4 big takeaways from the Patriots’ defining win against the Chargers
The Patriots' defense bottled up Justin Herbert and the Chargers' offense, while New England's offense made plays at the right time.
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The Patriots came into Week 8’s strangely important contest with the Los Angeles Chargers with a lot of questions, including what they would do at the trade deadline if they lost and dropped to 3-5.
But more pointedly, they had to answer one main query: could they finally decisively beat a good team?
Yes, they can.
Sunday’s takedown of the Chargers wasn’t the cleanest effort, but it was the most satisfying performance the team has put together this year–even more so than last week’s destruction of New York Jets.
They beat a playoff contender without their best stuff on offense. The defense hounded and confused one of the best young quarterbacks in the league.
Biggest of all, they finally looked like the kind of well-coached team everyone expects them to be when it mattered most.
The defense gets tricky…and gets treats.
Not counting the Jets–though Mike White sure looked good against the Cincinnati Bengals–the Patriots have had some rough luck against quarterbacks of late, with the Texans’ David Mills and Cowboys’ Dak Prescott shredding the defense in consecutive weeks.
But they brought their A-game against the Chargers and their star quarterback, Justin Herbert.
Playing on last year’s success against Los Angeles, Steve Belichick dialed up a scheme that had Herbert holding onto the ball longer than desired and forcing him to repeatedly throw off-platform while under pressure to covered receivers.
But the game plan wasn’t quite a carbon copy of what they did last season.
Specifically, Herbert noted after the game that the Patriots reportedly showed more two-deep safety looks than the Chargers expected: an interesting wrinkle for a team that typically relies heavily on man coverage and one deep safety.
The switch appeared to throw Los Angeles off its rhythm offensively, taking away some of the big plays the Chargers hoped to hit in the passing game. The result: Herbert held the ball longer and faced more pressure than in any start this season except Week 2, per Pro Football Focus.
But New England also played some Cover 1 Robber to keep both Devin McCourty and Adrian Phillips in man coverage while trusting their four-man rush to fluster Herbert. That coverage paid off on Phillips’s first pick.
Speaking of the veteran safety: Phillips’s show-stealing performance, including his momentum-shifting pick-six, turned into 11 Patriots points.
This sort of complementary football is what the Patriots envisioned when the season started: keeping the pressure off of Mac Jones and the offense to play lights-out all game and breaking their opponents’ spirit offensively in the process.
The Patriots nail their “gotta-have-it” moment.
Mac Jones arguably looked more like a rookie than he ever has in the NFL to this point, completing just 18 of 35 passes for 218 yards and misfiring in ways he typically hasn’t.
Until the fourth quarter, his 44-yard deep ball to Nelson Agholor was his lone highlight of the day.
The running game didn’t exactly go off against the worst rush defense in the league, averaging just 3.6 yards per carry.
But when they had to seal the game in the fourth quarter, they did it. What’s more, they did it intelligently and efficiently.
Jones delivered a few clutch throws for Jakobi Meyers and N’Keal Harry on that final drive to move the chains. The running backs kept their legs churning and the ball protected. Josh McDaniels pressed all the right buttons to extend the drive, including a savvy rollout for an easy completion to Meyers on 3rd-and-1 in the red zone.
Meyers and Damien Harris even set the tone throughout the possession by sliding down inbounds to keep the clock moving even before the clock wound under five minutes, at which point running out of bounds stops the clock. That way, once it was time to pay attention to where they were on the field, everyone understood the assignment: stay inbounds and chew clock.
All of that culminated in a six-minute drive that put New England up by two scores and took six minutes off the clock, all but ending any real chance for the Chargers to come back.
That level of awareness and execution is what separates what the Patriots have been this season–and arguably were for three quarters–from what they can be when they put it all together.
After drilling those “gotta-have-it” plays and situations all training camp, the Patriots finally locked those moments down on both sides of the ball in the same game.
Christian Barmore’s future is coming on.
Mac Jones has a pretty firm handle on the “most impactful Patriots rookie” award this season, but Barmore has made plenty of noise on his own account.
