New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick joined Scott Zolak for his weekly Belichick Breakdown segment where he analyzes the top plays of the week. Belichick was in a chatty mood and if you want to see how the Patriots won the game on the final few drives, you need to watch the segment.
First, Belichick breaks down the touchdown scoring drive to take the 22-17 lead and he does an excellent job explaining how and why the Patriots ran certain routes against the Jets defense. In the red zone, the Jets are vulnerable against stacked receivers because they use two defensive backs- one to take inside leverage and one to take outside leverage. But if both of the receivers run to one side, then one of the receivers will be open.
Belichick then discussed Chris Long’s strip sack to seal the victory and it’s clear that he’s impressed by the edge defender’s hand fighting techniques. You can actually see Long grabbing the hand of the left tackle to prevent him from grabbing his pads, which allowed Long to discard the blocker and get to Jets quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.
But perhaps most interesting (humorous?) is the time Belichick spends analyzing Trey Flowers’ fumble recovery.
“Then this really ends up being a very interesting part of the play here,” Belichick says, “where the ball bounces to Trey, he picks it up, and first thing he does is tuck the ball away there, has good ball security, has the nose of the ball covered, has the ball tight to his ribcage. And you can see [Jets RB Bilal] Powell coming in there trying to strip it out, with a good strip play, but Trey does a good job securing it and securing the ball for a turnover. We’ve talked about ball security and taking care of the ball, you don’t think you’re gonna be talking about that with a defensive lineman, but it ended up being one of the most important plays of the game.”
It’s the attention to these details- and the focus and praise when the players do it correctly- that makes Bill Belichick the best in the business and is the reason why the players buy in to the system.
The final play is a clock killing run by LeGarrette Blount and you can see how players like James Develin and Cameron Fleming were able to spring Blount to the goal line to close the game.