Ho-hum. New England Patriots beat much hyped Jacksonville Jaguars 31-20
Top Line: New England Patriots advanced to the 2007 AFC Championship Game by beating Jacksonville Jaguars 31-20 in the AFC divisional playoff game. Jaguars tried to shorten the game not by holding on to the ball but by taking away New England’s downfield passing game, forcing the Patriots to march slowly and patiently down the field. On offense, Jacksonville tried to keep up with the Patriots scoring wise through deep passes off of the play action. It wasn’t a bad plan, Jaguars just didn’t have the personnel to execute it. The game was tied 14-14 at half time, but then the Patriots stepped it up in the second half, especially on defense, and the game slowly but surely - inevitably, I’d say - slipped away from the Jaguars.
Offensive Line: Patriots fielded their first-team offensive line, with left tackle Matt Light, left guard Logan Mankins, center Dan Koppen, right guard Stephen Neal and right tackle Nick Kaczur.
The Gist: Patriots used a lot of three wide formations and also frequently split tight end Ben Watson and even fullback Heath Evans wide, which was as expected given the size of Jaguars players and the strength of New England’s passing game. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady took full advantage of Jacksonville’s coverage schemes. He completed 26 of 28 passes, setting a new NFL record for completion rate in a playoff game (92.9%). The two incompletions were both catchable passes. Watson dropped a pass that hit his hands and Welker dropped the other incompletion by looking away from the ball the moment before it hit his hands (he had an almost identical third-down drop in the very first game of the season against the New York Jets). Brady’s 26 completions were good for 262 yards. Brady was sacked on the first play of the game when Logan was unable to hold off a power-rushing Henderson. Otherwise he was largely free to roam the pocket as he pleased, and when he wasn’t he was able to side step the problems in his customary cool fashion. Wide receiver Wes Welker caught nine passes for 54 yards, Donte Stallworth three for 68, Jabar Gaffney three for 26 and runningback Kevin Faulk five for 36. Runningback Laurence Maroney also benefited from the soft defensive front. He gained 122 yards on 22 carries, and another 40 yards on two receptions. He ran about as well as he did against the New York Giants in the last game of the regular season, but this time he got more yards to show for the effort. It helped that tight end Kyle Brady had his best game since the Patriots’ first game against Buffalo Bills.
Patriots had the ball eight times and scored five times (four touchdowns, one field goal). They also missed one field goal attempt, kneeled down once to end the second quarter and punted to end their final possession with 32 seconds to go in the fourth quarter.
The Jaguars also had the ball eight times, but managed only four scores (two touchdowns and two field goals), two turnovers (one fumble, one interception), one punt and one game ending run.
The Jaguars scored on the game’s opening drive, aided in large part by a 34 yard pass down the right sideline to tight end Marcedes Lewis on 4th and 1 from New England’s 43-yard line. But Patriots struck right back with a 10 play, 74-yard drive that ended with a three-yard touchdown pass to Watson. The first key play of the drive was a nice little screen-left dump to Maroney who took the ball 33 yards before getting pushed out of bounds. The second was a fourteen yard completion to Moss on fourth-and-five from Jacksonville’s 40-yard line.
Jaguars lost the initiative for good on the following drive when defensive end Ty Warren pushed past his blocker and powered into Garrard’s right arm, jarring the ball loose. Outside linebacker Mike Vrabel fell on the ball and just like that New England had the ball at Jacksonville’s 29 yard-line. It was the key play of the game because it allowed the Patriots to leap-frog the Jaguars on the score board. Seven plays later Maroney crashed into the end zone over right guard Neal on the first play of the second quarter, making the score 14-7.
While the Jaguars managed to march 95 yards to tie the game with surprising ease they remained one behind in the possession game, even after Patriots kicker Steven Gostkowski missed a field goal attempt late in the first half since the Patriots were to receive the second half kickoff.