The second-round rookie out of Alabama has quietly become New England’s most disruptive and most trusted inferior defensive lineman. The latest piece of evidence: Barmore played 63 percent of the team’s defensive snaps yesterday, the highest total of any lineman.
As his effort in the run game has improved, he’s gotten more chances to show off his monstrous ability as a pass rusher. He’s taken full advantage, posting 10 pressures in his last three games after registering a sack and two hurries on Sunday.
The Patriots even started lining him and Matthew Judon up together on the right side and using Barmore’s size and strength to terrorize Chargers right tackle Storm Norton and open up rushing lanes for Judon, which was about as devastating as you’d expect.
And who had his paws up in Herbert’s passing lane on Phillips’s fateful pick-six? Barmore. It won’t show up in the box score, but you can bet Herbert noticed it.
If you’re going to trade up for a defensive tackle in the second round, he’d better be pretty good. It looks like Bill Belichick hit on this one: Barmore, while green, might already be the best defensive lineman on the team.
Fumbles, No. 2 corner remain weak spots.
As much as players deserve praise for fighting for every yard they can get, there’s a caveat to that: know when your journey is over.
The Patriots have continually flunked that lesson this season and did so again when Kendrick Bourne coughed up the team’s ninth fumble of 2021. New England’s six fumbles lost–two by Damien Harris and one each by Bourne, Mac Jones, Rhamondre Stevenson and J.J. Taylor–rank third-worst in the NFL.
As encouraging as the team’s discipline in crunch time was on Sunday, they can’t afford these kinds of mistakes at all.
Bourne’s fumble and effective benching served as one lingering blemish to the team’s victory aside from the pedestrian play of Mac Jones, which is still understandable given his rookie status.
Another sore spot for the Patriots? Their No. 2 cornerback spot.
Teams are starting to hunt Jalen Mills opposite J.C. Jackson, and it’s not looking good for the veteran defensive back.
He gave up two ugly plays on the Chargers’ last drive of the game–a completion on 3rd-and-18 that turned into a first down and a 24-yard touchdown to Joshua Palmer on which Mills looked surprised to see the ball coming his way–that gave Los Angeles an unnecessary chance to try an onside kick and possibly tie the game.
For all the improved awareness the Patriots’ offense showed on their final possession, Mills didn’t seem to get the memo when he was on the field.
The free-agent signee started off the season well as a replacement for Stephon Gilmore (whom New England must face next week), allowing a passer rating of under 50 in his first three games.
His last three games against Tampa Bay, Dallas and the New York Jets, however, have seen him get cooked. Mills allowed quarterbacks to complete 75 percent of their passes against him to go with four touchdowns and a passer rating of at least 115 in his last four contests, via Pro Football Focus.
To be fair to Mills, this wasn’t the role he was supposed to play. Ideally, he could’ve been an extra safety or slot corner rather than an outside corner, where he has struggled in his career. Riding with him on the outside permanently after the Gilmore trade was bound to burn the Patriots eventually.
Hopefully, he can keep the damage fairly minimal as the season goes on.
Quick hits
- Gunner Olzsweski really does like playing the Chargers, doesn’t he? The Patriots’ punt returner had three returns of more than 20 yards against Los Angeles on Sunday, consistently setting up the Patriots’ offense with good field position. This comes, of course, after Olszewski basically earned his 2020 All-Pro nod with a massive game against the Chargers last year.
- The game wasn’t without its warts for the Patriots despite the positive outcome. They only converted one of their four red zone trips into touchdowns, continuing an issue that plagued him in the first few weeks of 2021. In particular, McDaniels dialing up three passes on four plays inside the 5-yard line on the second-quarter drive they turned over on downs, including two straight passes from the 1-ard line, felt especially egregious. Sometimes, you just can’t overthink it.
- Jakobi Meyers still hasn’t registered his first touchdown yet, but he did technically find the end zone yesterday. Meyers scored on his second two-point conversion of the season after Phillips’s interception return for a touchdown, giving him a total of four points scored in 2021. His career points total: six. Of course, that doesn’t count the two touchdown passes he threw last season. He’s still leading the team in receiving yards by a good bit, but he’s still waiting for that ultimate payoff. That said, throwing him end zone fades is not the way to break his unlucky streak.
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