So How Good are the Patriots, Anyway?

“We have an opportunity this week to work on things that’ll help us. Obviously, we don’t know who we’re going to play, so once that clears up, we’ll turn our attention to that team. But right now, hopefully we can find some things that we can improve on that’ll help us the next time we do get to play. That’s pretty much where we’re at today.” – Bill Belichick

“This week is about us, go out and do everything you can to try to tighten things up — sharpen. That’s what we’re looking forward to.” – Julian Edelman

With the Patriots in their annual early-January period of rest, healing, self-scouting, coffee and contemplation, it seems like as good a time as any for me to do the same. To look back at the season just concluded, where they are now and try to get a mental grip on exactly how good they are as the playoffs begin.

I’ve written a million blogs (and I’ve rocked them all) pushing back against the negativity of a world gone mad with visions of the End of Days for this franchise. You left me with no choice. One missed tackle (by a tight end subbing in for a safety, no less) in the Miami game separates the Pats from Kansas City. And yet the Patriots are being talked about like a hollow shell of themselves while the Chiefs are new ultimate power in the universe. So in some ways I feel like the last sane man on Earth.

But this is not going to be one of those posts.

There’s plenty of valid reasons to have a healthy concern for this team. Yes, they earned their ninth straight playoff bye. But they also broke a streak of winning 12+ games that goes all the way back to the 2009 team, the mentally weakest and least likeable Patriots roster since the Pete Carroll era. They had great moments (wins over Chicago and Kansas City) and moments that nearly broke me (Tennessee, Miami and Pittsburgh). They’re coming off their most complete game all season, but it was against a terrible edition of an already bad Jets team, so take that for what it’s worth.

All of which makes this the perfect time to GPS the Patriots’ postseason coordinates and find out exactly where the hell we are. Here are some conclusions we can draw:

1. The Patriots might be the most balanced of the 12 playoff teams.

The when it comes to Points Scored and Points Allowed, ultimately the only stats that are truly worth spending your time on, the Pats are the only team in football that finished in the Top 7 in both:

The teams ahead of them in Points Scored ranked like this in Points Allowed:

Kansas City: 24th, with 421 points
LA Rams: 20th, with 384 points
New Orleans: 14th, with 353 points

The playoff teams who allowed fewer points ranked this way in Points Scored:

Chicago: 9th, with 421
Baltimore: 13th, with 389
Houston: 11th, with 402
Dallas: 22nd, with 339

Overall they were +111 in Point Differential, good for 5th best in the league.

2. The Patriots have the edge over everybody at cornerback.

There are a few Passer Rating Deniers out there. Holdouts who don’t believe in the stat or think it measures performance in any accurate way. For them, let me point out that of the 12 teams that made the playoffs, 11 finished in the top 14 in team Passer Rating. The lone exception was Baltimore, who finished 24th. The only teams who finished in the top half of the league and missed the playoffs were Atlanta, Minnesota and Pittsburgh, who averaged eight wins between them.

It’s stating the obvious to say a lot of factors go into slowing down a great passing attack. But just as obvious to say that great cornerbacks are key. They are stopsticks that can blow out the tires on a speeding offense. And according to Pro Football Focus, no one has better corners than the Pats:

That’s two of the top six corners in football. And since lately JC Jackson has been taking all of the reps at corner opposite Gilmore while Jason McCourty has taken on more of a slot/subpackage role, allow me to show you this:

That number in red would be Jackson’s Passer Rating Against, the lowest in the NFL among corners. By far. And jut in case you don’t put any stock in PFF, ESPN has this stat for Stephon Gilmore:

3. The Patriots defense doesn’t have to play great in order for them to win.

T/H/T/T (tricornered hat tip) to the guy who came up with this one:

So over his postseason career, Tom Brady is 9-8 when his team gives up more than 20 points. And since he’s 27-10 lifetime, that would mean when they give up 20 or less, he’s 18-2. The only losses coming in the Super Bowl That Shall Not Be Named, and at Denver in 2015. A winning percentage of .900.

To answer your next question, the defense averaged 20.3 PPG on the season. In the last six games they averaged 14.8 PPG and in the last three, 10.67 PPG. If they could keep that up against the rest of the playoff field, it would be quite nice. But they don’t necessarily have to.

4. Tom Brady still looks great in analytics.

More PFF. This is their overall grade using whatever metrics the nerds use at Cris Collinsworth’s advanced stats sweatshop:

They’ve got him ranked third best overall. Behind the MVP, the Comeback POTY and ahead of Discount Double Jesus. But just to be fair, and to gauge Brady with a more familiar stat, here’s how it looks going by Passer Rating:

Seventh best in the league is respectable and all. But loses its shine when you realize he’s only the fifth best in the playoffs and fourth in his own conference.

5. The Patriots were objectively terrible at stopping the run.

Two wins at the end weren’t enough to make me forget how badly their run defense got gashed in Pittsburgh and Miami. And all season long, basically, particularly up the middle. Reasonable people can differ about how much that matters as we’re forced to live out Bill Polian’s 2003 wet dream of a world without defense. But I still think it matters more in January than it does the rest of the year. And it says a lot that the top teams in fewest Yards Per Attempt all made the playoffs:

Weirdly though, so did the teams with the most Yards Per Attempt:

That is 10 of the 12 playoff teams at one extreme or the other, with only the Eagles and Chargers somewhere in the dreaded middle. What that means is for greater, less beer-marinated minds than mine. But I’d like to think it means if you’ve got an elite quarterback, its hard for a team to beat you on the ground? Maybe?

6. The Patriots biggest challenge is a team that gives up a metric shit ton of big plays.

Check this out:

As we sit here in the bye week, until such time as the Chiefs realize they haven’t won a home playoff game since 1993 (0-6 since), Patrick Mahomes realizes he has zero postseason experience and it occurs to Andy Reid that he is Andy Reid, we have to assume a trip to Arrowhead is the only way back to the Super Bowl. Your obstacles become your path, and all that. So it should come as some comfort to know that the Chiefs gave up more chunk plays than any quality teams, by a long shot.

I know I said this was about self-scouting, so let me bring this back to the Patriots. According to Sharp Football Stats, this was how they ranked offensively on Explosive Plays:

Tenth on the ground, 17th in the air. Not great. But more or less what we’ve come to expect from two decades of ball control offense predicated on quick timing routes, working the slants, curls and flats and not turning the ball over with only the occasional shot down field. But a relatively healthy offense with Cordarelle Patterson back to run sweeps and keep a defense off balance will have chances both rushing and throwing against a defense that vulnerable to big plays. If it comes to that.

So the bottom line is that they are pretty much where they should be. With as good a chance as anybody, and a much better shot than a lot of the other 11. There is no team in this tournament I’d rather be invested in than this edition of the Patriots. In spite of everything. Because in the end, there’s the stuff you can’t measure:

7. This.

#StillHere. Sweet mother of God, it’s going to be a long week and a half waiting for kickoff.