Patriots dominate with 38 shades of Gray
Robert Kraft has shown pretty good sporting judgement down the years. Many believed he had overpaid when he bought the New England Patriots for $175m in 1994, but, two decades on, the franchise is now estimated by Forbes to be worth $2.6bn. Likewise, his decision to hire Bill Belichick – a man who had previously failed in Cleveland – as the team’s head coach in 2000 was questioned by many at the time. Three Super Bowl wins later, not so much.
This weekend, Kraft got things right once again. On Saturday, as the Patriots made final preparations for their trip to Indianapolis, he took Jonas Gray to one side and told him, “you’re going to have a big game this week”. One day later, the running back trampled the Colts for 199 yards and four touchdowns.
Perhaps we should all have seen this coming. New England’s gameplan was not so different, after all, to the one they had deployed against Indianapolis in last season’s playoffs, when LeGarrette Blount – another big, bruising back – also rushed for four touchdowns (with Stevan Ridley tacking on another two). The Patriots won 43-22 back then, and the scoreline this weekend was almost identical, New England victorious by 42-20.
But Blount’s circumstances were not the same as Gray’s. The now-Pittsburgh Steeler had been a fixture of the Patriots’ offense all season in 2013, playing 16 games and averaging five yards per carry. As a fourth-year pro with a thousand-yard rushing season under his belt, he was a known commodity.
The same could not be said for Gray. Undrafted in 2012, after tearing his ACL during his senior year at Notre Dame, he had spent the last two seasons as a practice squad player for the Dolphins and Ravens. That was how he began this year in New England, too, until being added to the main roster and playing his first regular season game, against the Jets, in October.
He did well enough to earn bigger roles in subsequent wins over Chicago and Denver. But his 38 carries against Indianapolis were still more than he had been granted in his entire NFL career to that point.
In fact, you would have to go all the way back to 2007, Gray’s senior year as a high school player at Detroit Country Day, to find the last time he played such a prominent role for any team. He never got more than 21 carries in a game at Notre Dame.
Such a sudden rise to prominence had journalists and fans scrambling for information on the player’s background on Sunday night. Among many fascinating tidbits was the discovery that Gray had once opened a comedy set for Dustin Diamond, better known as Screech from Saved By The Bell. A clip was quickly unearthed (although the less charitable among us might conclude that Gray did well to sticking with football).
But New England fans will be less interested in what Gray has done before now than what he can offer their team going forward. The wisest will not get too carried away. They know well that in Belichick’s offense, a player can be a star one week and a non-factor the next, the coach drawing up drastically different game plans to fit each opponent. He had identified the Colts’s weakness against a power running game and exploited it ruthlessly, using six offensive linemen on many plays.
The same strategy might not be a good fit against Detroit next week, or other opponents after that. But certainly Gray has demonstrated that he can be highly effective when called upon. The most impressive aspect of his performance on Sunday was its consistency: only once in all those carries did he run for negative yardage – and that on a play where the defense had jumped offside.
He is another valuable weapon for a Patriots offense that seems to discover new ones by the week. At 8-2, New England are now front-runners to win the AFC, with tie-breakers over both the Broncos and Colts. Who can honestly say that they saw this coming when the Patriots were hammered 42-14 by the Chiefs at the end of September? Except Robert Kraft, perhaps. PB
Chiefs make good on last season’s promise
Of course, that New England loss to Kansas City has also been placed into a different light by the Chiefs’ performances since. Andy Reid’s team – equipped with a head-to-head tie-breaker – might be the single biggest threat to the Patriots’ top seeding in the AFC.
Four consecutive victories had positioned the Chiefs as a playoff contender, but this was the weekend when they announced themselves as something more. A victory over the reigning champs Seattle was the validation this team needed after brushing lesser opponents aside.
They beat the Seahawks at their own game, with brute physicality on both sides of the ball. Seattle had not surrendered a touchdown on their opponents’ opening possession for 30 games, yet seemed powerless to slow down a Kansas City offense that moved the ball 86 yards on 15 plays – culminating in Jamaal Charles’s short plunge into the end zone.
