Perry's Pats-Seahawks Report Card: High marks for Newton, WRs
Is this what we should've expected? Were we naive to assume it would look any differently?
Nope. And nope.
By the sounds of it, not even Cam Newton would have blamed you if you didn't know the Patriots offense would look this good this soon.
The Sunday Night Football broadcast team explained that Newton admitted to them that he felt some doubt creep into his mind at times about whether or not he'd be able to regain his form after missing almost all of 2019 due to injury. He acknowledged in a video online this offseason that he hadn't put his best work on tape over the last two seasons. And then after losing to the Seahawks, 35-30, he said it was a good test for the Patriots to see how they stacked up.
"Make no mistake about it," Newton said, "the Seattle Seahawks (are) a great football team. We are a great football team as well. It was great for us to kinda see where we fared up. We just fell short."
A reasonable expectation? It would've been reasonable to assume that, if Newton was healthy, he could get back to where he was in 2018. He was in the MVP conversation that year, early in the year. Then his shoulder got battered. He needed surgery. He broke his foot the following summer, and that was the last we saw of him before he was released by Carolina.
But what Newton did on Sunday night was better than just about every 2018 performance on his record. The one that comes close, statistically? A one-point loss to the Lions, 20-19, when he completed 25 of 37 passes (68 percent) for 357 yards, three touchdowns and a pick. He was sacked three times and ran twice for two yards.
On Sunday, Newton completed 30 of 44 passes (68 percent) for 397 yards, three total touchdowns and a pick. He was sacked once and ran 11 times for 47 yards. He was accurate to all levels of the field, completing all four of his attempts 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage or deeper. He bought time with his legs to find open receivers in the soft spots of Pete Carroll's Cover-3 defense. He threw to receivers before they made their breaks, and he cycled through his progressions. He manipulated safeties with his eyes.
The result was a Patriots passing game that seems to have coalesced long before anyone expected. You better believe that made for a nice Week 2 grade for Newton in our latest Report Card.
Was Cam Newton perfect? He was not. Clearly. He threw a pick and had another near-pick. He threw high to the goal line on what would've been the game-winning pass had Julian Edelman been able to snare it. He threw behind Edelman near the goal line earlier in the game.
But, for the most part, Newton was on point. And that's putting it lightly. His deep-ball placement to Edelman on catches of 49, 33 and 26 yards was tremendous. He eluded pressure and found extra time to throw, completing five of eight attempts when hurried for a whopping 11.5 yards per attempt. And while the running game wasn't quite as potent as it was in Week 1, while he lamented being unable to punch it in at the end, he scored twice and used Seattle's attention on the run to his advantage. No one threw more play-action attempts than Newton in Week 2, and he came away with his highest passing yardage total since Week 2 of his rookie season.
Playing with heavy hearts as their teammate and friend James White dealt with the sudden loss of his father, this group had a quiet night. After helping the Patriots exceed 200 yards rushing in Week 1, the backs recorded just 20 yards on 14 carries. Rex Burkhead came through with back-to-back catches of 19 and 18 yards, one on a check-down and one on a slip screen, but otherwise there was not much doing for this unit.
Hard to believe that Julian Edelman -- after all those years with Tom Brady -- set a career-high in receiving yardage Sunday night. What might've been even harder to fathom would've been if you'd told someone prior to the game how exactly Edelman would go off for 179 yards.
"He'll go vertical. He'll attack the seams of Pete Carroll's Cover-3 and create just enough space working on Jamal Adams to be the explosive threat the Patriots need. And he'll do it while dealing with a knee injury."
Tough. Dependable. Competitive. No matter who the quarterback is. Edelman had a drop. He had the potential game-winner glance off his mitts. But he was very good.
N'Keal Harry took a step in the right direction, somehow hanging onto a fourth-down conversion after absorbing a hellacious hit over the middle. He also was Newton's target on the final pass play of the game to get the Patriots to the goal line. There's trust there. He continues to be unable to break tackles, but he showed progress. As did Damiere Byrd, who caught six passes for 72 yards. Byrd's best catch might've been a quick out thrown by Newton well before Byrd came out of his break. Only one game, but the two one-time teammates in Carolina seem to have some real chemistry.
Late in the third quarter Ryan Izzo popped up with a grab to continue some early momentum in the team's penultimate scoring drive.
The touchdown to punctuate the series? A quick-hitter to fullback Jakob Johnson, who meets with the tight ends on a daily basis. Johnson was later submarined on the final play of the game, but Belichick did nothing but sing Johnson's praises on a conference call with reporters Monday.
