Offensive line has been standing tall for the Pats
Solid, clean play up front prevents drives from going backward
Quick. Name the six best Patriots.
Stephon Gilmore and Cam Newton surely spring to mind, with Devin McCourty and Julian Edelman close behind. The last two names could belong to any number of players. Perhaps an established vet like James White or rising star such as J.C. Jackson.
But according to Pro Football Focus, none of them deserve mention.
Through Week 3, the six topperforming Pats have been … offensive linemen.
Now, PFF player grades are like any other catch-all metric in that they are imperfect, despite the immense play-by-play data carefully packed into each rating. Even acknowledging that imperfection and the fact three September games don’t form a large sample, the power of a small sample can still be telling. And it is.
The strength of the new-era Patriots is their offensive line. It ranks as the second-best pass-blocking unit in the NFL and fourth-best at run-blocking, per PFF. Several other analytics, including ESPN’s runblock win rate and Football Outsiders’ adjusted line yards, corroborate those rankings.
The Pats’ O-line is elite. This was no accident.
Last March, Bill Belichick’s first offseason move was to retain left guard Joe Thuney, an All-Pro caliber player who’s started every game of his NFL career and represents exactly what the Pats seek in players: toughness, smarts and versatility. Last weekend, Thuney recorded his first career start at center, saving the Pats from a potentially devastating injury to David Andrews, who will miss at least two more games. He didn’t miss a snap.
Meanwhile, sixth-round rookie Michael Onwenu filled
Thuney’s old spot, a position he hadn’t played in three years. He dominated. One of three offensive linemen Belichick drafted last April, Onwenu now stands as the highest-graded rookie in the NFL.
Between their investments in those rookies and Thuney’s franchise tag, the Pats are now spending more money on Olinemen than all but seven teams.
Next to Onwenu, left tackle Isaiah Wynn played arguably the best game of his young career Sunday, while Shaq Mason and Jermaine Eluemunor evicted Raider defenders from the box with regularity. Sixthround rookie Justin Herron even played 10 snaps, quietly replacing Wynn on a touchdown drive. This offensive line may be as deep as any in the Belichick era.
The wisdom in building an powerful O-line is as almost as old as football itself. For starters, a dominant, well-coached front five can override any defensive counter. It also reduces negative plays, which doom drives.
“You’re not going to get a lot
of sacks, you’re gonna protect your quarterback and minimize the number of negative run plays. And you aren’t committing a lot of penalties,” NFL Network analyst Brian Baldinger told the Herald. “Bottom line: it’s going to be a lot easier to pick up first downs.”
Unsurprisingly, the Pats offense ranks second in total first downs. It’s also yet to take a single penalty. Every other team that has yet to commit offensive holding has been guilty of at least one false start.
Not New England.
Within this cocoon of protection, Cam Newton and the Pats’ skill-position players can develop quickly with minimal interference. Together, they’ve already produced one of the best passing performances of Newton’s career. Should he continue to thrive, Newton will repeatedly reset expectations for the Patriots this season because quarterbacks set the ceiling for their teams.
But its the offensive lines that establish their floors.
Consequently, while the Pats may not enjoy a deep playoff run come January, they should remain relatively immune to bad losses and therefore in the thick of the playoff hunt. Look to last weekend. After a painstaking loss in Seattle, their decimation of an undisciplined Las Vegas defense was perfectly predictable to Baldinger.
“Whenever (the Patriots) struggle, they lose a game or they don’t play well, coach (Belichick) always goes back to I-formation, back to the basics. You can almost predict that when they get beat,
they go back to moving the line of scrimmage,” he said. “And they did it on Sunday.”
The Pats ran for 250 yards, already the second time they’ve eclipsed 200 this season. Sony Michel and Rex Burkhead broke out for career days without much aid from Newton, as the option runs that allowed them to break Miami in the opener proved ineffective. Otherwise, Michel and Burkhead ran freely inside and out, gashing the Raiders equally on man and zone-blocked runs.
Thanks to the O-line, the Pats have also maintained a multiple identity once credited to Tom Brady’s mastery of the system. Without him, they can execute a highly diverse run game and keep Newton safe through a variety of standard and play-action protections because of a coaching philosophy that stresses fully mastering basic techniques.
Baldinger, who played under former Patriots offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia, explained the blocking for any play design is built upon roughly a half-dozen techniques, which when mastered unlock every schematic possibility for an offense.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re going up against Lawrence Taylor or Reggie White or if you’re going up against a free agent. It doesn’t matter. The tools and the mastery of those tools are what are going to win for you,” he said. “And that’s why guys who are undrafted and low picks … can compete against anybody.”
Scarnecchia, of course, is gone, leaving new co-offensive line coaches Carmen Bricillo and Cole Popovich to fill one legendary shoe apiece in Foxboro. Yet without knowing “Scar” had retired, Baldinger and ESPN analyst
Damien Woody, a former Patriots offensive linemen, agree they never wouldn’t have noticed he was gone. In fact, the Pats are performing far better in short-yardage than they did last year, converting on 90% of those downs.
“No. No way,” Woody laughed. “They’ve been playing that well. And one of the great traits about Dante was his ability to develop guys. That’s what they’ve done this season.”
Onwenu, a sixth-rounder, is the latest success story of the Pats’ development system, following Andrews, an undrafted free agent and Mason, a former fifth-rounder. All credit belongs to Bricillo and Popovich.
“They’ve done an excellent job of working together, managing the needs of the position and mixing in both fundamentals and the scheme adjustments that we have to make in our offensive system,” Belichick said this week. “They’ve done a really good job there.”
With worries of a potential post-Brady collapse all but relieved, the question in Foxboro now asks how far one line can carry the offense. Woody’s experience tells him it’s as far as the AFC Championship Game, which he reached in 2009 and 2010 with the Jets.
“When I was there, we didn’t have we didn’t have great skill positions. But we had a really good offensive line,” Woody said. “Yeah, I mean, that just it took us to two AFC Championship games. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get over the top. But when you when you’re strong in the trenches, at the end of the day, that’s where the game is won and lost.”
And, as it turns out, where franchises can be reborn.