Knee Jerk Reactions to the AFC Championship Game: Patriots vs. Broncos
Things to consider while the Patriots dust off ridiculous late '70s B-movie references. As if I didn't already love this team enough:
--Every week, as the Pats climb higher and higher up this gym class rope, it gets harder to believe what we're witnessing is real. During the Lamar Hunt Trophy presentation, I couldn't shake the feeling that back in the last game of last year, when Jerod Mayo and Joe Milton conspired to cost us the No. 1 pick, I slammed my head through the wall in frustration, and I've only imagined the last 12 months. That I'm going to wake up to find out that Mr. Kraft didn't fire his coaches and we're facing a perpetual doom loop of 4-13 irrelevance. And if that is the case, I'm taking the blue pill and staying right here in The Matrix forever.
--This is no time for a history lesson, but this entire season is beginning to feel fated, the way 2001 was when you look back on it. Dozens of moments, big (Drew Bledsoe getting hurt), small (David Patten getting knocked out with his head out of bounds and his ankle touching the ball, meaning the Pats retained possession in OT), and historically huge (9/11) all fell in such a way that they found themselves playing in the Super Bowl. But in a lot of ways, this is feeling more and more like 1985. Back to an age where basic cable was our internet, Pepsi Free was our Poppi sodas, and Madonna was our Tate McRae popstar who acts like she invented sex. That team also came out of nowhere, won on the road, made just enough plays in all three phases, and forced enough turnovers in high leverage moments to win ugly games. That team just got exposed in Super Bowl XX once they faced arguably the best team to ever exist and the magic ran out. These Seahawks are no '85 Bears.
--Going into this game, I said if the Patriots lose the turnover battle, the odds of them winning would be in the single digits. That Jarrett Stidham could easily win with a stat line of 135 yards but no INTs, provided Drake Maye didn't clean up the ball security issues of the last couple of weeks. Well it was Maye who kept it as pure as Caesar's wife. It was butt ugly at times. He clearly had trouble gripping the ball and it kept coming out of his hands like a celebrity ceremonial first pitch. Even before the weather outside turned frightful. Late in the 2nd, with the chance to go into halftime with a lead, he twice had Kayshon Boutte open beyond the line to gain for an Andy Borregales field goal, overthrew him and then bounced one to him, on consecutive throws. Which led to a 63-yard attempt that had no chance of succeeding. And Maye's accuracy wasn't done any favors once that School Cancellation Day came rolling in during the 3rd quarter.
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--But history is never going to care that Maye had an ugly stat line. Or that he struggled against the Broncos zone schemes (a season high 72%, with Pat Surtain II playing man on the back side). The fact he's the first QB to ever win a conference title game with less than 100 yards is already a footnote. All anyone will remember is that he took care of the ball. The same people who didn't give him credit for 3 touchdowns against Houston because he fumbled 4 times need to acknowledge he fulfilled his Hippocratic Oath in this one. "First, do no harm." And also, that he flat out won this game with his legs. His run chart was actually more impressive than his passing chart:
--Maye has more rushing yards these playoffs (140) than Tom Brady had in his 41 career postseason games (136). All those years we spent watching Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson keeping drives alive with scrambles and designed runs while watching the likes of Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe stand in the pocket so long they got reclaimed by nature are long gone. Maye has become the gold standard of a dual-threat quarterback who can win games when the passing game inoperable. None bigger than the 3rd & 9 when the Broncos rushed 5, he caught them in deep Cover-3, tucked it and ran, and outraced PJ Locke to set up what turned out to be the game-winning kick:
--And when they needed one 1st down to put the game away, I was among the probably 85% of Patriots fans who wanted no one touching the ball but Maye. After the game, he said this wasn't a designed run. He came to the line, counted 10 (!) Broncos in the tackle box, crunched the numbers, and realized Rhamondre Stevenson wasn't getting 6 yards through that crowd, and literally took matters into his own hands. Including the hand he stiff-armed Jonah Elliss with:
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--Now seems like the perfect time to point out how critical Stevenson has been throughout this postseason run. He's not putting up crazy, gaudy numbers that blow your hair back to look at them. What he's been against three straight Top 5 defenses in the league is the steady, dependable, bell cow back you trust to pick up 3 yards when there's only a gap in the front big enough to get one yard. And also take care of the ball. Last week he picked up two first downs on four consecutive runs to bleed 6:10 off the clock and put Houston away. Yesterday, he was the one who got the rock on that opening drive of the 3rd that killed 9:31 and gave the Pats the 10-7 lead they would never relinquish. Then on the final four possessions, as the Pats were willing to sacrifice lives for seconds off the clock, and rolling out the Tank formations with Thayer Munford Jr. and a fullback, Stevenson carried the ball on 9 of their 12 snaps prior to Maye picking up that 1st down that ended it. And every Broncos defender was focused on ripping the ball out of his hands. And failing to do so. Looking back, those fumbles Stevenson had in the Pittsburgh game might have helped win us the AFC championship.
