FOXBORO – The Patriots’ defensive philosophy is similar to that of the weird kid from your neighborhood that used to torture bugs.
The same way he’d pluck legs off spiders or wings off of moths and then watch the results, the Patriots excise offensive weapons until the offense doesn’t work.
Sunday, the Patriots tore off Chris Ivory and Brandon Marshall. The Jets limped around OK for a while. But eventually, like most of the offenses end up when deprived of their mobility, the Jets’ wound up face down and twitching.
Prior to Sunday, Chris Ivory’s lowest rushing output was 57 yards. His lowest yards per carry was 4.1. In every game that he’d carried the ball, the Jets won. Ivory carried 17 times for 41 yards, an average or 2.4 per carry. Sub-average.
Marshall was targeted at least nine times in each of the Jets’ first five games. His low game in terms of production was the Jets’ first game when he caught six for 62. That was the only game in which he’d been under 100 receiving yards. On Sunday, Marshall saw seven targets, caught four and wound up with 67 yards. Pedestrian.
In the Jets’ locker room after the game, Ivory lamented a pulled hamstring on the game’s first series.
“I tried to stay loose and tried to continue to loosen the thing up,” he explained. “I didn’t have the confidence in getting around the edge. It started getting looser in the second half.”
Part of the problem with getting around the edge was the Patriots did a very nice job of “setting” it – meaning they would get their defensive ends upfield to funnel Ivory back into the middle of the field.
From the first play that was the case as Ivory gave ground to try and get around the corner and wound up getting drilled down by Patrick Chung who tore upfield from an inside linebacker spot and Jamie Collins, who pursued from the weak-side end position.
“They definitely changed the way they played the defense,” said Ivory. “We knew coming in what they were gonna do but they did some different things.”
Asked if it was the hamstring or the Patriots which limited him, Ivory said, “Combination of both. They set the edge pretty good. They wanted all the runs to go inside. They ran a lot of twists in the middle and then had their defensive ends (set the edge). 50 (Rob Ninkovich) on the right was very strong.”
Ninkovich was a beast all day. He had two tackles and four passes defensed. Playing full-time because Jabaal Sheard was unable to go, Ninkovich was at his best. So too was Donta Hightower, who had 10 tackles and recovered a fumble and rag-dolled the very physical Ivory on one play.
As for Marshall, it was Logan Ryan on the big man at the line of scrimmage and then Devin McCourty helping out over the top. That plan dissuaded the Jets from going to Marshall in the first half – he had just one catch for 13 yards – and helped keep quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick from going at him much more in the second half.
“Yeah, I mean, it was double on every play,” said Fitzpatrick. “You know, a lot of times they will take Brandon away as much as (they) can, but they certainly made a conscious effort to have two guys on him on every play. They always do a great job of taking away your best players, so they were going to try to take away Chris. And [they] had two guys on Brandon [Marshall] all game. You know, they weren’t going to let Brandon catch the ball, so you know, we had other guys that had to step up and I thought [Eric] Decker played a great game. Especially on third down, with some of the stuff he did, but you know, we’ve just got to find a way to score more points, take advantage of the third downs we missed and then the big ones in the red zone. When we get down there, seven points, it’s got to happen every time for us. You know, we can’t settle for three.”
Fitzpatrick played about as well as he could. So did Decker. And the Jets defense was outstanding too. But it was the little things in between – Fitz’ fumble on the first drive, the Jets being unable to score a touchdown when it was first-and-goal at the Patriots’ 4, the miscommunication on an incompletion to Decker when he looked like he could have back-shouldered Malcolm Butler in the second half, the blown blitz call that Jets head coach Todd Bowles took the blame for on the Patriots last touchdown – that made the difference.
There’s some risk involved when a team says, “We are going to take these guys away; let’s see what the rest of you slappies can do…” There is also the reward when the slappies overheat and break down. There weren’t many of those occasions for the Jets on Sunday.
But there were enough. The Patriots wouldn’t let Ivory and Marshall beat them. And the rest of the Jets couldn’t.