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Film Room: Do the Patriots play soft football?

Film Room: Do the Patriots play soft football?

At this point, it’s the quote heard around the world.

“We’re a soft football team across the board,” Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo told the media on Sunday after his team’s 32-16 loss to the Jaguars. “They talk about what makes a strong football team. This means running the ball, stopping the run and covering kicks. We didn’t do any of that today.”

Mayo has since walked back his comments, saying on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show”: “We don’t have a soft football team, it’s us.” play soft” – but the point remains. They’re not doing enough to win football games right now and it comes down to these three things: running the football, stopping the run and covering kicks.

As different as the two regimes have been so far, this Mayo nickname is actually straight from Bill Belichick’s playbook. Belichick literally defined the essence of a tough football team as follows: Run the ball, stop the run, kick [off] Cover.

So let’s break down all three – and how the Patriots didn’t do any of the three well enough on Sunday against Jacksonville:

RUN THE BALL

The Patriots started Sunday with their seventh offensive line combination in as many weeks and a running back in Rhamondre Stevenson, who practiced Friday for the first time in more than two weeks while battling a foot injury.

As a result, New England rushed for just 38 yards on 15 attempts (2.5 YPC) against the Jaguars. Drake Maye and Stevenson were the team’s leading rushers with just 18 yards each, while Antonio Gibson ran for just four yards on three attempts and JaMycal Hasty ran for -2 (!!) yards on his two attempts.

These numbers are a far cry from where they were at the start of the season. After averaging over five yards per carry through the first five weeks of the season, New England’s rushing offense has fallen off a cliff in the last two games. Here are some of the numbers:

“You have to see it on film,” Mayo said after the game when asked what was bothering them at this stage of their game. “What I want to say is that it’s a mentality, it’s an attitude. Our running game just couldn’t do anything offensively here recently.”

STOP THE RUN

The Patriots also had problems stopping the run on Sunday, allowing Tank Bigsby and Co. to score 171 yards and two touchdowns on 39 carries.

New England scored a season-worst six explosive runs against the Jaguars on Sunday and has now allowed 22 such runs since Week 3, tied for the second-most in the NFL.

Bill Belichick commented on New England’s offensive problems on Monday’s edition of ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” and criticized Mayo for calling at least the defensive side of the game “soft”:

Defensively, that Patriots “He led the league in rushing defense last year,” the former head coach said. “Yards per carry: No. 1 in the league, and this year they’re somewhere way down in the 20s… They’re the same guys. They signed again [Anfernee] Jennings, you’ve re-signed [Jahlani] Tavai, they signed again [Kyle] Dugger. Marcus Jones and [Christian] Gonzalez was healthy… Yes, you did [Deatrich] Smart, you have that [Davon] Godchaux, you have Keion White, you have [Marte] Mapu. It’s a lot of the same players… I kind of feel sorry for those guys. Because to call them soft, they are not soft. They were the best team in the league against the run last year… I feel bad for the defensive players in this game because these guys are a tough group.”

It sounds like the previous manager emphasizes coaching, while the new manager emphasizes execution:

“We just have to play better,” Mayo said after the game. “We have to play with better technique. We need to lock our guy out in front of us. That’s what it comes down to: blocking the guy in front of you, dominating him and making a tackle.”

“It’s not the X’s and O’s,” he continued Monday morning. “We just have to be where we’re supposed to be.”

KICK COVER

One thing Mayo and Belichick agreed on after Sunday’s loss? The lack of execution in the punt game. After New England allowed 14 straight points in the second quarter, Jacksonville’s Parker Washington allowed Bryce Baringer’s punt to be returned for a 96-yard touchdown.

“Bryce has been a weapon for us all year when it comes to turning the field over,” Mayo explained on WEEI when asked what he saw on film of the play. “One thing I would say is that if you throw the ball in the middle of the field now, it puts a lot of stress on everyone else, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Belichick had the same feeling.

“I don’t understand why players just want to throw the ball right down the middle against good returners,” he told McAfee. “And okay, it comes back 97 yards, but I mean, it’s hard when you put it right in the middle – right in the middle of the field, and you have to go all 53 1/3 yards and outkick the coverage .”

“Now I understand that Baringer could lead the league in average…” Belichick continued. “He’s got an 80-yarder, a 77-yarder, but they’re so hard to cover… and look, if you want to go right down the middle, give the ball some time! Preferably up! Like those four-second, 69-yarder players, they’re hard to cover.”

In addition to the poor punt, the Patriots failed to maintain their lanes and were overwhelmed all over the field.

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