Along with getting Maye on the move, the Patriots got their run game going by spreading the Steelers defense out. By playing out of a spread formation in a three-receiver set, the Pats get Pittsburgh into a two-high safety shell with only six defenders in the box. The Pats ran a play commonly known as “dart,” which is just power but with the backside tackle pulling rather than the guard. The effective down blocks allow RT Morgan Moses to pull to the play-side linebacker, C Jared Wilson climbs to the second level, and slot WR DeMario Douglas “gets two” with a great block downfield to spring Henderson on his long TD run.<\/p>\n
The goal here isn’t to put lipstick on a pig, but there’s a sea of negativity around the Patriots offense after a slow start to the season. Even prime Brady and Belichick had some rough Septembers. Are we on to Cincinnati yet? Although there’s a lot of work to be done, New England’s offense did put some good things on film that it can hopefully build on this week.<\/p>\n
Let’s preview the chess match between the Patriots and Jaguars in Sunday’s Week 3 matchup in Jacksonville, with kickoff at 1 p.m. ET at EverBank Stadium.<\/p>\n
Offense Key: Maximize Maye’s Mobility and Prep for Another Cover-6 Week<\/p>\n
As we transition into a deep dive into the Jaguars defense, Coen paired himself with another under-the-radar defensive coordinator who has quickly become a rising star in the coaching carousel.<\/p>\n
Like Coen, Jags DC Anthony Campanile has been associated with a who’s who of defensive minds. Campanile has coached under Brian Flores, Vic Fangio, Jeff Hafley, and Don Brown, among others. His defense is a melting pot of those systems, with the Jaguars mostly relying on “structure” like the Fangio tree while having some Flores and Brown chaos (blitzing) in his DNA.<\/p>\n
As for their personnel, the Jaguars have bookend edge rushers in Travon Walker (rushes over RT) and Josh Hines-Allen (rushes over LT) who are game-wreckers. The Jags are using No. 2 overall pick Travis Hunter as a full-time cornerback, but are rotating defensive backs in their nickel and dime-heavy packages (15.6% dime, 9th). They also lost top off-ball linebacker Devin Lloyd in free agency, replacing him with underrated veteran Foyesade Oluokun and fourth-year pro Ventrell Miller, who is Pro Football Focus’s top-graded linebacker through two weeks (91.1 overall).<\/p>\n
Discussing the Patriots “kryptonite” is getting tedious, but the Jaguars defense is another quarters-based system that plays zone over 76% of its coverage snaps. Although their most common call is Cover-3 (33.3%), they major in quarters (25%) and the infamous Cover-6. Campanile dials up blitzes at the ninth-highest rate (36.7%) while ranking in the top half of the league in simulated pressures and line stunts. Campanile is trying to take all the best things from his mentors to build out his own defense.<\/p>\n
“They’re trying to take away some of the boundary, 1-on-1 stuff. You can see that teams are trying to do that, have the field safety play in their run game and try to fit him. So, you see more teams trying to mix it up and try to cloud one side, cloud the other, and really try to keep things in front,” said Maye about Cover-6. “They’re trying to play split safety, let the guys up front stop the run and let the guys up front eat. So, realizing that also at the same time, just knowing that there are still holes and we have some chances to make plays.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Along with getting Maye on the move, the Patriots got their run game going by spreading the Steelers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5268,24988,24018,24019,116,118,117,161849,25737],"class_list":["post-412594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-analysis","tag-gameplan","tag-hp-article","tag-hp-featured","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-new-england-patriots-at-jacksonville-jaguars-2026-reg-3","tag-pregame-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}