Alex Smith threw the ball just four times on that drive, and only 16 by the end of the game. The Chiefs moved a grand total of 108 yards through the air. No more was required. Charles totaled 159 yards and two touchdowns on the ground, while Knile Davis added a further rushing score. With Kansas City’s defense playing as well as it was, that was enough to achieve a 24-20 victory.
And make no mistake about it, the Chiefs’ were exceptional on defense. That truth might not show up on the stat sheet, which shows that they failed to force a turnover and surrendered 372 yards. But it certainly showed up on the field, where they conjured three consecutive fourth-down stops in the final quarter.
Most impressive was the stuffing of a Marshawn Lynch run on fourth-and-short. Not since his rookie year had the running back failed to move the chains in such a situation. Here he ran into a wall of defenders before he had even escaped the backfield.
The Chiefs have been moving towards this level of performance ever since Andy Reid arrived last season. There might not be any defense in the league offering more quality at the line of scrimmage, with the explosive pass-rushing qualities of Justin Houston and Tamba Hali complemented perfectly by the muscle of Dontari Poe, Allen Bailey and Jaye Howard.
But Reid has also brought order to a team that had none, fostering a sense of shared responsibility. As Hali put it when I spoke to him last season, “You’re always going to have good players; some of them will even be great, but they cannot win you the game.”
The question now is whether this group can maintain their momentum. Memories are still fresh of last season, when the Chiefs opened 9-0, only to lose five of their last seven and then crash out in the first round of the playoffs.
Motivating them is the knowledge that a division title remains very much within reach. For that, they have their Missouri neighbours, St Louis, to thank. Because while Kansas City were beating Seattle at Arrowhead Stadium, the Rams were orchestrating a 22-7 upset of Denver on the far side of the state.
There are plenty of parallels to be drawn between Kansas City and St Louis, two teams picking themselves up from grim lows under previous coaching regimes. St Louis, just like Kansas City, find their strength in their defensive front, but where Reid has been able to effect a quick turnaround for the Chiefs, his counterpart on the far end of the I-70, Jeff Fisher, has been hindered by injuries at quarterback.
Without consistency under center, the Rams have often looked like a bad team, but victories like this one reinforce the impression that they are nothing of the sort. They, too, have beaten the Seahawks this year, and yet – with a 4-6 record and playing in one of the toughest divisions in football – it would take a minor miracle for them to make the postseason.
Instead, they will have to content themselves with doing their neighbours a favour. The Chiefs, at 7-3, now sit level with the Broncos atop the AFC West. Denver hold the head-to-head tie-breaker for the time being, but still have to visit Arrowhead later this month. On this evidence, it will not be a comfortable trip. PB
Green Bay at Lambeau a scary proposition
Chilly winds and thick snow: the harsh reality right now for any team visiting Green Bay to face against Aaron Rodgers and the Packers, as they set about exposing and dismantling any opponent that enters the hardest NFL environment there is. The Philadelphia Eagles, fresh off a Mark Sanchez-inspired victory over Carolina, came in and were beaten 53-20, giving the Packers their first ever back-to-back 50 point performances after their 55-14 win over the Bears last week.
30-6 up at half-time on Sunday, Green Bay became the first team in league history to score 28 or more points in the first half of four straight home games. In those very halves, the Packers have outscored the visitors 128-9 and Rodgers has thrown 322 passes at home without an interception, surpassing Tom Brady’s record 288 from 2002-04.
The weaponry on this day included Randall Cobb and his 129 yards on 10 receptions, Micah Hyde’s 75-yard punt return and Jordy Nelson – whom Rodgers admitted beforehand was the best number one receiver he has ever had – catch four balls for 109 yards and a touchdown. While Dez Bryant, Calvin Johnson and Antonio Brown seem to make all the headlines, it is hard to look past Nelson – nine touchdowns and 998 yards after week 11 – as the best deep ball threat in the league.
It’s worth remembering that opposing Mike McCarthy was Chip Kelly, hardly Marty Mornhinweg when it comes to decision-making, but there was only one forward-thinker present. A 5-0 record at Lambeau compared to a 2-3 record on the road makes it imperative that Green Bay aim for the number one seed in the NFC and the subsequent clear route to the Super Bowl. Two games behind Arizona (9-1), the Packers have winnable road games remaining at Minnesota, Buffalo and Tampa Bay.
