The Patriots hosted the 49ers on Oct. 25, 2020, a game that seemingly has little to do with New England’s 2022 opener this Sunday against the Dolphins.
That game — Patriots fans who haven’t wiped it from their memory might remember — will be remembered for a variety of things. It took place in front of zero fans at Gillette Stadium thanks to COVID-19. The contest marked Jimmy Garoppolo’s return to Foxboro. It might have also been the worst performance of Cam Newton’s Patriots career, which is saying something.
Bill Belichick was unsurprisingly terse after the game but lent his support to Newton once again despite the outcome. Oh, that’s right. The outcome. The 49ers won the game 33-6, one of the most embarrassing losses of the Belichick tenure in New England.
So, what exactly does that game have to do with Sunday in Miami? This week’s game is the debut of new Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, who landed the gig after one season as San Francisco offensive coordinator. While he wasn’t leading the offense when the Niners came to Foxboro in 2020, he was the club’s run game coordinator. You see where this is headed.
In that game, the 49ers ran all over the Patriots, literally and figuratively. San Francisco racked up 197 yards on 37 carries with all four of its touchdowns coming on the ground. The run-game dominance overshadowed the fact that Garoppolo threw two picks in his return to New England. Garroppolo can thank Jeff Wilson, a surprise starter, who ran for 112 yards on just 17 carries and three touchdowns before leaving with an injury. JaMycal Hasty carried it nine times for 57 yards for good measure.
The big question: How much, if at all, does that matter on a Sunday in 2022 when two completely different teams play a game in Miami? It’s unlikely to have a major impact, sure, but it’s worthwhile context. At the very least, it shows that the 49ers’ coaching staff was able to find something it could attack in Belichick’s defense. At the end of the day, it is head coach Kyle Shanahan who masterminds the 49ers’ offense — that’s the same now as it was then — but McDaniel deserves some credit for having responsibility over the run game. And while the figures on both sides have changed, one has to think he’ll at least revisit what made San Francisco so successful then as he builds a Dolphins game plan for Sunday.
At the very least, it figures to be a worthy test for a Patriots defense that has put a little more emphasis on speed in building the 2022 unit. Going back and just watching the highlights from that 2020 game show a 49ers offense that dictated the pace to a Patriots defense that looked less and less interested in tackling as the game progressed. Ja’Whuan Bentley had an especially rough showing, with Wilson blowing through gaping off-tackle holes and leaving Bentley among others in his dust.
We’ll probably see plenty of play-action, too, and Miami certainly should take advantage of Tua Tagovailoa’s accuracy. Garoppolo killed the Patriots in the flats in 2020, and that sort of attack seems to fit Tagovailoa’s game, too.
Then again, the Patriots know all of this already. But it’s just one more thing to keep in mind when the two division rivals finally kick off Sunday on South Beach.
