The Good News for Patriots fans this week is that you can feel really good about Drake Maye after a nearly 300-yard day with three scores through the air against a good Rams defense. The Bad News? Jerod Mayo and DeMarcus Covington put together and executed their worst defensive gameplan of the year against Matt Stafford and co. The fact LA was down multiple starters up front didn't matter at all, as the Super Bowl winner shredded New England all afternoon long, forcing Maye and the offense to play from behind for a large swath of this one despite scoring first.
At surface level, there's not a ton of shame in losing to Matt Stafford, but the Patriots' approach was mind-numbing, as was their lack of adjustments to remedy the clear issues that sunk them in the second and third quarters.
Inviting Trouble
The first side of the Patriots' defensive blunders lie with Christian Gonzalez spending just SEVEN MAN COVERAGE SNAPS (out of 16) on either Cooper Kupp or Puca Nacua. The Herald's Andrew Callahan tracked those Kupp/Nacua snaps as 4/7 for 36 yards for Stafford, and when Gonzalez was on Demarcus Robinson, Stafford went a crisp 6/9 for 146 yards and three scores vs. man. Stafford was even more efficient vs. zone, but I didn't like Jerod Mayo's explanation for this at all. At what point does putting Gonzalez away from two All-Pro caliber receivers put the Patriots in the best spot to succeed? The answer is it doesn't in theory, and it certainly didn't in practice.
As was the case a lot here, Gonzalez was on the boundary with Robinson, but the key here is to watch Stafford immediately look over to Jonathan Jones. He knows he's going to Kupp the microsecond. Jones starts to fade towards the boundary and lays out a sensational anticipation throw. The lack of safety help here is one thing, but I don't get why Jones, who's been shaky at times this year, especially yesterday, was put in bad spot after bad spot. Stafford went after him with impunity, and can you blame him? This was trying to get too cute when they didn't need to.
The other end of this equation, which you can see in that clip, is the need for more success blitzing. The Patriots recorded nine pressures despite blitzing a season-high 63% of the time. I mentioned this in the game preview, but Matt Stafford was never going to have these processing deficiencies that sunk Caleb Williams. In fact, Matt Stafford nearly had a PERFECT PASSER RATING when being blitzed in this game, and three of his four touchdowns.
It's important to allow DeMarcus Covington some room to make mistakes, but yesterday was egregious. Even if you felt good about your plan going into Sunday, to not come off of what you're trying to accomplish when it's clearly not working is malpractice. Not that this defense would blank the Rams, but they lost this game for the Patriots.
Phenomenal Outing from Maye
Despite the strip sack (which I'm not putting on him since the pressure was record-quick) and a game-sealing pick, Drake Maye's performance vs. the Rams yesterday was the best of the year. You saw him stick in the pocket to make tough throws, make off-platform and alternate arm angle throws, and make a ton of winning plays against a front that was all over him.
Let's start with the initial Bourne TD. He gets a bit of help from Jaylen McCollough (No. 39 on your program) over committing to the outside for the Stevenson check-down, and Maye recognized it instantly. He puts some great zip on this pass and leads Bourne for an easy six. Really good all-around play here. Now for the best play he made all day: this 3rd&7 conversion to Pop Douglas across his body as he's about to get drilled.
This is an excellent blitz design by Chris Shula, with the drop defender doing so pretty late and freeing up extra space for the DB to come in free. Still, great players make plays, which Maye does here. It doesn't seem super difficult from the All-22, but that's an absolute money throw from the opposite hash with plus-velocity to make this an excellent YAC opportunity for Douglas. It's a shame they couldn't get on the same page on that game-ending pick.
There are two perfectly fine ways to look at this. The first is that Maye was expecting Pop to get his head turned around earlier and sit down about where Kam Kinchens makes this pick. The other way is that Maye misread things and should've either come off that read if he didn't think he could've hit Douglas deep through the two-high look. Either way, that's a communication issue you'd want to avoid seeing in the second half of a season. Not a perfect grade for Maye in this one; he had a few turnover-worthy throws from my own count, but it was a fantastic game against a great defensive front, and if nothing else, he gave them a shot to win.
Quick shoutout to AVP as well. I thought this was another good week for him after that disaster in Tennessee. He did a much better job diversifying up-run looks for Rhamondre Stevenson, which led to a ton of successful early-down runs. Please do more of that moving forward.
Final Score: Los Angeles Rams 28, New England Patriots 22
Gaffney's Three Stars from Patriots-Rams
3rd Star - Kendrick Bourne (5 Recptions on 5 Targets for 70 Yards and a TD)
2nd Star - Hunter Henry (6 Receptions on 9 Targets for 63 Yards)
1st Star - Drake Maye (30/40, 282 Yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT, 1 FUM, 3 Rushes for 27 Yards)
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