There's a big spread between the points the Patriots scored when they won and the points they scored when the lost. It's about 16 points on average, but since averages are kinda "squishy" think of it as a 3-4 touchdown difference between when they win and when they lose. That's a big spread. It means that opponents who beat them mostly
shut them down.
In winning their two playoff games, the Pats have scored a lot like the way they did when they won in the regular season. So it stands to reason that if the Rams are going to win, we want to make them score a lot more like they did when they lost in the regular season - something like 3 TD's or fewer.
Ergo: bend don't break on defense and play tough and tight in the redzone. Make them settle for 3 instead of getting lots of 7's.
The more I think about it, the more I think we need to mix-n-match what we've done the last two weeks. Go after them on offense similar to how we did against Dallas so that we keep Brady on the sidelines and limit the raw number of drives they even have to score on. Meanwhile, play defense the way we did against New Orleans: take away Edelman and their hot RB, while pressuring Brady up the middle so that he has to throw off-tempo to his less-talented receivers.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2019 04:43PM by EternalHorns.
