Gästeforum » his dig route in front of the two safeties a

Into Foxborough came the Dallas Cowboys and the driving rain.The New England Patriots weathered both visitors.A 13-9 victory would be the result of a game Tom Brady entered as questionable with an injury to his right elbow White John Hannah Jerseys , and a game the quarterback played without wide receivers Phillip Dorsett and Mohamed Sanu while completing 47 percent of his passes.The Patriots stood on sodden turf Sunday. They’d also stand at 10-1.Here’s a touchdown of observations from what went into it.Wynn back in, and hanging inFor the first time since Sept. 15, New England’s left tackle spot included the player drafted No. 23 overall last year to play there.Isaiah Wynn started against Dallas after spending the previous eight games on injured reserve with turf toe. The Georgia product took over for veteran in-season signing Marshall Newhouse and took a steep matchup in his return. While lining up across from the resurging Robert Quinn in the first quarter, Wynn conceded a strip-sack that’d be recovered by his quarterback to force fourth down. More growing pains and knockdowns would follow. More work for Newhouse would, too, as starting right tackle Marcus Cannon worked through an illness that had him questionable.But Wynn’s quick hands and feet were not lost in pass protection. Neither were the run plays heading his direction.Patriots gain ground with another Georgia productThe Patriots opened in “11” personnel with one running back and one tight end. That grouping remained throughout the offense’s first drive. And it saw Sony Michel, Wynn’s former roommate in Athens, Ga., who went eight picks after him, handle four consecutive runs.Light then shifted to heavy. Behind eligible tackles and a linebacker in Elandon Roberts playing fullback, Michel found himself with 46 rushing yards by the end of the first quarter. Heavy then shifted back to light. Michel averaged 4.3 yards per carry to the tune of 85 yards by game’s end while breaking off multiple double-digit gains.The Cowboys’ defensive front would be missing 2018 Pro Bowl linebacker Leighton Vander Esch, who was ruled out Friday after undergoing an MRI on his neck.Blocked punt sets up first touchdown for first-rounderThe Patriots dressed four receivers. That is, if accounting for Matthew Slater.The gunner and captain carved around the line to block New England’s third punt of the season. And the first touchdown in the career of first-round pick N’Keal Harry followed on a 10-yard fade from Brady with 45 seconds to go in the initial quarter.Harry, Julian Edelman and Jakobi Meyers made up the wideout room on Sunday. They combined to catch 13 passes for 177 yards. Edelman got under a third-and-20 target. Meyers shed Cowboys tackles on pickup of 32, came up with a critical third-and-9 conversion, and moved the chains on third-and-7 late. It’d be needed. The aforementioned Dorsett and Sanu went to the inactives before kickoff due to a concussion and a sprained ankle, respectively.Six points go wide right for the PatriotsBrett Maher wasn’t the only kicker in the elements on Sunday. Nick Folk missed the first two field goals of his Patriots tenure.A 46-yard attempt, pushed back five yards on a false start by defensive tackle Danny Shelton, sailed right of the uprights in the second quarter. A 48-yarder then went the same way as the last seconds before halftime expired. The score read 10-6.Folk entered the league with the Cowboys in 2007 John Hannah Jerseys 2019 , and went to the Pro Bowl with the organization that drafted him as a rookie. His stay with New England began in late October. Prior to his two waterlogged misses against Dallas, Folk made good on a 44-yard try and an extra point. The recent Arizona Hotshot would make good on another from 42 yards out at the 9:32 mark in the fourth.Withstanding Prescott’s paceDak Prescott arrived at Gillette Stadium having passed for 1,098 yards and nine touchdowns since the calendar turned to November. He arrived on pace to eclipse 5,000 yards after never throwing for more than 3,885 in a season.“Hard to see anybody playing much better than him,” Patriots head coach Bill Belichick said of the quarterback earlier in the week. “This guy’s tough.”It’d begin tough for the Cowboys. The league’s top-ranked offense saw its first drive end with a punt. The second bounced off the upright from 46 yards out. The third ended in punt rejection. And the fourth landed in the hands of reigning first-team All-Pro cornerback Stephon Gilmore on an interception. Prescott and Co. dried off with Ezekiel Elliott. The NFL’s two-time winner of the rushing title helped propel Dallas to back-to-back field goals before intermission. And Elliott absorbed 126 total yards from scrimmage on a night Prescott finished 19-of-33 for 212 yards through the air.One McCourty in the New England secondary, but few openingsJason McCourty appeared on New England’s final injury report of the week. A groin injury had left the 32-year-old starting cornerback limited, questionable and ultimately inactive by Sunday.It marked McCourty’s first missed game since joining twin brother Devin in the secondary. In his place, J.C. Jackson garnered the start on the outside. Jackson paired with Michael Gallup while Gilmore paired with Amari Cooper. In between, Patriots slot corner Jonathan Jones went up against Cowboys slot receiver Randall Cobb, and broke up the game’s first third down.Rotating into the defensive backfield would be rookie second-round pick Joejuan Williams out of Vanderbilt. Rotating out would be the Cowboys, both on third down and in the red zone. Gallup, Cooper and Cobb hauled in eight passes altogether from Prescott. The longest from that trio of wideouts sent Dallas 59 yards down the left