Chargers Players Made This Stunning Admission After Losing to Patriots
New England earned a 16-3 victory
The Patriots defense made the Chargers offense look terrible on Sunday night — but how?
Well, they apparently rendered Los Angeles’ players nearly clueless throughout the 16-3 wild-card victory at Gillette Stadium.
New England’s defense limited the Chargers to just 207 net yards while racking up six sacks and forcing one turnover. Star quarterback Justin Herbert completed 19 of 31 passes for just 159 yards and zero touchdowns while leading his offense to just one third-down conversion on 10 attempts.
During a postgame news conference, Patriots linebacker Robert Spillane praised defensive play-caller Zak Kuhr and revealed a stunning admission that Chargers players made after the final whistle.
“Zak has been great all year,” Spillane told reporters. “He keeps the dial spinning. He keeps offenses guessing. All year, he has been doing that.
“You know, just after the game, talking to a few of the guys on the other team, they had no clue what we were doing. And they came up and said that: ‘We had no clue what you guys were in all game.’ So, for him just to be able to build those packages throughout the week, our back-end players to know how to disguise the different defenses, really keeps quarterbacks guessing.”
Boston Sports Journal’s Greg Bedard offered insight into the Patriots’ defensive gameplan in his postgame column.
“It started before the very first snap,” Bedard wrote. “There were the three corners, standing near Spillane, waiting to see which receivers went where out of the Chargers’ huddle. (Christian) Gonzalez went with Quentin Johnston, (Marcus) Jones with Ladd McConkey, and (Carlton) Davis followed either Tre Harris or Keenan Allen. On third down, Gonzalez often went with Allen, who had by far the most third-down targets on the Chargers (53 to McConkey’s 29).
“The advanced analytics will tell you the Patriots played almost the exact same man coverage as their season average (about 29%). But that’s not true. It might have been ‘zone’, but the Patriots were matching. Tightly. And the Chargers had no clue what to do about it, because the Patriots had not shown that potential all season. It was a master coaching class by the Patriots’ defensive coaches.”
It’ll be interesting to see whether the Patriots deploy a similar defense in the AFC divisional round or come up with something different. Regardless, if the defense continues playing at or near the level that it did against the Chargers, the Patriots will be awfully tough to beat in the playoffs.
