New England Patriots maul New York Jets, 38-14
That was fun.
New England Patriots opened their 2007 regular season by clobbering New York Jets 38-14 on the road. Wide receiver Randy Moss caught nine passes for 183 yards. Runningbacks Laurence Maroney and Sammy Morris combined for 126 yards on 31 carries. Cornerback Ellis Hobbs returned the second half kick-off 108 yards for a touchdown, the longest kick-off return in the history of National Football League. Patriots’ defense logged five sacks.
The key to victory was New England’s offensive line: Left tackle Matt Light, right guard Logan Mankins, center Dan Koppen, right guard Stephen Neal and right tackle Nick Kaczur.The offensive line had an edge in the run blocking and completely destroyed Jets’ pass rush. I suspect one of the reasons Jets didn’t get much pressure was that Jets had their defensive line looking to snuff out New England’s very effective and varied screen plays. If that’s what the Jets in fact were doing they were pretty effective as the Patriots had to almost completely stay away from the screen. They did get one good one in though to Wes Welker who who ended up a yard shy of a first down on customarily well-blocked screen where Light, Mankins and Logan led the way.
On the other hand, Jets were unable to put pressure on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Not even frequent blitzes brought them particularly close to him s New England’s offensive line picked up everything.
New England’s dominance on the line of scrimmage was partly brought about by tight end Kyle Brady, who pretty much blocks like a lineman, and the use of Ryan O’Callaghan, who is a lineman. Specifically, O’Callaghan is a backup offensive lineman who’s almost as good as Kaczur, the tackle he’s backing up. It is probably a non-trivial challenge for a defensive coordinator to on the fly come up with a package that can handle both the power of Light, Mankins, Koppen, Neal, Kaczur, O’Callaghan, and Brady and the speed of, say, Moss, Welker and Maroney. Jets, at any rate, failed to do so.
On defense, New England’s defensive front-seven outclassed Jets’ offense. Nose tackle Vince Wilfork and defensive ends Ty Warren and Jarvis Green - in for the injured Richard Seymour - clogged the middle and pressured Pennington while linebackers Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Adalius Thomas, Junior Seau and Rosevelt Colvin wore down Jets short-strike offense.
Wide receiver Wes Welker scored New England’s first touchdown on an 11-yard toss-and-run against man cover. Brady threw a perfect pass to a short-hooking Welker who immediately spun out of a tackle and sprinted in for the score.
Jets tied the game with 4:15 remaining in the second quarter on a 7-yard Chad Pennington pass to Laverneus Coles. Jets used well-designed play that left the Patriots covering Coles with outside linebacker Rosevelt Colvin, a major mismatch.
Patriots struck back before half time, using a couple of deep passes to Moss to set-up a 5-yard pass over the middle to Watson at the back of the endzone. Watson beat Jets linebacker Jonathan Vilma with a terrific swim move. The offensive line provided with excellent protection and easily picked up a delay blitz while Brady picked and chose among his five receivers.
Hobbs blew things open with his 108-yard touchdown return.
Patriots went up 28-7 on a 51-yard bomb to Moss. The play took long time to develop, but Jets came no where close to Brady thanks to New England’s protection-scheme with O’Callaghan as a sixth offensive lineman. The play-action fake - to Maroney - helped s well, as it did maany times throughout the game.
Jets answered with a patient dink-and-dunk drive that ended with Pennington’s 1-yard lob to Coles who out jumped Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel.
That was close as the Jets got.
Patriots responded with a 17-play, 75-yard drive that ate up 10 minutes and 28 seconds that resulted in a field goal by Stephen Gostkowski, giving New England a 31-14 lead.
With the game in hand fullback Heath Evans leaped into the endzone, led by the also leaping linebacker Junior Seau who did the the leadblocking on the play. Evans would likely have scored on the previous play had not Koppen failed to control the defensive lineman he was taking on.
Some things could have been smoother. Maroney still seems to lack the field vision that great runningbacks have. He all to often cuts the wrong the direction, or cuts when simply going straight ahead would serve him better. Hopefully he’ll improve on reading and reacting as the season progresses.
There were outright miscues as well. Welker killed one drive when he dropped a perfectly thrown ball on 3rd&3. He turned his head downfield a fraction before the ball arrived. That’s not good enough. He simply has to make those kinds of catches. On the play prior to his drop, Welker made a catch and then simply froze instead of trying to get an extra yard or two to set up a shorter third down.
By contrast, tight end Ben Watson made a diving catch for a first down on 3rd & 1 in the second quarter to keep a drive alive that later died when back-up holder Matt Cassel fumbled the hold on a field goal attempt. Cassel was never seen again in the game.
