PHOTO: Brynn Anderson/AP Photos
Since giving up 567 yards to the Cowboys and falling two games below .500, the Patriots have become a completely different team.
The defense has given up a total of 1,273 yards during a five game winning streak. It seems like a big number, but it’s actually an average of just 254.6 yards per game. The Patriots manhandled the Falcons on Thursday night and despite the offense struggling a bit, the defense held Atlanta to 165 yards, sacked Matt Ryan four times and picked him off twice times, including one that was returned for a touchdown in a smothering 25-0 win. New England also picked off both of Atlanta’s backup quarterbacks once just for good measure as well.
The Pats (7-4) now have 10 days before a huge showdown with the Titans at home on November 28th. Thursday night wasn’t always aesthetically pleasing, but it was the first “just get out healthy with a win on a short week” test for Mac Jones and a lot of other young guys on the team and New England passed with relative ease.
“Good effort by everyone. Coaches, staff players, obviously on a short week,” said Bill Belichick. “Falcons play hard. Dean did a good job on us defensively and they were ready to go. Got to give them a lot of credit. Falcons really played very competitively tonight, and good to come away with a win. We got some big plays defensively. Nick made some kicks and we did enough offensively to score enough points to get ahead and win. Hopefully, we can just play a little bit more consistently. We had obviously way too many penalties. Kill us in the return game, killed us offensively. We got to do a better job there.
“But it’s good to get to come down here and get a win and get a couple of days here this weekend to kind of catch our breath and then be ready to go. Short week but good week.”
There was only one offensive touchdown scored on the night and it came in the second quarter. Thanks in large part to Damien Harris (10/56), the Patriots drove 76 yards in seven plays and Jones found a wide open Nelson Agholor streaking over the middle for a 34-yard touchdown to put the team up 10-0 after Nick Folk booted one of his four field goals on the night in a sloppy first quarter.
Jones was a solid 22-26 for 207 yards and the touchdown, but he also threw an ugly pick at one point in the in the third quarter that allowed Atlanta to hang around with the score at 13-0. Luckily for Jones, he has a stellar defense to back him up and they were able to force a turnover on downs with a 4th-&-1 stop at their own 16 on the ensuing drive.
“I think we’ll just have to watch it and see what happened,” Jones said of the offense. “I think they emptied the clip on what they were going to try and bring against us. They did a good job on the defensive side. We can do better on offense, so we’ll do that and it all just starts with watching the film. It’s a short week but there’s no excuses. We can play better, and we will.”
The Pats punted the ball away, but Ryan was eventually picked off by Devin McCourty at the New England 22. That drive ended in another Folk field goal to make it 16-0 and just three plays later Ryan was intercepted again, this time by JC Jackson at the Pats’ 49. Again, despite Harris and Rhamondre Stevenson (12/69) running well, the offense sputtered and had to settle for a 33-yard Folk field goal with 1:55 to go tp push the lead to 19-0. Kyle Van Noy came up with a 35-yard pick-six against Josh Rosen with 1:22 to go and Adrian Philips put the icing on the cake one play after the kick off, intercepting Feleipe Franks.
“It was a great team win,” said Matt Judon, who set a career high in sacks when he got to 10.5 on Thursday night. “The defense played very well, we are going to go back and watch and go over some things and get set for the next game.”
“These guys play well together. We use a lot of different personnel groupings. They communicate well together. Played with good communication and anticipation,” Belichick added on the defense.
This offense will undoubtedly need to play better if they’re going to beat Tennessee, Buffalo or Indianapolis, but with the defense playing at the level it is right now and clearly buying in to everything Bill and Steve Belichick are telling them, there’s reason to believe this team will be one of the most dangerous teams in the AFC if this continues.
Sitting at 2-4 and unable to prevent a team from gaining 24 yards on 3rd-&-25 just weeks ago, that’s a hell of an accomplishment in such a short amount of time.
“I don’t want to brag too much but I feel like we have one of the best defenses in the league,” said Jackson. “We got a good pass rush and guys up front that are doing good this season. The secondary has always been pretty good and we are starting to build chemistry. This is a big game and defense played outstanding. I can’t even explain the feeling, we just have to keep it up. It’s about to get scary out there for teams.”