Dion Lewis could be the most electrifying player in the Patriots’ lineage of third-down backs
Dion Lewis was nearly impossibe to tackle against the Dolphins Thursday night.
COMMENTARY
The Seahawks’ final offensive play of Super Bowl 49 is as much confirmation as we will ever need of the Patriots’ genius for discovering overlooked talent and putting the players in possession of that talent in a position to succeed.
The curious thing about the Patriots’ scouting staff’s history-altering find of Malcolm Butler, who in the final game of his rookie season merely made what might be the greatest clutch play in the history of American team sports given the magnitude of the game and what was at stake, is that cornerback is the rare position where the franchise has made more than a sporadic evaluation mistake.
(I was thinking mostly of Ras-I Dowling there, with just a fleeting recollection of Terrence Wheatley. You too? Great minds, my friends.)
The Patriots have struggled in drafting wide receivers too, though there have been some hits. I always admired David Givens, and fellow seventh-rounder Julian Edelman, who had two touchdowns in the Patriots’ 36-7 thumping of the Dolphins last night, is approaching All-Time Draft Steal status – actually, he’s probably already there.
Of course, the Patriots have had a recurring knack for finding unheralded talent at several other positions – most other positions, really — especially along the offensive line. In just the past two years, they appear to have found not one but two excellent centers, one a fifth-round pick (Bryan Stork, 2014) and one undrafted altogether (David Andrews, ’15). That’s called knowing what you’re looking for and knowing exactly where to find it.
After all these years, finding quality players to complement and perhaps replace other quality players time and again reveals itself to be more a skill or a talent than luck or good fortune, though at least a dollop of the latter is always helpful. But through Bill Belichick’s 16 seasons here, I’m not sure there’s a job description that the franchise has filled as successfully through changes in personnel as it has the role of third-down/change-of-pace running back.
If there’s been a time when they haven’t had a good one for anything more than a Sunday or two during the Brady/Belichick era, I don’t remember it. (I’ll ignore the fateful Kevin Faulk suspension in Week 1 in 2008 if you will.) Faulk, who was basically the running back version of Troy Brown on the early Patriots championship teams, is regarded the preeminent player at the position based on his dependability and longevity. Faulk held the position from 2000 to 2009 before ceding to Danny Woodhead and retiring following the 2011 season.
But it should also be noted that when the Patriots won that first Super Bowl in the 2001 season, it was not Faulk but J.R. Redmond who made the huge drive-extending catches in both the Snow Bowl and the Super Bowl. His time here was brief, but he deserves his plaudits, too.
Redmond achieved his fleeting and yet enduring moments as Faulk’s early peer. Woodhead, plucked off the waiver wire after Rex Ryan and the Jets talked him up and then cut him, supplied plenty of low-to-the-ground highlights as Faulk’s successor, totaling more than 2,000 combined yards of rushing and receiving during his three full seasons.
When he signed a free-agent deal with San Diego before the ’12 season, his successor already on the depth chart: former second-round pick Shane Vereen. Vereen was a versatile back, but one who always seemed to be battling injuries. He was at his best in his final game as a Patriot, making 11 catches in the Super Bowl 49 victory over the Seahawks in February. We remember him well, like the rest, always.
Vereen signed a lucrative deal with the Giants in the offseason, and for a while it looked like there might be a gap in the lineage. Instead, it appears the Patriots may have discovered the most electrifying player at the position yet.
Only the transactions junkies noticed when the Patriots signed Dion Lewis to a futures contract on New Year’s Eve, and with good reason. He was a name in the small type, a once-promising back who battled injuries and struggled to recapture his form from his successful college days at Pitt.
When the Colts cut him last season – keeping, among others, colossal flop Trent Richardson ahead of him – not even fantasy football deep-divers thought anything of it. He spent all of last season out of the NFL until the Patriots decided to sign him and allow him to end 2014 on a hopeful note.
Seven games into the season, it’s safe to say everyone has noticed Dion Lewis now. Lewis, all 5-feet-8-inches of him, was immense in the Patriots’ invigorating dismantling of the Dolphins Thursday night, catching six passes for 93 yards and a touchdown (all in the first half) while also picking up 19 yards on five carries. He had 80 fewer yards last night than he had total in his career (192) before this season.
Lewis used his shiftiness and field vision to contribute a couple of crucial first-downs early in the game, when the game’s flow was still being established. He made Dolphins linebacker Koa Misi look like he was boneless on his first touch of the night. Later in the first half, he bobbed and weaved his way to a first down on a 3rd and 16 play.
But it’s not just that Lewis, who now has 457 total yards in six games (he missed Sunday’s win over the Jets with an abdominal injury), makes all the necessary plays. It’s that he makes them with a style and flash – I love the little hesitation move/hop he uses to freeze defenders in the open field – that hasn’t been seen around here since … well, I don’t know, maybe since the days of another Pitt alum, Curtis Martin.
Now, I’m not putting him in Canton just yet, fellas. I’m not suggesting whatsoever that he is in Martin’s class as a player. He’s not and never will be. Few in the history of the game can say they are. I’m saying he borrows all the right moves from Martin’s repertoire. Watching Lewis is like watching Faulk in fast-forward. He brings you out of your seat.
Lewis is no mirage, no half-season flash, but a truly dynamic player who is already continuing the Patriots’ tradition of effective, easily appreciated third-down backs.
“Gotta think he’s the quickest of them all,’’ said Jim Nantz last night after citing Lewis’s accomplished predecessors at the position, and he’s right, though that particular truth comes adorned in irony. Lewis’s talent – that quickness, those moves – is obvious now.
He is the quickest of them all. Yet until the Patriots called last New Year’s Eve, every team in the league had been painfully slow to recognize what Lewis could do.
Photos: The best scenes from Patriots-Dolphins
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Chad Finn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeChadFinn
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