The New England Patriots took the Pittsburgh Steelers’ lunch money on Sunday night. There really is no other way to describe it. Pittsburgh was outclassed in every facet of the game and spent most of the night looking entirely helpless.
While the Patriots’ offense looked unstoppable, an aesthetic propped up by the Steelers declining to even bother covering Phillip Dorsett, New England’s defense was absolutely suffocating in their week 1 victory. Some quick stats: Ben Roethlisberger finished with a QBR of 18.2 while averaging 5.9 yards per attempt, James Conner was held to just 21 yards on 10 carries while Pittsburgh amassed an entire 32 rushing yards as a team, Donte Moncrief managed to haul in 3 receptions from his team-leading 10 targets, and the team went 3/12 on 3rd down.
What does all that add up to? Three points on the scoreboard at the final whistle. You’ll be shocked to learn New England achieved this in a very #PatriotsWay. New England spent the night containing Pittsburgh’s offense. It just so happens Pittsburgh couldn’t break the containment. This resulted in the maximization of the Patriots “bend but don’t break” defensive philosophy that has been deployed for the past 15 years.
Coverage
The Patriots standard operating procedure, as it pertains to their defensive game plan, is to eliminate or contain the other team’s best weapon. So while JuJu Smith-Schuster caught 6 of his 8 targets, he totaled only 78 yards. He was allowed room to catch the ball, just not enough room to alter the dynamics of the game.
Apart from a single James Washington reception, Smith-Schuster’s teammates were unable to pick up the slack. Pittsburgh managed very few explosive plays in this game. Their receivers had nowhere to run after the catch if they were even able to make the catch at all.
As mentioned above, Moncrief caught just 3 out of 10 targets. Some of these were drops, but the Patriots’ defensive backs continuously made pass breakup after pass breakup throughout the game. For example, Patrick Chung knocked the ball out of Moncrief’s hands on 4th down with 1:58 remaining in the first half.
New England totaled 8 pass breakups in this game. In 2018, the team accumulated 41 pass breakups, roughly 3.5 per game. Jason McCourty had 3 pass breakups himself. For reference, Stephon Gilmore lead the NFL last season with 18 pass breakups or roughly one per game.
Jonathan Jones, as the ink was still drying on his new extension, had two breakups of his own. The best came at the 8:02 mark of the first quarter, as Jones perfectly blanketed Johnny Holton. As Holton moved back toward the ball, Jones avoided making any illegal contact despite not turning to track the ball. Jones displayed the ability to perfectly react to Holton’s body movements, a very uncommon coverage technique in the NFL given the degree of difficulty.
Pass Rush
The bad news is New England racked up a disappointing 11 total pressures and a single sack against Pittsburgh. For a team with question marks in this area coming into the season, it’s not a good sign.
However, we need to remember the Patriots defensive philosophy is about containment, not domination. While the pass rush didn’t bring the heat against Roethlisberger, the veteran QB was also unable to extend plays with his legs. He had only one rush for seven yards, but more importantly, was unable to force the secondary to cover for a prolonged period of time. The coverage held up, and Roethlisberger had to get rid of the ball within the structure of the play. For the game, Roethlisberger averaged 2.31 seconds to pass, the 9th quickest release time from week 1 among quarterbacks that had at least 10 dropbacks.
The defense bent in the sense it didn’t consistently hit or knockdown Roethlisberger, but it in no way broke.
The one productive rusher New England had was Deatrich Wise. On 17 pass rushing snaps, Wise accumulated 4 total pressures, 3 hurries, and notched the Patriots’ lone sack. Wise’s 15.6 pass rush productivity mark, per ProFootballFocus, is currently the 3rd highest among interior defenders after the first week of action.
New England Defense
It’s easy to think of New England as an offensive team. It has seemed that way since the Patriots beat the Eagles for their third Super Bowl. In fact, in years they did not reach or win the Lombardi Trophy, they’ve often had an offense that was let down by its defense.
Given the talent on the defensive side of the ball in 2019, coupled with the opening night performance against Pittsburgh, the Patriots may finally be in possession of a defense worthy of matching the offense. The pass rush is still a work in progress, but throughout the years New England has proven to work toward their best form through the first three quarters of the regular season.
Jonathan Rosenberg is a writer for PFN covering the AFC East. You can find him @frosted_takes on Twitter.