by Dakota Antelman
The Patriots suffered a stinging loss to the Packers Sunday afternoon at Lambeau Field. Embedded within the 26-21 final score were a whole host of takeaways, the most notable of which being the struggles that the Patriots had in their secondary.
Just one week after cornerstone CB, Darelle Revis deemed the Patriots secondary “the best in the league”, it gave up 26 points to the Packers and allowed 368 passing yards to their quarterback Aaron Rogers.
"When you play great teams, it comes down to you have to win one-on-one matchups," Patriot defensive back McCourty said. "They just won more matchups than we did."
For much of the first half in particular, the Packers were finding ways to beat the Patriots down-feild.
Though double coverage on Jordy Nelson effectively neutralized the Packers' hottest receiver, the Packers located a diamond in the rough in rookie receiver, Davante Adams. Adams caught six passes for a whopping 121 receiving yards and, for the first two quarters, was the Packers’ go-to guy in the passing game.
The Packers adapted perfectly to the Patriots’ work against Nelson and Cobb.
"They're a matchup defense so if they want to try to take away Jordy and Randall – it was basically Revis one-on-one with Randall and Browner with a little bit of help on Jordy -- so we tried to get Davante involved," Rodgers said. "And he made some big plays for us."
Of Adams’ 11 targets on the night, 7 came in the first half. His somewhat stark drop-off in the back half of the game directly correlated to the Patriots briefly taking control in the final minutes of the first half.
They came out and rattled off a blazing fast 80 yard drive that ultimately culminated in Patriots quarterback Tom Brady tossing a 15 yard touchdown pass to receiver Brandon LaFell. The score gave New England new life and greatly diminished the Packers’ then 14-16 lead.
Though, Green Bay turned right back around and scored a touchdown of its own in less than 45 seconds, New England managed to shut out the Packers in the third quarter. Furthermore, it was New England who drew first blood in the fourth quarter with yet another LaFell touchdown.
In the end though, the Packers managed to hold off a comeback hungry Patriots offence.
Most notably, they stifled the Patriots red-zone offence late in the fourth quarter, when a New England touchdown would have given them the lead, and ultimately punched down Brady for a 15 yard sack on third down.
“I just go back to our philosophy of winning. First, you have to find ways to win. Learn how to win, No. 1, but then you've got to find ways to win and you have to do it as many different ways as possible," Packer coach Mike McCarthy said generally about the win.
The Packers had to get creative to stop the dominant Patriots; four field goals, just one punt and a sudden dependency in a fourth level receiver in Adams dictate that much. But in the end, their creativity paid off. Their seemingly easy toppling of one of the NFL’s hottest teams proved to the league that they might very well be the favorite to win the whole NFC this January.
As for the Patriots, they will swallow the loss and turn their focus to next week’s meeting with San Diego where, if the past is any indication, an angry Tom Brady will be a dominant Tom Brady.
0 comments:
Post a Comment