Patriots

A Manual That’s Not Easy To Follow

... Rodgers 94.6. — Pat Thorman (@Pat_Thorman) January 13, 2017. In each of New England’s two Super Bowl losses to the Giants, Brady struggled to handle the New York defense, which tallied seven sacks in the two games. Step two: Win the turnover battle. There’s an element of luck involved with turnovers, but the Patriots are consistently among the NFL’s best at avoiding them. The 11 giveaways by New England in 2016 were the fewest in the NFL, just like the 14 in 2015 and 13 in 2014 that also landed the Patriots at No. 1 in giveaways. So forcing mistakes is difficult, but close to a must. New England was 10-0 in the 2016 regular season when it avoided a turnover and 4-2 when it had at least one giveaway. In the Belichick and Brady era, the Patriots have 18 turnovers in the nine postseason losses and 22 in the 22 victories. Simply put: Making mistakes is a problem, and not capitalizing on the Patriots’ rare mistakes is worse. Step three: Win the time of possession. The Broncos’ 26-16 win over the Patriots in Jan. 2014 wasn’t exactly lighting up the scoreboard, but Manning ...

Cyrus Jones Among Patriots' Inactives, Danny Amendola Returns

... the No. 1 Patriots and No. 4 Texans will kick off their divisional round playoff game at 8:15 p.m. The winner will move to the AFC Championship Game next Sunday and face the victor of tomorrow's Chiefs-Steelers contest. It's gotten a lot colder here later in the day. It's currently 28 degrees and feels like it's 21. The temperature is forecasted to remain steady for the night, and snow is no longer in the forecast. One other off-field storyline: The Texans again stayed in Waltham for this trip. Remember, that's where they stayed in Week 3, but that was incredibly dumb considering the well-known rush-hour issues for a Thursday night game. At least this time, they only had to deal with game-day traffic. It appears Malcolm Mitchell won't play tonight due to the knee injury that has bothered him for three weeks. Mitchell was listed as questionable on the injury report, but he was the only player listed after he was limited during yesterday's ...

Who & When Do They Play Next

... that featured victories over the Raiders, Colts, Panthers, Broncos, Falcons and Chargers. Per Football Outsiders’ efficiency ratings , Kansas City ranked 13 th in the league on offense, 14 th on defense and second on special teams. Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers were significantly worse away from Heinz Field this season, going just 5-3 with 21.62 points per game, compared to 28.25 at home. Ben Roethlisberger had similar struggles, averaging 238.0 yards per road game with a TD: INT ratio of 9:8, compared to 319.2 and 20:5, respectively, at home. That said, if this matchup comes to fruition, it would mean the Steelers knocked off a very good Kansas City team on the road, and when you throw in the Steelers’ red-hot finish to the season, there’s no question this is a dangerous squad no matter where the game is played. New England and Pittsburgh met at Heinz Field back in Week 7 with the Patriots prevailing, 27-13. Tim Keeneyis a sports ...

Broncos Wide Receiver Explains The Secret To Beating The Patriots

... Patriots. The Texans might want to take some notes. 8 h ago. • 2 min read. If there's anyone out there who's qualified to talk about how to beat the New England Patriots , it's Broncos wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders. Sports Line. More Sports Line. Over the past 16 months, Sanders and the Broncos have done something that no other team in the NFL has done: They've beaten Tom Brady 's Patriots multiple times. Since the beginning of the 2015 season, Brady is 23-4 as a starter against teams that aren't the Broncos. However, he's just 1-2 against Denver (including the postseason). So what's the key to beating the Patriots. "To beat the Patriots, you gotta keep Tom Brady off the field," Sanders said on Saturday's edition of NFL Network's Game Day Morning. Wait, there's more. "How do you keep Tom Brady off the field? You have to be able to run the football," Sanders said. "You gotta get Lamar Miller the ball and when you have an opportunity, you have to throw the ball down the field. We talk about low percentage throws, low percentage throws that you can complete.". Although the Texans are a 16-point underdog ...

The Players' Tribune

... in December 2000 and realized that there was a team meeting starting in 20 minutes, I immediately thought, Oh, shit…. Then I threw the sheets off, looked out the window and saw the first snowfall of the season. OH, SHIT. I’m a Louisiana boy, born and bred. This was only my second season in New England, so this was only my second year of experiencing snow. And it wasn’t the kind that we used to occasionally get down South where it would hit the ground and immediately melt. This was Northeastern snow — the kind that sticks. I lived approximately 15 minutes from the Patriots facility — I knew because I had timed the drive just in case I ever found myself in a situation like this. But the snow was a wild card. In those conditions, I didn’t know how long it was going to take me to get to the facility. I just knew that I was probably gonna be late. I had seen guys get fined for being late to meetings before, but this wasn’t just any meeting. This was a Saturday morning meeting, the day ...

