What went wrong and why? The coaching staff explains
How did Sidney Rice get so wide open on the Seattle Seahawks’ game-winning touchdown? According to New England Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia, it was the result a complete defensive breakdown.
That much is obvious to anyone who watched the play, so how are those problems fixed? It starts with fixing, well, everything.
“Could the pass rush have been better? It always can. Could the coverage have been better? Definitely. Could we have been in something other than that when that play was called? Of course that’s part of it too,” head coach Bill Belichick said. “The bottom line is we don’t have any defenses designed to give up 50-yard touchdowns or any offenses that are plays that are designed to cause penalties or turn the ball over or do those things.
“We have to always look at the design and always work to try to improve it. We have to be able to execute what it was have called, we don’t know what they’re going to run so we have to be handle what it is they throw at us, whatever defense they call or whatever play they happen to run. We have to do a better job of that.”
In other words, the coaching staff views the result as being unacceptable and they know that changes must be made to prevent a similar breakdown in the future.
Here are some other highlights from the coaching staff’s conference call with the media Monday:
Would an extra defensive back have helped on the final play?
Belichick “I think we had enough people back there on paper. We just didn’t have the play covered so we didn’t play it very well. Look, I’m not trying to put the blame on the players or anything like that, that’s not what it’s about. Was there a different call we could have made? There always is. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the call. I think we could have played it better, which includes coaching it to be played better. I think the responsibility on the coaching end is the execution of it, not we could have been in something else because we would have had to cover it if we were in something else as well.”
Patricia: “I think the particular play that you're talking about, obviously we’ve got to execute better and coach better the call that we were in. Defense is called to try to stop any particular play that they can throw at us or run at us and we’ve just got to go out and execute and perform it at a higher level. I can’t really say that an extra defender or an extra player here or there would have helped us, but we’ve got to obviously do a better job overall from coaching and playing to just handling the situation and the play better.”
Why was Kyle Arrington yanked from the game after the third series?
Patricia: “I think we try to play as many guys as we can and everyone that is active for the game is going to have a role for that particular game and get out there have an opportunity to play. So, we’re certainly going to take all the guys that are active and get them out there and try to get some opportunities and some plays out of them and certainly we do that every week.”
Do these end of game situations come down to mental toughness, and do the Patriots have it?
Belichick: “Sure, I think that’s part of it. There are a lot of different adjectives you can use to describe it. But whatever it is, in the end it comes down to situation awareness, reaching down at the end of the game in terms of performance, overall execution. … It’s an area, like I said, that I think we need to do a better job of all the way around – it’s not any one person or any one thing or even any one play, but collectively all the units I previously mentioned were all involved and we just have to work harder to get it to a higher level.”
Why did the Patriots abandon their balanced offensive attack?
Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels: “We knew Seattle was a really good, talented defense. We knew that there are certainly some challenges playing there in their stadium and then couple that with their scheme, where they really play with a safety down either in the box or at the line of scrimmage on almost every play. We knew we were going to rely a little more heavily on our passing game as kind of an extension of our running game yesterday. We mixed the running game in there – I think whatever it was, 27 runs or whatever it may be – and then used a lot of short passes to kind of go hand-in-hand with that to try to control the ball and control the clock and really try to effectively move the ball against the scheme that they implement, which is a good one and they have a lot of good players.”
What happened on the final play of the first half and why didn’t the team kick a field goal?
McDaniels: “We’ve practiced that situation a lot. We understand the dynamic that’s at play there and we made the decision to go ahead and run an extra play. We knew we had to go quick. Tom knew he had to throw the ball quickly, whether that was to find a receiver fast or to throw it away quickly. We’ve practiced that numerous times and unfortunately we incurred the penalty there that didn’t allow us to end up kicking the field goal. I think the pass was incomplete with one second left, but just where we ended up putting the ball on the play was the thing that changed the result. But I think we’ve executed and run that situation before and we tried to do it the right way.”