5 lessons the Patriots can take from their Week 4 loss to the Bills
Back in Week 4, the Bills handed the Patriots their only loss of the season. The Pats certainly weren’t at full strength: Jacoby Brissett started at QB, Rob Gronkowski had just one reception, and the Bills won 16-0.
Here are five things the Patriots can learn from the loss to try to get the win this week:
1. Utilize the tight ends
While the Patriots certainly did plenty wrong in Week 4, one bright spot was Martellus Bennett’s performance: 5 catches, 109 yards. Rob Gronkowski only had one catch in the game, as he was still recovering from a hamstring injury, so the Pats have potential to focus even more heavily on the tight end spot. This could be an underrated weakness of the Bills, since most of their schedule has come against teams that don’t throw to tight ends much (like the Jets, Cardinals, and Dolphins).
2. Make Tyrod Taylor throw deep
Taylor has shown an ability to connect on deep balls this season, but the Patriots need to trust their secondary and not let Taylor complete so many short passes. He completed 27 of 39 passes in Week 4 for 246 yards, but the Buffalo gameplan centered mainly around short throws: Taylor went 24/31 for 182 yards and a touchdown on short attempts, and 3/8 for 61 yards on deep ones.
3. Key on running backs in the passing game
Lesean McCoy is questionable to play this week, but his backup, Mike Gillislee, has looked capable in limited action this year. Taylor leaned on McCoy pretty heavily last time around, and his stats look a lot less impressive when the running backs are removed from the equation: 20/31, 195 yards. If McCoy is out, this task becomes a lot more managable, but taking away Taylor’s easiest targets is a must either way.
4. Get Julian Edelman the ball
Week 4’s matchup began with a 90-yard Edelman touchdown being called back for holding, and it may have affected his performance the rest of the way. He caught just one of four targets for 16 yards, clearly a major reason the Pats were shut out. Edelman’s numbers have been down overall this season, but there’s a correlation between his involvement and the offense running well: in three games where the team has scored 30 or more points, Edelman has averaged 9.3 targets. In the other four games, he’s averaged 6.7.
5. Do better on third down
Third downs were a disaster for the Patriots in Week 4: the Pats converted just 1 of 12, and the Bills managed 7 of 15. The offensive number will likely look better with Brady under center, but the Bills have been strong defensively on third down this season (teams have converted on 33 of 92 third down plays against them for 35.9 percent) compared to the Pats (40 of 93, 43 percent).
There’s no doubt Tom Brady’s return makes the chances of the Bills repeating the 16-0 result of Week 4 extremely unlikely. Knowing Bill Belichick, though, he’ll be taking full advantage of studying a game’s worth of mistakes to make his team better.
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