Comparing And Reflecting On The 49ers And Patriots Dynasties, 15 And 35 Years After They Began

... and our offensive and defensive system is staying the same. Read. "The second thing you have is outstanding quarterbacking. New England has done it with one guy for those 16 years, and the Niners did it with two. But you had the same high efficiency quarterbacks who knew how to take care of the ball and could make clutch plays when you needed it, and that gives everybody confidence that you're going to be fine no matter what the situation is. Read. "And then the third thing that kind of goes under the radar is outstanding defenses. The 49 ers defenses were very, very stingy in terms of giving up points, and same thing in New England. So the formula is kind of there and it didn't change, and they were able to get people to come and buy into it, whether it's star players like Randy Moss or Le Garrette Blount with the Patriots or Deion Sanders with the 49 ers. They all buy into doing it the way it was done there. They all had to understand and fit into the formula that was already established there." Read. Will we ever see the likes of them again. Billick gives the current Patriots dynasty the check mark ...

Josh Mcdaniels Reportedly Prefers The 49ers If He Leaves The Patriots This Year

... the 49 ers interest Mc Daniels? Maybe he's eyeing the perfect Bay Area weather after spending too many snowy winters in New England. Maybe he wants to be situated in a better time zone to watch the super-team Warriors every night. The Chronicle's Branch provided a real answer to that question. The 49 ers, who are the only team with a general-manager opening, are appealing to Mc Daniels because of their clean-slate situation and CEO Jed York's stated commitment to patiently rebuilding. It's believed the 49 ers' status as a marquee franchise, despite their recent free-fall, also makes them more attractive than Los Angeles and Jacksonville. So, here's where I point out that the 49 ers ended up hiring Bill Walsh in 1979 to end their coaching carousel and that Mc Daniels is regarded as one of the game's top offensive minds - not just for his work with Tom Brady , but for the way he handled Brady's four-game suspension at the start of the season, when he modified the Patriots' offense to better fit Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett. The 49 ers might ...

Will Patriots Blitz Brock Osweiler This Time Around

... 1. In a 27-0 win over the Texans in Week 3, the Patriots blitzed quarterback Brock Osweiler on just one of his 44 dropbacks (2.3 percent), the second-lowest blitz rate against any quarterback in a game in the past three seasons. The strategy allowed the Patriots to blanket the Texans' wide receivers and drop front-seven players into the secondary, as Osweiler was just 8-of-19 (42.1 percent) with an interception targeting his wideouts, his second-worst completion percentage on such throws this season (40.0 percent at Jaguars in Week 10). 2. The Patriots are looking to advance to their sixth straight conference championship game, which would break a tie with the Raiders from 1973 to 1977 for the longest streak since 1970. 3. Via the Elias Sports Bureau, this is the 15 th time in NFL history that one team shut out another team during the regular season and then met that same team in the postseason. The team that was blanked during the regular-season meeting went on to win the postseason game in eight of the 14 previous such cases. 4. The Texans are 0-4 all time in New England, including playoffs, having been outscored 150-49. The Texans have ...

When Rb Dion Lewis Is On The Field, Patriots Have Never Lost A Game

... game. 32 m Mike Reiss. When RB Dion Lewis is on the field, Patriots have never lost a game. In 163 offensive snaps since his return, Dion Lewis has 64 rushes for 283 yards and 17 receptions for 94 yards. Chris Humphreys/USA TODAY Sports. FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - New England Patriots running back Dion Lewis is back at full strength, as the team's careful management of his return from a torn left ACL has been one of the more important developments of the second half of the regular season. Lewis' return highlights a most impressive statistic: The Patriots have never lost with him on the field. "It's great to have him," coach Bill Belichick said Thursday morning. "He's been a very productive player for us. The more of them you have, the better off we are.". Lewis tore the ACL in the eighth game of the 2015 season, at which time the Patriots were on their way to posting their eighth victory. This year, he came off the physically-unable-to-perform list on Nov. 20 at San Francisco, which is when the Patriots' current seven-game winning streak began. This ...

Patriots Women's Association Deliver Winter Necessities To Homeless Youth

... can be folded into a sleeping bag or a tote, and the New England Patriots Charitable Foundation has worked to collect money to purchase these coats for three years. With each coat costing $100, the foundation has been able to purchase about 800 Empowerment coats, which have been donated to those in need throughout New England. Hats, gloves and scarves were also donated. Bridge Over Troubled Waters Executive Director Elisabeth Jackson said these coats and winter essentials will make a huge difference in the lives of their clients. "Some of these will be used for sleeping bags on the floor because we don’t have enough beds for everybody," Elisabeth said. "It’s nice out today, but when it gets really cold out they have nowhere to sleep and they have nothing to keep them warm. The basic things that we have, they don’t have those ...