--An underrated element to this one you might not hear anyone else talking about - because unlike me, they have a life - is a literal footnote. The shoes they were wearing were designed for normal conditions. Ernie Adams has talked about how they used to love playing in the snow because they'd wear seven-stud grass cleats, and they'd see teams from the warmer climates take the field in their regular turf shoes, and the game would be over before it started. I'm presuming that's what both teams had on. Which might as well have been thigh-highs and stilettos for all the good they did:
--Credit where it's due to Josh McDaniels for valiantly trying to mix in some exotic play calls, even as conditions worsened to where it was time to consider slicing open your Tauntaun to survive. The goal line direct snap to Stevenson was off the mark, bobbled, and nearly ended in disaster. The weird formation with Khyiris Tonga and Milton Williams in the backfield worked, ish, despite Jim Nantz and Tony Romo believing otherwise. (I've heard they've tested TSA security and found the people working the X-ray machines miss 95% of weapons and drugs stashed in suitcases. But these clowns thought the skycam somehow detected where the football was in a pileup of 22 300-lb men with pinpoint accuracy. Sure, Jan.) But the fleaflicker worked to perfection despite the weather. Thanks to Stevenson immediately picking up the blitz from Alex Singleton and Mack Hollins engaging with Pat Surtain II just long enough before releasing to sell the run and get open:
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--And one last thing on the coaching before I get to the unit that actually won the game. That sequence just before the half might not have led to points, but it says everything about how this team improved year-to-year. On the very last play before the field goal attempt, Maye scrambled to reach the line to gain, realized he couldn't get out of bounds before the clock ran out, went down, and allowed Vrabel called timeout with 0:01 left. I can't tell you all the times the 2024 Patriots failed to have any sort of situational awareness in moments like that. Because I've successfully repressed all those memories. Drowned them in an ocean of IPAs. But I also can't think of a single instance where this edition of the Pats has screwed up at clock management. Instead we get moments like this, or TreVeyon Henderson in the Tampa game, looking to the sideline to see if he should run it into the end zone or take a knee at the 1. We've gone from coaching that was almost as bad as it gets to pretty much as good as it gets in the span of one offseason. Coming up so far, so fast, we're all lucky we didn't get the bends.