sideline. But Cooper would go without a catch. His last look came down four points on fourth-and-11. Our offseason series continues with a look at the Tom Brady-to-Josh Gordon connection." Patriots AnalysisPatriots Film RoomHow it Happened: Week 12 — Tom Brady and Josh Gordon punish the Vikings for two cardinal sinsNew,19commentsOur offseason series continues with a look at the Tom Brady-to-Josh Gordon connection.EDTIf you are a defense facing Tom Brady, there are two cardinal sins that you cannot commit. First, you cannot let him know before the play exactly what defense you are running, especially in the secondary. Second, you cannot simply spot drop into zone coverage in the secondary unless you have a means of pressuring him or putting him under duress in another manner.Perhaps a third would be this: You cannot, under any circumstances White Irving Fryar Jerseys , do both on the same play.The Minnesota Vikings tried that and it failed.Following a Week 12 victory over the New York Jets coming off their bye week, the Patriots hosted the Minnesota Vikings in a very interesting non-conference matchup. New England entered the game with an 8-3 record but there were some lingering doubts about the team after the Week 10 disaster in Nashville. The Vikings traveled east with a 6-4-1 mark, looking to try and keep pace in the NFC North.New England moved to an early 10-0 lead, but the visitors clawed back into the contest, and with the third quarter ticking away the score was knotted at ten. That was when quarterback Tom Brady connected with Josh Gordon for a 24-yard scoring strike that eased tensions on the Patriots’ sidelines.Before breaking down this play we can take a moment to talk naming conventions. It is often discussed each season how the Patriots’ offense can be difficult to learn. Part of that stems from the playbook itself and the naming structure of concepts. In other systems a play call might contain a ton of information and numbers that spells out exactly what route each receiver is going to run. For example, a play call could contain “617 F-Wheel,” and as long as you know the formation and where to align, you know what route to run. Staying with this example the first receiver on the left runs the 6 route, or the dig. Then the next receiver (so long as he is not the F receiver) runs a quick out (the 1 route), then the last receiver runs the 7, or corner, and the F receiver runs the wheel route.In Patriots’ parlance, that same combination could be termed “Win” and “D-Pivot.” So now the receivers (and the QB of course) have to know their route based on remembering alignment and what Win or D-Pivot means. Here’s Win:Now here is D-Pivot:As you might have guessed by now, the route concept on the Gordon touchdown was Win and D-Pivot.Looking at this play let us first get into Brady’s head before the snap. The teams line up for this 1st and 10 with Brady (#12) in the huddle and three receivers to his left. Gordon (#10) is the outside receiver with Chris Hogan (#15) in the slot and Julian Edelman (#11) aligned on the wing. New England starts this play with a Y-Iso alignment, putting tight end Rob Gronkowski (#87) alone on the right:Before the continue look at the Vikings’ defense. You see both safeties deep, which tells Brady at this point that Minnesota is perhaps in a two-deep coverage, whether Cover 2 or Cover 4. But as Josh McDaniels so often does, he uses presnap movement to get his quarterback more information, as well as getting one of his receivers an easier release. Edelman comes in motion from the left into a stack alignment behind Gronkowski. As he moves Irving Fryar Jerseys 2019 , watch what the defense does:Instead of a defender trailing Edelman as he crosses the formation, Minnesota responds by simply sliding linebacker Anthony Barr (#55) to the outside. At this point Brady can be almost certain that Minnesota is dropping into a zone coverage look. Unless they want to have a linebacker cover Edelman one-on-one…Here is the route concept:To the left Gordon and Hogan run a dig/wheel combination, termed Win in the playbook. Gordon runs the dig while Hogan takes off on a wheel route to the outside. On the right side Gronkowski and Edelman run D-Pivot. The wide receiver takes off for the flat while Gronkowski runs a convertable route based on the coverage. He will either run a deep curl, a deep out or a corner route depending on what he sees from the secondary.What does he, and more importantly Brady, see? Minnesota spot drop into a standard Cover 2 look:This is going to be easy pickings for Brady. By not disguising their look, the quarterback can simply confirm at the start of the play his presnap expectations, and execute accordingly. Here, Gordon runs his dig route in front of the two safeties and behind the linebackers, and is wide open for the throw:Now look, playing quarterback is a hard job. But on this play Brady’s task is a bit easier thanks to the presnap movement and the fact that Minnesota’s secondary simply spot drops into their assigned zones. Now, the Vikings might have thought that pressure up front would have forced Brady off his spot and into a mistake, but as we have seen so often from the veteran quarterback, his ability to use footwork in the pocket to slide or climb away from pressure stands out again. Watching this play from the replay angle you can see how pressure starts to build off the left edge, but Brady so adroitly clicks and climbs in the pocket before delivering the strike to Gordon:There are rules when playing a quarterback of Brady’s level, and we outlined the two big ones at the start of this piece. Minnesota broke both of them on this touchdown pass, and in doing so made life that much easier for a player who will end up on the Mount Rushmore of quarterbacks.