10 Things We Learned Last Night
In no particular order, here are 10 things we learned about the Patriots in last night’s game, a 30-10 loss to the San Diego Chargers:
1. When it comes to the New England passing game — and the San Diego pass defense — something doesn’t add up. When you face a team that’s last in the league in average passing yards allowed per game — the Chargers were yielding 265.6 passing yards through their first five games — you should be able to exploit their secondary, even without two important running backs. But even early on last night, the Patriots were ineffective, mounting their only sustained scoring drive late in the game when things were all wrapped up. As poised as he appeared at times last week against San Francisco, quarterback Matt Cassel never appeared truly comfortable last night against the Chargers, finishing 22-for-38 for 203 yards, four sacks and one interception. After getting New England to the San Diego one-yard line with its first drive of the second half and turning the ball over on downs, the wheels came off: On his first play after getting the ball back, Cassel tossed an ugly interception right at San Diego corner Quentin Jammer, and the game was all over. The quarterback is progressing — the win over the 49ers is proof of that — but thus far, his development appears to be a case of one step forward, two steps back.
2. Bad starts continue to plague the New England offense. The Patriots trailed 10-0 and 17-3 last night, the third straight game where New England has managed to dig itself a first-half hole of at least one touchdown. In all, the Patriots have been outscored by a combined 31-10 in the first quarter of their first five games of the season. With a young quarterback that has struggled to play from behind, a bad five or 10 minutes right out of the gate can hamstring you the rest of the night, something New England can’t afford next week against Denver or in three weeks against the Colts. “We knew that there was going to be a lot of energy in the stadium tonight. We knew that they were going to come out and try to shut us out early,” Cassel said. “They did a good job. They got ahead, and we weren’t able to really catch up and score points.”
3. Wes Welker is Matt Cassel’s favorite target. Through five games, Welker is far-and-away the leader in receptions, totaling 36 catches for 324 yards. Last night, he had nine catches for 73 yards, and appears to be developing a rapport with the quarterback — he caught nine of the 10 balls thrown in his direction, the highest percentage among New England receivers who had at least five balls thrown in their direction in a game all season. (For his part, running back Kevin Faulk was 3-for-3 on catches last night.) Welker is the only member of New England 2007 record-setting offense who is on-pace to actually better his performance from last season — if he continues at this rate, he’ll finish with 115 catches, three more than last year’s 112, which was tops in the NFL.
4. Over the last couple of years, Ellis Hobbs did something to change Philip Rivers’ mind. The Chargers quarterback once infamously referred to Hobbs as the “sorriest corner in the league.” But early on last night, it appeared that New England’s opposite corner, Deltha O’Neal, was the one who had the bullseye on his back. Rivers went right after O’Neal from the jump, burning him badly on a pair of deep balls early — a 48-yarder to Vincent Jackson on the first play of the game and a 49-yard touchdown pass to Malcolm Floyd on San Diego’s second series of the night where O’Neal was simply outjumped in pursuit of the ball. In all, O’Neal was thrown at three times in the first half, and yielded three catches for 114 yards and a touchdown.
5. Right now, there are more questions than answers about New England’s pass defense. The Patriots preach the mantra of team defense: defensive lineman Richard Seymour frequently says that, “The chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” So there is a connection between the fact that New England was unable to get any sustained pressure on Rivers (zero sacks on the night) and the San Diego quarterback’s ability to pick apart the Patriots’ secondary. (Rivers finished 18-for-27 for 306 yards and three touchdowns.) But it certainly was a lousy night for the New England secondary. In addition to the early undressing of O’Neal, there was a 59-yard catch by Jackson in the third quarter where he ran right past rookie corner Terrence Wheatley, an illegal contact call on O’Neal in the third quarter that kept a San Diego drive alive and a bad pass interference penalty on Ellis Hobbs III midway through the third that accounted for 32 yards of San Diego’s 98-yard touchdown drive that ultimately put the game out of reach. The secondary had some nice moments — Brandon Meriweather accounted for an impressive pass break up in the second quarter, and Hobbs did the same later in the same quarter — by all in all, a bad night.
