Massarotti: With Rock Fight On Tap, Patriots Are Finally Equipped To Battle
BOSTON (CBS) -- These Patriots were rebuilt precisely for this, for January, for teams like the Baltimore Ravens. They were built for the days when Tom Brady is neutralized. They were built to win a rock fight.
And so here we are now, in divisional week of the NFL postseason, and a funny thing has happened in the annual tomato can game: the Patriots actually have to bring a fork and a knife this time. They have to find out if they can truly maul with the maulers, if they can win the kind of game, when it matters, that has prevented them from winning a championship since the first term of George Bush.
Bush had a W in his name back then. The Pats really haven't had one since.
"As usual, the Ravens are a solid football team in all three phases of the game," Patriots coach Bill Belichick told reporters yesterday via conference call. "They're well coached, they're physical, they do a good job on the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. They have explosive skill players on offense, in the return game and on defense. I think Coach [John] Harbaugh has, as always, put those type of teams out there with Ozzie [Newsome, the Baltimore general manager] and their respective staffs. I think that's what they have again. That's what they are. They're tough. They're physically and mentally tough. They can play in tough situations and they're talented. They keep coming at you."
As usual. That's what they are. In professional sports, there are select teams that forge a brand over time, that possess an identity beyond the players who wear the uniforms. Ray Lewis and Ed Reed are gone, but the Ravens are still the Ravens, just as the Pittsburgh Steelers are always the Steelers. That was true under Brian Billick and it remains true under Harbaugh. It will likely remain true when Harbaugh is gone.
Once, it was true of the Patriots, too, when New England possessed a tough, physical, play-making defense to go along with a masterful coach and the consummate big-game quarterback. Maybe it is true again now.
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has dismissed the past in this matchup with the Ravens, and there is probably a very good reason: in Brady's case, the past is not worth remembering. In three career postseason games against Baltimore, Brady has three touchdowns, seven interceptions, a 56.1 completion percentage and a 56.8 rating. New England's only victory in those meetings came in 2012, when Baltimore receiver Lee Evans dropped what would have been a game-winning touchdown in the corner of the end zone before Billy Cundiff missed a 32-yard field goal by an impossibly wide margin.
After that game, Brady admitted he "sucked." (And he did.) Brady's rating that day against the Ravens was a paltry 62.1, the best he has performed in any of the three postseason games against the Ravens. (The others were 49.1 and 57.5.) The discerning eye would tell you the Ravens lost the game more than the Patriots won it, and New England ultimately was upended in the Super Bowl by a New York Giants team that possessed the ball for nearly two-thirds of the game.
The Patriots couldn't get off the field against the Giants then, and they generally have not been able to get off the field against the Ravens. In the three playoff losses to Baltimore, the Ravens converted 24 of their 45 attempts on third down, a whopping 53.3 percent. To put that number in perspective, the Atlanta Falcons this season were the worst team in the NFL on third down, allowing opponents to covert on a stunning 47 percent of their attempts.
So what has changed? Only everything, from how the Patriots built their defense to how they built their offense. Darrelle Revis was brought in to do what Aqib Talib did not – play in January – and Brandon Browner was brought in to maul. During the season, after foolishly parting ways with Tommy Kelly during training camp, Belichick fortified the interior of the defensive line with Alan Branch. Brandon Lafell and Tim Wright both give Brady far more sizable targets in the red zone, where Brady has floundered against aggressive, more physical teams.
Get the point? The Pats got bigger, stronger, tougher. And the entire idea was to combat teams from the 2007 and '11 Giants to the '10 Jets to the '12 Ravens. The opponents changed, but the style remained the same. You beat up Brady and the passing game, you beat the Pats.
The 2014 Patriots feel different, if for no other reason than the fact that they won games, particularly down the stretch, when Brady and the offense were not at their best. In San Diego on Dec. 7, the Pats beat the Chargers by a 23-14 score to close out an amazing run against some of the best passing attacks in the NFL. Three weeks later, the Patriots beat the Jets by a 17-16 score on a day when Brady passed for a mere 182 yards and was sacked four times. To find another game like that, you had to go back to 2010. Prior to that, it was 2006.
Will Brady shred these Ravens on Sunday? History suggests no. Baltimore possessed the No. 2 red zone defense in the NFL this season and the Ravens seem too good up front, too experienced, too well coached. As usual. That's what they are. But these Patriots do not feel nearly as reliant on Brady as they have been in the past, far more balanced and versatile. New England now seems as capable of defending Joe Flacco as the Ravens do of defending Brady, and that is something the Patriots have not possessed in a long, long time.
At least not when it mattered. At least not in January. At least when the opponent entering Gillette Stadium was toting a slingshot and satchel full of rocks.
Tony Massarotti co-hosts the Felger and Massarotti Show on 98.5 The Sports Hub weekdays from 2-6 p.m. Follow him on Twitter @TonyMassarotti.