With the Jaguars continuing to guard against the big play, Patriots dink-and-dunked their way down the field on the first drive of the second half. Brady tossed four passes to Welker for 25 yards, two to Faulk for 15 yards, and one to Gaffney for 13 yards. Watson dropped pass, Brady’s first incompletion of the game. Maroney ran three times for 29 yards, including an impressive 22-yard scamper round the left end where tight end Brady and a pulling Neal helped seal off the edge and punch a whole in the defensive front. Welker’s fourth catch was the drive’s coup de grace, a scoring six yard strike off of a sort of play action Statue of Liberty: Patriots faked a direct snap to Faulk that Brady helped sell by acting as if the snap had gone over his head, the standard fake to conceal a direct snap to the runningback. The Jaguars’ scrambled and befuddled secondary couldn’t recover in time to prevent Welker from getting open in the middle back of the end zone, where Brady hit him squarely in the numbers to put the Patriots up 21-14. I’m not a big fan of dink and dunk since it only takes one bad play to short circuit that kind of drive but Brady is so accurate and his receivers (including Faulk) so good that the Patriots can make it work.
Jacksonville answered with yet another good looking drive that eventually stalled at New England’s 21-yard line. The troubles began when right tackle Tony Pashos was flagged for a false start. A short run and an incomplete pass later Garrard went deep on third-and-eleven for wide receiver Dennis Northcutt who dropped the ball, possibly out of fear for the on coming cornerback Asante Samuel. Jacksonville had to settle for a field goal.
Up 21-17 New England moved in for the kill score. A short pass to Welker gained another 15 yards thanks to a roughing the passer penalty against Jaguars’ defensive tackle Derek Landri. The next play was another long run over the left end, where Kyle Brady and Neal once again gave Maroney something to work with. Maroney made a nice adjustment, bouncing out of the original point of attack and picking up 29 yards down the left sideline. That’s significant because throughout the regular season Maroney’s adjustments were consistently ill-conceived and unproductive. That run was followed by an 11-yard run to the right, once again behind Kyle Brady. Three plays later Tom Brady threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to Watson. Less than a minute remained of the third quarter and New England was up 28-17.
Jaguars and Patriots traded field goals on the next two drives, leaving Jacksonville with only six-and-a-half minutes to close the 31-20 gap. Jaguars worked their way to New England’s 41-yard line. On 4th and 6 Garrard tried to force the ball to Jones but the pass was intercepted by safety Rodney Harrison with just over four minutes remaining. That was the game.
Maroney was robbed of a shot at a big play late in the third quarter when he was ran down from inside on a run over the right side of the offensive line. Had Koppen maintained his block on Jacksonville linebacker Darell Smith Maroney would have had a one-on-one matchup in open field against a Jacksonville safety. A couple of plays earlier Neal had failed to pick up linebacker Ingram on a run blitz. The fourth-down play that Brady converted with a pass to Moss was preceeded by a weird run by Faulk that cost the Patriots three yards on third down. It wasn’t Faulk’s fault, it was the weird blocking scheme’s that called for Koppen to block a defensive tackle lined up between Koppen and the point of attack. Typical fruity zone-blocking garbage, in other words.
Stallworth made a great catch for 53 yards on third down on the Patriots final scoring drive. A busted screen play hd Brady look deep down the right side line where he found Stallworth after
Bottom Line: Most teams that have seriously challenged the Patriots this season (Dallas, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and New York Giants) have used pressure on Brady to try to disrupt the offense. Jaguars chose to borrow the much more cautious approach used by Cleveland Browns in week , which focused on taking Moss out of the game and otherwise cover the receivers best they could. The outcome was pretty similar, although the Patriots weren’t nearly as sharp that time. Brady completed 22 of 38 passes for 265 yards and three touchdowns against Cleveland. Sammy Morris ran for 102 yards on 21 carries and Watson caught two touchdown passes. The final score was 34-17 (cornerback Randall Gay forced a fumble and returned it for a touchdown).
Jacksonville’s plan was pretty sound and the execution good but the Jaguars don’t have the players necessary to beat the Patriots straight up and none of them rose to the occasion to make a play on defense. Without help from the defense the offense had little chance of keeping pace with New England’s scoring machine. I think a defense has to send some overload blitzes and loops at Brady in order to produce some errors and turnover opportunities. The few times the Jaguars did blitz they usually made something happen. Both of Brady’s incompletion came on blitzes and the drive that resulted in the missed field goal bogged down when a fake blitz combined with looping defensive lineman made Mankins draw a chop block penalty. But the reality is that there probably is no cute or clever scheme that can beat the Patriots this season.