The Seahawks tried like hell to make Cam Newton uncomfortable. They brought extra pressure on almost half of New England dropbacks -- 22 of 47 -- but the Patriots offensive line and backs did their part in keeping Newton clean. He was under pressure nine times and sacked just once -- though even the sack was a few inches away from going down as a Newton carry for positive yardage. The relentless Jamal Adams simply caught Newton from behind and brought him down right at the line of scrimmage.
This grade takes a hit for what happened in the Patriots run game when it was someone other than Newton holding the ball. Less than 2.0 yards per carry is a far cry from what they were able to do one week prior. And on the final play of the game, rookie offensive lineman Mike Onwenu lost his one-on-one battle with L.J. Collier, with Collier getting across Onwenu's face and into the backfield to stuff Newton.
Travis Homer broke through New England's kick coverage unit for a 44-yard return early in the second quarter, forcing Jake Bailey to make the tackle to prevent it from going any farther. Nick Folk missed a 51-yarder, a missed opportunity to bump this grade up. J.C. Jackson was called for a hold on a punt return. Just not an all-time day from this unit. Bailey did wallop a 57-yard punt in the second, though, that helped erase the extra yards the Patriots gave up on the long Homer return.
Frustrating time having to try to defend an alien at the quarterback position. Has to be. Not only is Russell Wilson one of the best deep-ball throwers in the league, but he's so quick in tight spaces that it's difficult to hem him in and keep him in the pocket -- all he needs is a small crease -- and he's short enough that when he's juking behind the line, he crouches down behind his blockers and can be hard to find. Seemed to happen time and again Sunday night.
Wilson ended up with five scrambles for 39 yards -- 7.8 yards per attempt -- and four of those went for first downs. That's partly on the big bodies up front for not being able to control their blocks and crush Wilson's pocket around him during lengthy dropbacks.
Even though players like Lawrence Guy (five pressures, two quarterback hits) and Deatrich Wise (two pressures, one hit) had multiple reps where they got into the Seahawks backfield, some of those rushes left openings for Wilson to exploit with his legs. Every runner on Seattle's roster had at least 4.2 yards per carry, and as a group they racked up over 5.0 yards per attempt.
Chase Winovich is quickly becoming one of Bill Belichick's best defenders. He had six pressures off the edge and met safety Kyle Dugger in the backfield for a sack. But he also got caught doing a little too much that led to Seattle rush yardage. He lost contain on Russell Wilson on the edge, which led to a first-down run during the first Seahawks scoring drive of the game. On the same drive, Ja'Whaun Bentley got caught in the middle of the field in no-man's land during a Wilson scramble up the middle. Tough spot for any off-the-ball linebacker.
As our resident middle linebacker Ted Johnson said on "Monday Night Patriots," Ray Lewis would probably have trouble with Wilson one-on-one in the open field. Later in the game, Winovich lost an edge again and allowed a 13-yard run to Chris Carson two plays before another Seahawks score. And on the play before Freddie Swain's touchdown to make the score 28-17, John Simon seemed to have the play played almost perfectly -- one-on-one with his blocker he played a brief cat-and-mouse game with Wilson before Wilson used his lineman like a picker in basketball -- but it went for an eight-yard gain.
There were positive moments here. Shilique Calhoun checked in with a quick sack that had Wilson wrapped up before he could get away. Derek Rivers was in on a sack for the second straight week. Brandon Copeland recorded a pressure and a run stuff. Bentley had an early stuff. And one of Winovich's pressures was a heartbeat away from drilling Wilson and preventing DK Metcalf's long touchdown reception. Just not enough doing here to stifle a magician behind center.
Thinking this one would be lower? They did allow five touchdowns. They did allow Russell Wilson to throw for 10.3 yards per attempt. But they still come away with a gentleman's "C." How? Well, look at the coverage. Stephon Gilmore gave up a step to DK Metcalf but was in very good position at the moment of truth to bat away Wilson's deep ball. He didn't. Metcalf somehow hung on. Touchdown. Jason McCourty was all over David Moore -- on a pass that NextGen Stats said had a six percent chance of being completed -- on Moore's long score.
The Patriots were within one yard of the receiver on three of the five touchdowns Sunday night. Devin McCourty's pick-six was a gift, but it helps the grade. So too does the fact that this unit didn't get much help up front. Unable to generate consistent pressure, unable to keep him inside the pocket, the Patriots let Wilson put up 205 yards and all five of his scores on dropbacks of 2.5 seconds or more. Tough to cover for three, four, five . . . seconds at a time against a quarterback of that caliber.
