Legit ground beef on ‘D’
Hightower, Shelton aim to halt rush more
FOXBORO — The discussion of the Patriots’ defensive meltdown in Super Bowl LII usually starts and ends with the Malcolm Butler mystery.
The truth is, though, the Eagles offense began dominating the game because it was winning up front. By halftime, Philadelphia had 107 rushing yards on 13 attempts. LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi had free runs into the secondary.
The Pats were overmatched in the trenches.
And this wasn’t the first time.
The 2017 Patriots were, statistically, the worst run defense in Bill Belichick’s tenure here. They allowed 4.7 yards per carry in the regular season, which was, by the nose of a football, a higher figure than the porous run defense of 2002.
So will the 2018 Patriots be markedly better in this category?
Dont’a Hightower’s return from a shoulder injury will help enormously. His leadership and thumping presence was sorely missed a year ago.
Also enormous: Danny Shelton. A throwback two-gapping nose tackle, Shelton, the No. 12 pick in the 2015 draft, weighs 343 pounds and needs to shed eight pounds to reach his goal weight.
“I mean, I hate it,” Shelton said, laughing, when asked about the conditioning program. “But it’s something you’ve got to do. It’s giving your all during practice, and then after practice giving your all with conditioning. So it’s really just continuing to have the mindset that you’re going to be consistent and dominating.”
Shelton has flashed early in training camp, anchoring a unit that stuffed the offense on four straight goal line repetitions Sunday. Acquired in a trade this offseason from Cleveland, Shelton was the muscle in the middle for a winless Browns team that didn’t do much right, but sure could shut down the ground game. The Browns allowed 3.4 yards per attempt in 2017, second in the league.
With a healthy Hightower patrolling the second level and Shelton’s boulder of a defensive tackle eating up blocks in the trenches, the Pats should improve against the run. The addition of defensive end Adrian Clayborn and the potential development of second-year pros Deatrich Wise and Derek Rivers will factor in, too.
“It all starts up front in the front seven,” Hightower said. “Obviously, the secondary is part of that, forcing certain situations and plays, but it really starts up front. We’re really trying to take pride in that, stopping the run. We want to have a good goal-line defense. In order for us to do that, we have to win up front.”
Rivers, who tore an ACL in camp last year and missed the season, spent the offseason trying to become an all-around defensive end.
“You’ve got to play the run to play here,” Rivers said.
Yes, it’s true that the run defense numbers looked ugly in 2017. It’s equally true that run defense statistics can get a little screwy. Last year, seven of the bottom 10 run defenses (by yards allowed per carry) made the playoffs. Only three of the top 10 qualified.
Over the past five seasons, more teams with bottom-10 run defenses have qualified for the playoffs than teams in the top 10. And in the past three years, the majority of teams that allowed 4.7 yards per carry or worse, like the 2017 Patriots, finished with winning records.
The statistic is often dictated by circumstances. For instance, the Bills tacked on 47 yards on five rushing attempts in the fourth quarter of a lopsided loss to the Patriots in December. Similarly, Mark Ingram busted loose for a 28-yard gain on the final play of a Week 2 blowout, bumping the Pats’ yards per carry from 3.3 to 4.7 on a single rush.
This is probably why Shelton and Hightower both mentioned “goal-line defense” when the general topic of run defense was broached. As long as Hightower has been in New England, he’s preached one stat: Points allowed.
By that figure, the Patriots were near the top of the league a year ago. They ranked fifth. They simply weren’t good enough when it counted most.
So they traded for Shelton, they signed Clayborn, and they quietly bolstered a front seven that let them down in Super Bowl LII.
It’s early in the process, but the expectation is that the Patriots will be better, perhaps significantly, in the trenches.