all 64 of the Patriots\u2019 offensive snaps<\/a> against the most productive pass-rushing team in the league, Campbell did not give up a single sack for the first time this postseason. Against the Chargers and Texans, for comparison, NFL Next Gen Stats credited him with a combined four of them, the worst mark in the playoffs.<\/p>\nVersus Denver, however, one hit and one hurry was all he surrendered. And while there were still some issues to iron out before Super Bowl LX against another high-level defense, his head coach sees a player trending up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he played better against a really good rusher,\u201d said Mike Vrabel of Campbell\u2019s matchup with Denver Pro Bowler Nik Bonitto.<\/p>\n
Campbell joined the Patriots as the fourth overall selection in this year\u2019s draft, and immediately was inserted into the starting lineup. He has not looked back since, despite going through the usual highs and lows of being a rookie tasked with facing up against top-level competition on a weekly basis.<\/p>\n
However, his trajectory was disrupted in late November when he suffered a knee sprain in the third quarter against Cincinnati. The injury forced the Patriots to place him on injured reserve for the next four games, and allowed them to only activate him before the regular season finale. Campbell looked solid in that game, but with the uptick in competition once the playoffs started, he ran into trouble particularly as a pass rusher.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles\u2019 Odafe Oweh gave him all he could handle, while Houston\u2019s Will Anderson Jr. clearly got the better of the youngster in their matchup a week later. Pro Bowler Bonitto, meanwhile, was relatively quiet and held without a sack for the first time in a month.<\/p>\n
Campbell still was not perfect \u2014 he badly whiffed on a cut block in the first quarter, was flagged for a false start in the second, and was not on the same page with Jared Wilson on an incompletion in the third \u2014 but he did show some general improvement after a rough couple of weeks. For Mike Vrabel, that is a starting point to build from heading toward the Super Bowl against the Seattle Seahawks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll need to keep improving,\u201d Vrabel said, \u201cand I\u2019m excited that he has another week to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Campbell has had his fair share of issues in the NFL playoffs so far. Protecting Drake Maye\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1167,249,52640,52113,103282,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-711725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-england","10":"tag-new-england-patriots","11":"tag-new-england-patriots-analysis","12":"tag-new-england-patriots-first-read","13":"tag-new-england-patriots-super-bowl","14":"tag-newengland","15":"tag-newenglandpatriots","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115973381525777619","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711725","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=711725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}