Well, this is a welcome change. During my tenure here at BSJ, the Patrots haven\u2019t sniffed the playoffs. Now? They\u2019re one of the favorites in the AFC. I always say the job is the job – good, bad, ugly, indifferent. But after a couple of years of watching bad football and bad coaching and bad roster construction, this season has been a breath of fresh air. That doesn\u2019t mean this group gets slack, but I\u2019m also no longer thinking a root canal would be better than watching the Patriots play football, so there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to share with you thoughts from my NFL contacts about Sunday night’s matchup, but before I do, a couple of my own thoughts about this game:<\/p>\n
1. I expect the Pats to come out as they did versus Buffalo in Week 5, with bigger personnel as if to say, \u2018You ain\u2019t running on us tonight.\u2019 Chargers OC Greg Roman is far more experienced than Joe Brady of the Bills, but he\u2019s also stubborn. LA has a play style, and being the more physical team is it. With no Khyiris Tonga and Milton Williams\u00a0dealing with the ankle, I expect Roman will keep handing it off until it\u2019s clear that either a) he\u2019s wasting time or b) the game script forces him to get away from it.<\/p>\n
2. I think the Pats are going to try and manipulate the Chargers\u2019 defensive personnel. LA wants to play lighter boxes and use Derwin James as that movable, attacking chess piece. Josh McDaniels has leaned more into bigger personnel, using Thayer Munford\u00a0as an extra lineman. This offense has the 5th-most snaps with an extra lineman since their bye (62 in total). Can McDaniels get LA DC\u00a0Jesse Minter to alter his desired approach and go heavier? That would rob Minter of some of his creativity\/disguise, and should also allow for more throwing windows\/preferable matchups in the secondary.<\/p>\n
On to the big brains (I always appreciate their time, especially when some of them still have teams playing):<\/p>\n
WHEN THE PATRIOTS HAVE THE BALL:<\/p>\n
AFC Pro Personnel director: \u201cMinter is really smart. I expect him to change the picture on Maye and the offense as much as possible. I\u2019d also expect them to show pressure, though I doubt they\u2019ll blitz very often. I know (Maye) hasn\u2019t been great against (cover) zero, but you can\u2019t live in that. He (Maye) has been very decisive when he sees defenders turn their backs and we know he\u2019s got the legs to take advantage of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
AFC defensive back coach (team played the Pats this year): \u201cMaye is a pain in the ass to defend because of his effectiveness as a runner. He\u2019s gotten better as the year goes along. You\u2019ve got to have eyes on him, and it wouldn\u2019t surprise me if the Chargers spy him on occasion.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis receivers aren\u2019t guys that keep you up at night. The quarterback makes them so much better. But they are also good enough that you can\u2019t fall asleep on them. (Stefon) Diggs is smart and will work the middle of the field. Not having (Mack) Hollins sucks for them; he did so much. They\u2019re still trying to figure out how to make up for that in the pass game.\u201d<\/p>\n
AFC Defensive coordinator (team played the Pats this year): \u201cWhen we saw them, ball security was an issue. They\u2019ve cleaned that up, but I\u2019d still instruct my guys to punch at it. The problem with those two backs (TreVeyon Henderson and Rhamondre Stevenson) is that there\u2019s that fine line. They can both run through contact. Tackle first and have the second and third guys punch. Or look stupid.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Will) Campbell\u2019s good, but they got two guys<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, this is a welcome change. During my tenure here at BSJ, the Patrots haven\u2019t sniffed the playoffs.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[88077,18531,7,249,6,88076,88078,88075],"class_list":["post-666276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-bedard-columns","tag-celtics","tag-football","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-sticky","tag-sunday-notebooks","tag-top-patriots"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115871204265420480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}