--And while we're on coaching, we can't overlook how Denver committed a third turnover. On downs. Which is all on Sean Payton. Going for it on 4th & 1 from your opponents 14 instead of taking a 10-0 lead in a game your defense was dominating (they'd given up 12 total yards and one 1st down to that point) was pure hubris, served with chaser of analytics. Payton said afterwards that he had a run play called, but checked out of it when the Patriots came out in a 6-1 front. They tried to pass out of a zone blocking scheme where everyone was taking an L-step to the left. Except Quinn Meinerz never got close to Cory Durden, Adam Trautman released without laying a finger on Milton Williams, and the Patriots zone coverage had everyone blanketed anyway:
--Which is a long, roundabout, Magellan-like circumnavigation of the globe for me to get to the most valuable players on the Patriots yesterday, but also throughout these entire playoffs. The defensive line. You can appreciate while Williams is feeling salty enough to violate RFK Jr's health guidelines. Even though he's on the way to his third Super Bowl in four years:
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--And Williams set that tone right from the opening series, when he came off a block by Ben Powers as Elijah Ponder speed rushed Garett Bolles for the pressure:
And Christian Barmore was ragdolling the interior line pretty much the entire game, including Meinerz, seconded Williams' emotion:
--Now with all of this as preamble, let's get to the plays that made the actual difference. It became obvious after a while that the Pats defense was going to have to win this game more or less on their own:
And they got one. By every rule in the book, by all logic, and the judgement of every sentient creature in the world, this was a defensive touchdown. With the exception of this officiating crew:
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It doesn't take Euclid to see the ball started out in front of the official, and ended up behind him. And 2-year-old who's learning how to put different shaped blocks into holes knows how an angle works. Besides, we hear a dozen times a weekend how these crews are highly trained professionals who know they're supposed to not blow the play dead, because they can always sort it out in post-production. By all means this was a fumble forced by Christian Elliss and a TD scored by Ponder. If Maye hadn't walked into the end zone on 2nd down and they had to settle for 3, this would have been the biggest postseason travesty since the Philly Special wasn't called for the illegal formation it was.
--Finally, there was Christian Gonzalez' redemption. That deep ball he gave up to Marvin Mims looked for all the world like he was expecting bracket coverage from a safety and was staying in trail technique. But that one turned out to be Stiddy's last miracle. And Gonzo's interception that kept Denver out of field goal range was set up by Payton making late substitutions, that allowed Vrabel to swap out runstuffers Tonga and Durden for penetrators Barmore and Williams while the officials kept them from snapping the ball. And it did have a familiar look to it:
--Again, it's hard not to compare this Super Bowl run with other great ones from the past. Because practically every one of them involved someone you've never heard of stepping up and making a world-changing play. Think Antwan Harris taking a blocked FG lateral from Troy Brown and running it back against Pittsburgh in 2001. In this case, a roster bubble special teamer who was just elevated off the practice squad blocked the kick that would've tied it:
I just don't remember Harris being as eloquent as Leonard Taylor III:
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--This Week's Applicable Movie Quote:
Harry: "I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than rockier than this."
Lloyd: "I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver's full of shit, man." - Dumb and Dumber
--I'm going to be honest with you, this still hasn't sunk in for me. It's all still too surreal that the Patriots could be back in the center of the football solar, when for these past few years they've been lost somewhere in the Kuiper Belt. Worse than just a bad team; but irrelevant. Not even terrible enough to be interesting to anyone outside of New England. I mean, how is this our reality?:
Or this?
--A year ago at this time, most of my mental bandwidth was being used up with speculation about coaching hires, free agents, and worrying about what the Titans, Jaguars and Giants planned to do in the draft. Now it's going to be entirely focused on beating Seattle in the rematch of the greatest Super Bowl of my lifetime. I'll take this upgrade any time.
--The 2025 Patriots are going to Santa Clara after beating, in order, the No. 5, No. 1 and No. 2 defense in the NFL. Their own defense played circles around all those units. They forced 8 turnovers, allowed just two touchdowns, and averaged 209.6 yards per game, and 8.6 points per game. That kind of dominance hasn't been seen in the 2000 Ravens or the aforementioned Bears, who had two playoff shut outs.
--On a personal note, I wish all the men who raised me from birth like a veal calf to be a Patriots fan were still here to witness this. But I'm still blessed to have people I love to share this with. They know who they are. But I'm going to tell them in person anyway.
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--Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some work to do. I've never been in a better frame of mind to shovel snow.