FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The New England Patriots’ run defense has some problems to address as it heads into an extended week to prepare for Matt Forte and the Chicago Bears in Week 8.
New England (5-2), playing its first game since Pro Bowl middle linebacker Jerod Mayo was lost for the season with a torn patella in his right knee, allowed the New York Jets (1-6) to churn out 218 yards on 43 carries in the Patriots’ white-knuckle 27-25 win Thursday night in Foxborough.
The Patriots entered the meeting with the league’s No. 4 run defense. The Chris Ivory-led Jets performance marked the second time this season New England allowed more than 200 yards on the ground, with the Chiefs notching 2007 yards in Week 4. The Dolphins just missed the mark with 191 yards on opening day.
Coach Bill Belichick’s team hasn’t allowed more than one 200-yard rushing game in a season since 2004 and has allowed more than two in a season just once in his tenure as head coach in New England.
Sure the loss of Mayo is a part of the issue. But that’s not the only problem.
“We have to coach better, we have to play better — all the things that you said, yeah,” Belichick said when asked if it was a problem getting off blocks, tackling or a combination of other factors. “I don’t think it was any one thing, any one player, any one play, any one scheme. It was just a combination of things. We just didn’t do things well. Sometimes it was technique stuff. We have to coach better; all of it. Put it on me.”
Dont’a Hightower, who returned after missing two games with a knee injury to take over play-calling and green dot duties for the Patriots defense against the Jets, thought the problem had to do with communication and guys simply doing their jobs.
“There were a couple (miscommunications) but maybe a handful of those were maybe blitzes that they thought were coming from an opposite direction which would cause us to lose the edge on certain plays,” Hightower said after watching the game tape. “Some guys not getting into the right gap and that creating a play. Communication is something that we are really going to have to pick up and that’s one thing that Mayo did was communicate with everybody.
“That’s something that me and Jamie (Collins) are going to have to take more ownership of and we are going to get that down pat.”
There were also issues with tackling, with Ivory getting plenty of yards after contact, and Hightower said that’s just a case of guys who have be playing football all their lives taking care of business.
“To be honest, a lot of us have been playing football for a long time,” Hightower said. “When it comes down to it, there are a lot of great runners and Chris Ivory is one of the better runners — a yards-after-contact type of runner — but I feel like it’s more of a mentality thing.
“There’s definitely a mindset we have to have to go out just to make our job a little easier, stopping guys for a 2- or 3-yard gain instead of letting those guys get a 7-yard run that turns into a 15-yard gain. That’s definitely just a mindset we are going to have to correct.”
Whether it’s learning to play without Mayo, tackling better, finding better run fits or some combination of a wide variety of factors the Patriots know they need to tighten up their run defense moving forward or it could be a long season on that side of the ball.
“That’s the one thing that I’m disappointed in,” defensive tackle Vince Wilfork said of the run defense. “We will fix it, we always do and hopefully we can get this thing rolling consistently.”