Rodgers has thrown 29 touchdown passes at home since his last pick, and when Julius Peppers returns an interception 52 yards for a score and Casey Hayward returns a fumble 49 yards, it’s no wonder the Eagles gave up their most points in a game since 1972. If the victors can preserve and prolong this superlative form, it would make them almost unbeatable. MW
JJ Watt carrying Houston
Ryan Mallett’s first touchdown pass as a professional landed in the hands of a man who has as many offensive touchdowns as LeSean McCoy this season. Sounds like a trusty target, doesn’t it? The grateful receiver of Mallett’s personal highlight was defensive end JJ Watt during Houston’s 23-7 win at Cleveland, yet another indication of his burgeoning greatness. Watt, at 25 years of age, is having an MVP-calibre year and has almost individually carried Houston to a 5-5 record, leaving them a game behind Andrew Luck’s Colts in the AFC South. The fact that he is only a defensive player of the year ‘candidate’ is laughable; there is no one else in his league.
Watt has now scored four touchdowns on the season, which, according to ESPN, makes him the first defensive lineman since 1948 to achieve such a feat. Not to undersell himself, Watt also recovered a fumble which led to a touchdown, strip-sacked Brian Hoyer and led his team with three tackles for a loss. The deep stat line was just another day at the relentless office for a man who hasn’t even received the help he thought he was getting when Houston drafted Jadeveon Clowney in this years’ draft.
Applying elements to the one-man band were rookie running back Alfred Blue (who had a franchise record 36 rushes for 156 yards in Arian Foster’s absence), and Mallett, who was drafted by New England in 2011 when current head coach Bill O’Brien was the offensive coordinator. His line of 20-for-30 passing, 211 yards, two TDs and a 95.3 rating will be a welcome sight for Texans fans, who have been offensively starved this season.
But it’s Watt’s hunger to affect and break up every play he’s involved in which is so infectious and even after twice running into punter Spencer Lanning which could have cost his team dearly, he is clearly the awe-inspiring player every franchise dreams of. The two-yard score was the longest catch of his career, but no one would be surprised if this gifted specimen lined up for a go route during his inspiring season. MW
Quick outs
• Additional note on that Jonas Gray performance, which I failed to squeeze in above: his four rushing touchdowns were as many as the other 23 teams playing on Sunday managed between them.
• No Carson Palmer, but no problems for Arizona in keeping their incredible season on track. Drew Stanton threw a pair of first-quarter touchdowns and, encouragingly, completed 21 of 32 passes (he had previously been completing less than 50% of his attempts this season) against a Detroit defense that successfully shut down the running game. At 9-1, Arizona now have a three-game lead over both the Seahawks and 49ers in the NFC West. But their schedule the rest of the way still looks daunting, with two games against Seattle, road trips to San Francisco, Atlanta and St Louis, plus a visit from Kansas City.
• More twists in the division nobody wants to win: New Orleans’s loss to Cincinnati allowed the Falcons to go top of the AFC South with a 4-6 record. Even the Atlanta’ Journal Constitution confessed in a headline that the situation “makes no sense”.
• Robert Griffin III insists he “would never throw [his] teammates under the bus”, () despite appearing to do precisely that in the wake of Washington’s 27-7 humiliation by Tampa Bay, when he told reporters that even the likes of Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning could not win if their colleagues played badly. Jay Gruden says Griffin was “not even close to being good enough” against the Buccaneers. Between the two of them, the head coach sounded a whole lot more credible.
• Cleveland dropped back to last-place in the AFC North after being beaten by Houston. And yet, they have won as many games (six) as first-placed Cincinnati, who have themselves won one game fewer than second-placed Pittsburgh. Confused? You probably should be.
• The Oakland Raiders put up a fight against San Diego, as they often do against division rivals, but still lost 13-6. Increasingly it is hard to see where they will win a game this season. Of their remaining opponents, only the Rams have a losing record – and their match-up will be played in St Louis.
• Who needs team-mates? Not Shaun Hill, apparently. PB