6. Defensively, the New England front offered plenty of looks to the Chargers. Not many of them worked, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The Patriots were shuffling different packages in and out all night. They opened in a four-man front, and showed that look for most of the first half (including 10 of the first 13 snaps). They used more of their traditional 3-4 set as the game went on, and also showed a two-man line on more than a few occasions (always in third and long situations). In the end, the breakdown looked like this: of the 55 offensive plays run by San Diego, the Patriots used a four-man front on 33 snaps, a three-man front on 17 snaps and a two-man front on six snaps. Among those combinations, they showed different looks out of those, including a 4-2-5 set, and a 2-3-6 look as well.
7. Cassel’s shortcomings as a quarterback were never clearer than during a two-plus minute sequence midway through the third quarter. After the Patriots had gotten to the San Diego one-yard line with just over 10 minutes left in the third quarter, it looked like New England had a real shot at drawing to within a touchdown. After all, they were down 17-3, but theoretically, still in the ballgame. Cassel had four shots at the end zone, with the final attempt coming on a fourth-and-goal from the one. On that final play — a play-action fake to Sammy Morris — Cassel was unable to locate a wide-open tight end Ben Watson in the left hand corner of the end zone. Instead, he appeared to panic, looking vaguely like a wounded seal about to be attacked up by a pack of sharks, ultimately taking the sack and turning the ball over on downs. “We went through it, and I didn’t see anybody open,” Cassel told reporters after the game. “I was hoping to maybe make a play with my legs, and it just didn’t happen. Goal line is goal line. You go down there, and it’s the grit and the grind of the game. They did a good job. They have good guys up front.” Just over two minutes later, Rivers was faced with a similar situation — first and goal from the New England one. Rivers coolly executed the play-action fake, waited for tight end Antonio Gates to get open and connected with him for the score that made it 24-3 and effectively ended the contest.
8. The only New England offensive skill position player who deserves to leave San Diego with his head held high is Sammy Morris. As he seems to do every week, the running back gritted out some of the toughest yards of the day for the Patriots. The veterans ended up with 26 rushing yards and a touchdown. In addition, he caught four of the six passes thrown in his direction, and finished with 49 receiving yards, second-best on the team. More importantly, he was one of only a handful of Patriots who showed some real life when he steamrolled Sam Diego cornerback Antonio Cromartie on a 28-yard reception in the third-quarter reception that got the Patriots to the San Diego one-yard line. (It tied the second-longest reception of his career, trailing only his 44-yard reception on Oct. 22, 2006 with the Dolphins. Morris’s other 28-yard reception also came that year during the Dolphins’ Dec. 10 game against the Patriots.)
9. In 2008, Stephen Gostkowski isn’t always a lock to be the best special teamer for the Patriots. The kicker missed his first field goal attempt of the season last night, a 48-yarder in the first quarter that went wide left. The miss snapped a streak of 17 straight made field goals dating back to last season, a string that was the third longest in Patriots history, trailing only a 25-kick streak by Adam Vinatieri from 1996-97 and a 23-kick streak by Vinatieri in 2004. Gostkowski nailed a 47-yard boot in the second quarter to improve to 11-for-12 (91.7 percent) on the season. Instead, we’ll give a tip of the cap to punter Chris Hanson, who dropped two of his five punts inside the San Diego 20-yard line, including one at the Chargers’ three-yard line.
10. The Chargers really needed this one. The next three weeks, the Patriots have the Broncos and the Colts — sandwiched by a homecoming game against the Rams — but San Diego, who improved to 3-3 with the win, has got a far tougher stretch. They travel to Buffalo next week, then journey to London for a date with the Saints. They’ll get their own homecoming the following week against the Chiefs, but then it’s Pittsburgh and Indianapolis back-to-back. If they didn’t win last night, they could have easily faced the prospect of sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner with a 3-8 record. “This was obviously a big game for us,” Rivers said. “We didn’t intentionally downplay it. It wasn’t necessarily a payback game at all. But it was big because of the situation we are in, because it gets us back to .500 before we go on this world tour here the next couple of weeks.”
Christopher Price has covered the Patriots for Boston Metro since 2001. His book, “The Blueprint: How the New England Patriots Beat the System to Create the Last Great NFL Superpower” is current available from St. Martin’s Press in paperback. He can be reached at christopher.price@metro.us.
