If I wished to rage-bait some Bostonians we might have made this query: Are the Patriots good or simply fortunate?
Their storyline popping out of the common season was the delicate schedule and the way a lot of a job that will have performed in the crew’s unimaginable year-over-year turnaround.
Then they bought right here in half due to a weird meltdown by Houston Texans quarterback CJ Stroud final weekend.
And now they’re dealing with a backup QB, a incontrovertible fact that has skewed expectations of the matchup dramatically.
The Patriots – winners of simply 4 video games in every of the final two seasons – are actually considered as having a transparent and charmed path to the Super Bowl.
But with the Broncos Nix-less, we received’t get that query answered this week anyway. The Pats will win or lose and not using a probability to show they will beat an incredible crew at full energy. Instead, we’ll must search for a sign in what New England itself is doing.
So let’s return to that beatdown of Stroud and the Texans offense. It was definitely a failure by Houston, however credit score to the Pats’ protection as properly. In the common season, New England was led by its offense and the MVP-caliber efficiency from Drake Maye. This month, the protection has stepped up. In two playoff video games, the Pats have allowed only one landing with 9 sacks, six turnovers, and one defensive landing.
In different phrases: the protection has scored as many touchdowns as they’ve allowed.
They’ve wanted that robust efficiency by the protection to compensate for Maye’s stumbles in his first postseason. After solely eight interceptions in 17 regular-season video games, Maye has surrendered six in simply two playoff video games. He may nonetheless win MVP – voting is completed based mostly solely on common season – however he hasn’t regarded able to carrying a crew these final couple of weeks.