the magic he had as a rookie, and you started to see flashes from CJ in that Colts game, some of the throws he was able to make. If he can continue to build on some of the things that you saw in that game against the Colts, this becomes a very dangerous team because we know exactly, we know exactly what that defense is and what that defense can be in a playoff setting. And as I see it anyway, this is a team that, that, that, that looks to me like it would be maybe the most dangerous team in the AFC, um, and a team that’s capable of, of, of getting all the way to Santa Clara. There are some ifs, again, if the rookies continue to perform this way, if CJ recaptures some of that magic, but the ceiling is very high for the Texans. I told you guys that back in August when we discussed what teams could break through that. Sort of block of teams atop the AFC, the Bills, the Chiefs, the Ravens, the established powers. I thought the Texans were that team now, that, that, that team back then , and now looking at it for some of the same reasons, I think they can be that team going into January. All right, and our third and final takeaway for week 13, the Chicago Bears come out of the weekend as the top team, at least by record in the NFC bludgeoning the Philadelphia Eagles on Black Friday. And they were able to do it with a different style of play that I think most people would have expected, but you maybe you should have seen coming if you had watched what happened in Detroit. To most people, the hire of Ben Johnson was about turning around Caleb Williams, a quarterback, and to a degree, that’s happened, but that’s not the story here. The story is what they were able to do on the ground against the Eagles. And this is one of my favorite stats I’ve been able to dig up over the course of the entire 2025 season. The Bears at one point on Friday had 285 rushing yards. That would have been the most rushing yards they had in a single game in 41 years since 1984. They wind up taking a knee and that knocked off some of the yardage and so it fell behind another performance from earlier this year. So the two best rushing days that they have had as a franchise since 1984. Came in the month of November, which is incredible when you think about like where that franchise has been in all the years that have passed and the era that we’re in now, and that the 1985 Bears, the vaunted 1985 Bears who had Walter Payton at tailback weren’t able to accomplish that. And I think it speaks to a number of things. First, it’s the investment in the offensive line, bringing in Jonah Jackson, bringing in Joe Tooney via trade, signing Drew Dahman in free agency, then going and getting Ozzie Chaillo in the 2nd round of the draft, completely changing the face of their offensive line. And then for Ben, it’s about what they’ve been able to build from a culture standpoint, from a scheme standpoint, like you look at what they’re able to do and they’re winning in a lot of cases, yes, on talent, with all the talent they brought in for that offensive line, but also with angles, with leverage. These are things that takes time to build. And they’re able to do this in their first year there, a dominant run game, and that’s how they’ve won this year. They’ve won behind that run game. And what does that do? That takes the pressure off of Caleb Williams, that feeds into a defense that’s playing really well under first-year coordinator Dennis Allen . There’s a rhyme and reason the way that team is put together. There’s a rhyme and reason. To the way that they’re playing, the style that they’re playing. In a lot of ways, it mirrors, you know, what we talked about with Vrabel in New England. And so, I think what the Bears are doing right now looks sustainable and imagine what it’ll look like if the quarterback starts to play a little bit more consistently because we’ve seen flashes. He’s played big at the end of big games. We saw it in, in against the, against the Bengals with that throw down the seam to Colson Loveland to win the game. We saw the comeback against the Giants where the scramble plays that. Wind up winning the game. If Caleb Williams can become more consistent at quarterback, now you’re adding them into the equation where and into an equation where you’ve got a dominant run game and a defense is starting to play well. The Bears are on the right track and they play the Packers twice in the next 3 weeks, which will likely determine who winds up winning the NFC North. Hard to believe that we’re there with the Bears and Packers battling for the division title after a year ago, the Lions and Vikings, of course, had that big week 18 battle. To win it. Appreciate you guys coming out. As always, you can leave your comments below here on YouTube or on my social media at Albert Breer on Twitter, at Albert R Breer on Facebook, at Albert_Breer on Instagram. We’ll have a mailbag edition coming in the next day or two. Another Breer report at the end of the week. We’ll see you guys then.
