Patriots Pulse Check: We're Building Character

You can't win em' all. But I sure as shit thought we'd win that one.

Especially at halftime, up 17, after playing one of the more dominant halves of football I've seen in a long time. We were outclassing the Bills, the boxes of t-shirts and hats were getting prepped in the locker room, and fans across New England and around the world were googling how much early February flights to San Francisco cost.

But the Bills and Josh Allen gave their best Lee Corso impression, and proceeded to put up five straight TD drives en route to a 35-31 win, and a 21-point comeback. The hats and shirts were tucked back into their boxes for another week, and Patriots fans were left scratching their head.

So what happened?

Special Teams Gave Buffalo Life

There's a lot of places to place blame, but one that likely won't be talked about as much as it should is our special teams unit, specifically kickoff coverage, who had a day to forget to put nicely.

After Drake and the offense’s opening drive went for six, Ray Davis almost answered with a house call, being forced out of bounds on the plus side of midfield. Luckily, the defense stood up and forced a three and out to avoid any damage.

After the Pats' third TD to go up 21-0, with Buffalo still showing zero signs of life on either side of the ball, with what felt like one more stop away from a halftime forfeit, the kickoff unit allowed another Ray Davis breakout, bringing him down at the Buffalo 43, but doing so illegally, as a facemask penalty added another 15 and again gave the Bills the ball on the plus side of the field. Buffalo used that glimmer of hope to score their first points, and like a great shooter in basketball, saw one go through the hoop after being cold, and never looked back.

Which is where you think this ends. But no. The Pats were able to tack on a FG as time expired to get that aforementioned 17-point halftime lead, and the momentum was still on our side.

Until Ray Davis, for the third time in four tries, broke yet another kickoff return past midfield and into Patriot territory. The Bills scored their second TD on another short field not caused by a turnover, and Josh began turning into Thanos, with each touchdown the Bills scored acting as another infinity stone in his possession, with the world (or in this case, game) takeover feeling more and more inevitable.

With only one New England score in the second half, the lone additional kickoff was a conceded touchback, as starting from the 35 yard line felt like a win.

In all, the Patriots kicked the ball off five times in the game. Taking out the touchback, they allowed an average of 45 yards per return, and gave the Bills an average starting field position of their 49 yard line. Against good teams, and great QBs, especially with a sizable lead, you can't afford to give up free yards. You can't provide a team that's bottoming out an escape route. As the Bills did, they took advantage of their opportunities, and used it to gain confidence and momentum, that eventually turned this game upside down.

Defense Went Missing

Despite the special teams giving Buffalo life, it was the defense that couldn't keep the Bills out of the end zone for five straight possessions.

After a first half of allowing just 35 yards to Josh Allen and two first downs on the Bills' first three drives, the defense...just...took their foot off the gas? I don't actually think they put forth less effort, but the results on the stat sheet might lead you to believe it.

On four of the Bills' five TD drives, they faced just five third downs. None of those had more than 5 yards to go, and they converted all five. They had two negative plays on those four drives, each for just -1 yard, and the two plays that followed were for a first down and a TD. That's not even playing defense.

The defense had one second half drive where they made Buffalo work for it. And what could be argued, correctly so, as a ridiculous call on the 4th down catch/interception/penalty to Shakir, doesn't make what happened before of after any better. They had 3rd and medium (which in this game was long) at their own 12 yard-line which was converted for 24 yards. That fourth down play I will continue to call bullshit but it happened. And then had a 3rd and goal from the 14, which they generated one sided pressure to allow Josh to escape the pocket and find Nasty Knox for a relatively easy TD.

I will give them the credit of making the stop with three minutes to go, allowing the offense one more shot. After getting bent over for two+ hours of real time, that takes some guts to get that stop.

Overall, I'm not surprised the defense wasn't elite yesterday, with our star defensive tackle Milton Williams and our mike LB and defensive play caller Robert Spillane missing action. I am surprised, though, at how we went from 100 to 0, and over the course of an entire second half, never got out of the mud.

The Worst Red Zone Defense In Football

The concern from a few weeks ago continues to grow taller than Jack's beanstalk. Going into yesterday, the Patriots ranked 32nd in opposing red zone TD %. Out of 32...

With Buffalo going 5-5 on such trips yesterday, that gap only widened. The Patriots are now allowing touchdowns on a whopping 75% of opposing trips that reach the 20 yard line. 75%!!

They still rank in the top 7 in total points allowed, total yards allowed, third down defense, and a variety of other defensive metrics. So this isn't to say they stink. It actually points to how difficult it usually is to get to the red zone against them. But as I've mentioned previously, this trend will be our kryptonite. Good teams will find their way to the red zone, and how games in January are won is by limiting those trips to 3 points instead of 7.

Fix it. Please?

The Offense Sputtered

For a second I thought the Patriots were the greatest show on turf. I thought they might never not score again.

Like I said, just for a second. Then came the second half, where they gained a total of 80 yards on offense, 65 of which came on one off-script play.

It wasn't for a lack of aggression either. In fact, they may have been too aggressive.

On the Pats' five second half drives, they ran the ball three total times. One of those runs was the aforementioned 65-yard TD.

After running buck wild in the first half, McDaniels completely abandoned the run in the second. Rhamondre was averaging 8 YPC in the first half and didn't see the rock once in the second half (only got 6 carries all game). I understand that TreVeyon is a home run hitter, but he's not nearly as reliable down by down as Rhamondre (Henderson's 12 non-TD runs went for 31 yards).

I would like to think running would've made a difference, but who knows. We took a couple crucial sacks, had back to back penalties on a drive that was yards away from field goal range, and ran 18 total second half plays to the Bills’ 36 (not including kneel downs). Maybe running the ball would've given the defense more time to rest. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. But the fact we didn't try was surprising to me.

Prevailing Thoughts

It's okay to lose a game. Hell we've lost 26 of them in the last two years. The sky is not falling, there's nothing to scream to the heavens about. We lost to the best player in the NFL, as many teams do. We'll be okay.

That said there are certainly things to be weary of. The red zone defense is absolutely number one. I’m very interested in how we fair against Baltimore, who's struggled to punch the ball in from the red zone since Lamar's return.

Second is the rush defense, who’s allowed over 110 yards on the ground five straight games after allowing more than 75 just twice in the first nine weeks.

The third to a slightly lesser degree is the second half offense. This isn't the first time we've seen them sputter in comparison to the first half, even in games we've won. In fact, we're the number one first half scoring offense in the league, but fall to 22nd in the second half. Whether that's due to poor adjustments, conservative or predictable play calling, or not having the guys that can consistently get open or make plays for 60 minutes I'm not sure, probably a combination of the three. But it's concerning regardless. I'd rather play playoff games with the lead than not, but what happened yesterday isn't as surprising or one-off as it may seem.

We're such a young team, both in age and experience, so playing in these playoff-type atmospheres, with so much on the line, is new for a lot of guys. They need to experience the pressure of these moments. They need to fail a time or two, to come up short, to have something to fall back on when the moment is even bigger and the lights even brighter.

I'm glad they got that exposure in some capacity now, and will get even more on Sunday night in front of a hostile Baltimore crowd. They got a little taste of what's ahead, and I'm sure Vrabel will make them learn from it.

Adversity builds character. And there was character built yesterday. Keep fighting the good fight. If a 21-point blown lead against the best player in football is what it takes for us to be beaten, I like our chances moving forward.